programs on new external hard drive?

[fsyozabil]

I'm running Windows XP sp3 on a AMD 64 Athlon. Things got very slow, and I was unable to defrag or use system restore. I discovered that I had less than 15 % of my 40 GB hard drive free, so I got a Seagate 500 GB external hard drive. It seems a lot of the 40GB drive is being used by programs which I think must stay on C:. I'll be glad if I can move them to the new drive, but I think not. Please tell me if I'm wrong. Unfortunately, I think it's not as simple as using the new drive as C:, because a friend has got my drive going in a different tower to the one I bought. I only have a Recovery CD. He said he had a job installing from it and I think if I try to reinstall onto the external drive from this Recovery disk (not a complete Windows disk) I won't be able to - different mother board etc. I can always buy a new Windows disk, but I'd rather avoid the expense if possible. Is there another option?

[Match]

moving programs off the C drive would confuse things, and probably cause more problems than it would solve

 

but what I would do is ether get a new bigger internal HD drive £50ish sholuld buy you around 500G and use your external for backing up, or move your documents folder off C onto the external drive ;)

 

and there is always the option of going through all the installed programs and removing (un-installing) the ones you don't use

 

when you make your mind up what's best for you if you need any help in 'how to' just ask ;)

[Trippy]

I agree with Match here. Probably best not to try and 'move' programmes as they are installed and not just 'stored' on the hard drive. Another way to free up some space is to move storage hungry files such as Music, Photos or Video to an external drive.

 

If you go the internal drive route, as I did recently, make sure you check the maximum drive size that your system will recognise with the OEM. My older dell system would only take a 320gb SATA drive. It may be possible to upgrade the BIOS on some motherboards to enable larger drives to be recognised, but the process is not without risk and (from bitter experience many years ago :( ) not for the faint hearted.

 

Trippy

[fsyozabil]

Thanks for your advice Match and Trippy.

[Tootech]

You could of course clone your 40Gb drive over to a larger drive, then once up and running extend the partition to the full capacity of the new disk:)

[fsyozabil]

Thanks VOAS tootech. Sorry to seem a bit dim, but will extending "the partition to the full capacity of the new disk" avoid needing the revovery disk, and how should I extend the partition?

[danzil]

Hi

if you did a disk to disk clone then it would be as it was before, but we more capacity.

just like you had a bigger drive in the first place.

and your ercovery cd will still work because you would have also cloned the "hidden partition"(the part of the drive that store your recovery data).

 

regards

danzil

[fsyozabil]

Thanks Danzil, I shall embark on this cloning