Hard Drive Partitioning

[Mad_Dog_McCracken]

Hi All,

 

I was downloading the new World of Warcraft patch onto my spare lappy which is a cheapo Acer running Vista Home Basic that I picked up from Comet. Halfway through the download I got the message my hard drive was full and the download stopped. I know it has an 80gb HD and I've only had it since May 08 so there was no way it would be full as I only use it for basic wordprocessing and the kids play WoW on it occasionally.

 

I checked it out and it turns out the HD has been partitioned into 2 drives of 40gb each, C: (called 'Acer'), and D: (called 'Data').

 

All my files etc had been written to the C: drive which was 90 odd % full hence the problem. How do I either a, delete the D: drive and let the C: drive take all the HD space (which would be my preferred option)? or decrease the size of the D: drive to enable the C: drive to take up the slack?

 

Please could any answers be in layman speak as I am not too clued up on the inner workings of a PC.

 

Cheers

 

Dave

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Hi Mad

 

Welcome to FPCH

 

Well whoever partitioned the Acer into 2 x 40gb needs to be shouted at.

 

The D: drive will be a recovery partition so don't delete that whatever you do.

 

If you want to make room for WOW then delete some stuff from C:

[Dalo Harkin]

You dont want to really go messing with the partitions if you can avoid it -

Move as much over to the D drive as you can as thats meant to be used for STORAGE really.

and then delete anything that you no longer need/use from the C drive and that will give you more than enough space.

[Mad_Dog_McCracken]

Thanks form your quick replies guys but as I said I'm not all that savvy with the inner gubbins of PC's.

 

I think I would like to xfer my WoW files to the D: drive. How would I go about doing this?

 

Thanks

[Dalo Harkin]

Do you have the disk for WoW - as when you install the game it asks where you want to move the install the game to and all you would have to do is create a file in D:/ called WoW and then reinstall the game to that location

[Mad_Dog_McCracken]

Dalo,

 

Actually all I did in the end (and was amazed it worked OK :D) was go into my C: drive, highlight the WoW folder and opt to move it to the D: drive.

 

After initially getting a message to say it would take 21 hours :eek: it eventually only took a couple of minutes and all my WoW files now appear in the D: partition and there is now 7.9 extra gigs of space in the C: drive.

 

I have not actually tried to play WoW yet on there so I hope the blinking thing recognises I have moved it.

 

Thanks for all your help. No doubt I'll be back.

 

Dave

[Tootech]

Drive D

 

Hi,

 

Drive D isn't a Recovery Partition on an Acer - that is hidden, and probably about 5 GB. It seems to be a common practice on HP, Compaq & Acer to split the drive into 2, one for your OS and one for your data. Theory being that if you need to reinstall Windows, your data partition is left untouched. Practice seems to be that most people run out of space on C: and have the same problem as you.

 

You would not be able to save your data to D: if it was a recovery partition as it is locked and inacessible.

 

Hope that helps,

 

Tootech.

[Seth]

Agreed that drive D is not a recovery partition.

 

WOW probably won't recognize the updates as it will look on the C drive. If such is the case, uninstall from C then install it on D.

[Dalo Harkin]

Hi,

 

Drive D isn't a Recovery Partition on an Acer - that is hidden, and probably about 5 GB. It seems to be a common practice on HP, Compaq & Acer to split the drive into 2, one for your OS and one for your data. Theory being that if you need to reinstall Windows, your data partition is left untouched. Practice seems to be that most people run out of space on C: and have the same problem as you.

 

You would not be able to save your data to D: if it was a recovery partition as it is locked and inacessible.

 

Hope that helps,

 

Tootech.

 

Spot on :)

Some HP laptops have the option to start from the recovery partition or the OS when the system boots just after the BIOS post - other than that you are not aware it is there.

[Mad_Dog_McCracken]

Thanks for all your replies guys.

 

Seth, I literally moved my entire WoW folder over to the D: partition so I'm hopeful it will look there when applying/looking for the upgrade.

 

I haven't actually played WoW on there yet as I prefer to play it on my main lappy which I had custom built and is much better to use all round. I let the kids play WoW on the Acer. They know better than to touch 'Daddy's Laptop' :cool:.

 

Thanks again