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Other => General Topics => Topic started by: REDACTED on May 10, 2017, 04:24:21 PM
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I have 5.5 GB left free out of 58.5GB, the bar showing Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit display is red, presumably meaning critically full.
The following method has been recommended:
1) Go to Disk Management
- Notice that "extend volume" of your C: drive is "ghosted" and you are unable to select it (right click); you need to have "free unallocated disk space" immediately next to this partition to its right. (As it is likely your D: partition is right next to it - you CAN NOT add the D: partition or part of it to your C: drive.)
2) You have to DELETE your D: partition completely (this means you will need to copy/save any files on your D: partition first). Right click on the D: partition and delete it. This will free up the entire 400+ GB of space on your drive and will create and place the "unallocated free space" immediately to the right of your C: drive.
3) You will now see that when you right click on the C: drive that the option to "extend" your C: drive is now available. Click "Extend..." and then option windows will open. At that point you may choose to allocate all remaining free space to your C: drive OR you may allocate whatever amount you'd like to your C: drive. You are then allowed to recreate your D: drive with the remaining unallocated free space.
Guaranteed that works; I just did it 3 minutes ago.
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Is this safe?
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Yes. One of the problems with partitioning drives is having to re-allocate space when one of the partitions gets full.
Partitioning was efficient in the old days. Not needed any more with today's modern drives.
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I have 5.5 GB left free out of 58.5GB, the bar showing Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit display is red, presumably meaning critically full.
The following method has been recommended:
1) Go to Disk Management
- Notice that "extend volume" of your C: drive is "ghosted" and you are unable to select it (right click); you need to have "free unallocated disk space" immediately next to this partition to its right. (As it is likely your D: partition is right next to it - you CAN NOT add the D: partition or part of it to your C: drive.)
2) You have to DELETE your D: partition completely (this means you will need to copy/save any files on your D: partition first). Right click on the D: partition and delete it. This will free up the entire 400+ GB of space on your drive and will create and place the "unallocated free space" immediately to the right of your C: drive.
3) You will now see that when you right click on the C: drive that the option to "extend" your C: drive is now available. Click "Extend..." and then option windows will open. At that point you may choose to allocate all remaining free space to your C: drive OR you may allocate whatever amount you'd like to your C: drive. You are then allowed to recreate your D: drive with the remaining unallocated free space.
Guaranteed that works; I just did it 3 minutes ago.
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Is this safe?
I don't know about safe (working with partitions can be dangerous), what I would have thought that the Deletion of Drive D: to be somewhat severe. But System Tools probably aren't as flexible. I have never used system tools to resize/partition HDDs, I have used partitioning software many times over the years and have never needed to delete a partition to be able to extend drive C:.
There are many Disk Partitioning applications out there some of them free that should be able to do this with possibly less hassle involved. Like resizing the Drive D: without having to delete the data and then extend the C: drive into the free space created. I have used an old program (no longer available) called Partition Magic on many of my old systems.
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Disk Management within Windows has always worked for me. :)
(http://screencast-o-matic.com/screenshots/u/Lh/1494433784403-36039.png)
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I'm only commenting on the instructions, pasted/written by the OPs whomever may have written them.
2) You have to DELETE your D: partition completely (this means you will need to copy/save any files on your D: partition first). Right click on the D: partition and delete it. This will free up the entire 400+ GB of space on your drive and will create and place the "unallocated free space" immediately to the right of your C: drive.
To me that is a nuclear option as you lose what is on your D: partition, unless you have an external HDD to backup the partition. There are tools that don't require the deletion of the drive, just reduce its size and allocate that unused space for extending the C: drive.
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Hi BOB3160
Thanks for posting those diagrams. When the guy wrote "Disk Management" I assumed he meant go to Windows Explorer and right-click on Drive C to see the options he referred to. But that didn't work on either C or D drive.
Unfortunately my Windows system is in German and the nearest option is Systemsteuerung (system management) which gives you 50 different options, but none of them concerned drives on the hard disk.
I would be grateful if you could teel in in plain English how you got to the Disk Management screen you illustrated, tackling the German should be no problem once there:)
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https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open-disk-management-2626080
Not sure if it will work in W7
windows key + X
run > dismkgr
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Hi DavidR
My Drive D has a capacity of 90GB only 4GB used, these files are on it (see attachment). Having deleted these (I have no idea what they are) how would I reallocate the 90 GB to Drive C?
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Delete the D partition and assign the unallocated space to the C drive.
If D is a physical drive, you can't assign the space to C.
You can do it with the disk-manager or one of the free tools.
e.g. MiniTool Partition Wizard or Easeus Partition Master
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Eddie
Thanks for the link https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open-disk-management-2626080 which shows me how to access Disk Management on Win 7.
To delete the D partition and assign the unallocated space to the C drive, I would presumably need to go to Disk Management, not possible via Win Explorer.
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Yup, you need to use the disk-manager to do so.
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Yup, you need to use the disk-manager to do so.
http://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=1284
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Eddy
According to disk manager and windows explorer my C Drive capacity has now increased from now 58.5GB to 149.95GB, leaving the 90GB extra from Drive D available. A good result. The result I wanted anyway.
The prompt on disk manager only gave the option to either reduce or delete "volume" on D, so I deleted the 5GB shown in the diagram to DavidR. As far as I know I did not delete the partition - just what was on it. Drive D no longer appears on disk manager though.
I has no idea what these files were, but I assume they are gone. (It is a second hand laptop I bought because I was not happy with Win 10 and wanted 7...so the previous owner may have put those there...hoping there was nothing system-critical in them).
Thanks everyone!
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I failed to verify my "brompeter" account in time, so I am now logged in as "brompeter2" in case there have been additional replies.
Thanks anyway.
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Sorry you've got issue with your new account. Maybe someone can help with that issue?
I've never thought it a good idea to partition a drive into multiple drives because:
- What happens to all of your data when your drive dies?
Now you've lost everything. And the point of creating a second drive was to safeguard you(r) data.
Always better to install a second hard drive or three and use them as your backups.
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Hello and thanks
- No issue with new account. I am only surprised I managed to post for so long with "brompeter", before signing up with a new email address as "brompeter2".
- Drive D
You are right, I too assumed they would go. The idea was to extend my Drive C which now has the added capacity. It booted fine today.
As mentioned - no idea what those files (see post to DavidR above) were ding there. It is a second hand laptop I bought as it was the way of reverting to windows 7 I knew of.
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Those files look strange, but not totally unseen, but we would need to know the actual location on that D: drive, sometimes they related to windows update (more so in preparation to update to win10) and on occasion also avast emergency update checks. But both would be protected files and in specific locations.
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I expect you noticed that my Windows7 is installed in German. Fortunately my German is pretty good so I have been able to work my way round it. I am told that I cannot switch the OS to English without re-installing Windows 7, which I have no means of doing.
Is that true?
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DavidR
Thanks - "sometimes they related to windows update (more so in preparation to update to win10)".
That is a good guess, since in summer 2015 I tried out the free Win 10 upgrade. I dint like it and used the 'revert to 7' option.
Everything seems to be OK though.
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DavidR
re - "we would need to know the actual location on that D: drive"
The files I attached in the screenshot of my ex-Drive D in my reply to you yesterday, were all that Explorer could give me about that Drive, and were all deleted. As to where they were on Drive D - the screenshot was all I knew. I have since run CCleaner twice which always do whenever I shut down, and about 600 MB in total were CC-cleaned.
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DavidR
Thanks - "sometimes they related to windows update (more so in preparation to update to win10)".
That is a good guess, since in summer 2015 I tried out the free Win 10 upgrade. I dint like it and used the 'revert to 7' option.
Everything seems to be OK though.
You're welcome.
I don't believe they would give you any problem as such, we have seen them placed in other partitions, I guess so there isn't an issue reverting back to your win7 installation.
DavidR
re - "we would need to know the actual location on that D: drive"
The files I attached in the screenshot of my ex-Drive D in my reply to you yesterday, were all that Explorer could give me about that Drive, and were all deleted. As to where they were on Drive D - the screenshot was all I knew. I have since run CCleaner twice which always do whenever I shut down, and about 600 MB in total were CC-cleaned.
Not a problem now they are gone.
Windows Explorer does actually give more information, but you have to look at the top of the window, it should show the path to the folder you are actually in. You can also right click on a file and select Properties, that should also show the folder location.
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DavidR
Like most, I have to work with my device. In autumn 2015 I reverted to Win 7 as Win 10 kept crashing. They say that was because the free offer was still in its Beta stage. I'm staying put.
I see you use OS XP Pro still. I know a couple of people who do this, one of whom has to work with an enormous amount of charts, maps, photos as a self-employed engineer...the oS has to take a heavy work load daily (but he does have the habit of visiting some notoriously dodgy sites for his entertainment. I know this as he insists on showing them to me...porn....yawn).
I never asked him about it, but in the absence of XP updates he must have a very good virus protection. The PC is crucial to his successful livelihood.
I expect you are as happy with Avast free as I have been since 2008.
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Having a good Antivirus is just one part of keeping your system safe.
I too have some old software that I regularly use that won't make the move/transition to win10 and for that reason I was hanging back.
I also take lots of proactive measures, not to mention using DropMyRights on all internet facing applications, so if I do get hit it limits the potential damage.
However, plan for the worst and hope for the best, for me that is having a robust backup and recovery strategy. That is in my case Hard Drive Imaging software, making a full exact image backup of your disk, partition, etc. every week and keeping the last 6 weekly backups. I also do daily backups of volatile data files, .doc, .xls, emails, bookmarks, images, etc. etc.
My drive imaging program is also one of the very old programs that wouldn't the move to win10 and it has saved my backside on numerous occasions, not one being related to virus infection. Much of the new disk imaging software should work on win7 (making it possible it would also work on win10) and that can also do incremental backups not just full backups.
I have been using avast free for over 13 years from early 2004 on avast 4.x
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Thanks for the very useful info. All my work (text) is saved and updated on external disk, so I don't know how useful e.g. DropMyRights would be except for the web-facing software that I use while working. The files I work on go straight to external disk and I have to trust in Avast when I open them or unzip them.
Great forum--so many prompt helpful replies, as ever: I was a forum member since 2008 until that incident (about 2 years ago) when members' passwords had been hacked.
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Glad we've been of help.
Might want to have a look: http://www.mcshield.net/ (http://www.mcshield.net/)
Highly recommended.
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Thanks for the very useful info. All my work (text) is saved and updated on external disk, so I don't know how useful e.g. DropMyRights would be except for the web-facing software that I use while working. The files I work on go straight to external disk and I have to trust in Avast when I open them or unzip them.
Great forum--so many prompt helpful replies, as ever: I was a forum member since 2008 until that incident (about 2 years ago) when members' passwords had been hacked.
You're welcome.
DropMyRights was designed for XP only, so not available for win7 or later. Of course in win7 or win10 you could run on a non admin account, but some find that a bit of a pain.
I would say hard drive imaging is the best option as unlike system restore it makes an exact copy of the drive/partition to a second HDD or external drive. Were system restore doesn't make an exact copy.
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mchain
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Thanks for the intuitive mcshield tip. It seems that you noted I am a laptop user, the users most likely to go around USBing into the devices of others. Even though my Samsung phoen is Avast virus protected , there could be a risk.
Again, I always trusted Avast to protect against incoming via USBs. No harm in a lightweight extra shield.
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DavidR, bob3160, Eddy-----thank yous.
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Thanks for the very useful info. All my work (text) is saved and updated on external disk, so I don't know how useful e.g. DropMyRights would be except for the web-facing software that I use while working. The files I work on go straight to external disk and I have to trust in Avast when I open them or unzip them.
Great forum--so many prompt helpful replies, as ever: I was a forum member since 2008 until that incident (about 2 years ago) when members' passwords had been hacked.
You're welcome.
DropMyRights was designed for XP only, so not available for win7 or later. Of course in win7 or win10 you could run on a non admin account, but some find that a bit of a pain.
I would say hard drive imaging is the best option as unlike system restore it makes an exact copy of the drive/partition to a second HDD or external drive. Were system restore doesn't make an exact copy.
DropMyRights is still available here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oeAhkMIGuveWsOvuZwYFksDl9DKslvUu4cHAGBCAFb8/edit?usp=sharing
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Since McShield is free, it will work on your desktops as well.
You are welcome. :)