Linking drives

[Dave-exfairy]

Guy's, my Vista drive (C) is approaching 75% capacity, is there any way I can link my C drive to my E drive, therefore doubling my capacity?

 

[R_Squared]

I'm not sure about Vista but on XP you can move your 'My Documents' folder to a separate drive or partition.

This is for XP, it may be the same or similar for Vista or it may not.

Copy 'My Documents' to your E: Drive

Then;

Go to Start, My Documents and Right clicking on that.

Select 'Properties'.

Click the Tab 'Target' and select 'Move'.

Browse to 'My Documents' on your E: Drive Click Ok.

Job Done.

If you mean you would like to combine the partitions, as long as they are on the same physical drive that could be possible, although risky.
If they are separate drives, it's not possible.

 

[propersplitbrainme]

Don't think you can 'link' two partitions in the way you seem to be suggesting, so that C: spills over into E: when its full (if thats what you mean).
There are programs that allow you to merge or split existing partitions (provided they are on the same physical hard disk), Partition Magic is one such utility although I don't know if there's a Vista version yet. There is an element of risk, because if it goes wrong part way through the merge you are somewhat screwed and will have to reinstall everything, but at least that will give you a chance to make a bigger C: partition DT_Xtremez_14:
I've used a partition manager (Acronis Disk Director I think it was) to merge two partitions successfully for the very reason you need, to create a bigger C: drive.
Hope that helps.

 

[Martin Blank]

Alternatively just install new programs on your spare drive....
makes no difference on modern puters I run games and apps from other drives when C: is full
alternatively move your pron, music and video's across and re check with media player to link to them.

 

[steve_k243]

I take it that C:\ and E:\ are on the same physical disk?

My way around it was to buy an external drive caddy and a 300GB HDD.
I then combined C and E and then formatted and re-installed XP. (this was after XP lost it's file table and would not boot even from cd or emergency disk)
An external drive is a great place for data storage, if your internal drive has a failure your data is still safe. A physical failure on a HDD can affect all it's partitions, so data is just as vulnerable on E as it is on C.

If you want to stay with the 1 drive then just change the "My Documents" path to E:\ by right clicking the icon and changing target folder location to E:

 

[R_Squared]

I must be right then, as 3 other posters just said pretty much the same as me, give or take. DT_Xtremez_31:

 

[MrMasher]

I take it that C:\ and E:\ are on the same physical disk?

My way around it was to buy an external drive caddy and a 300GB HDD.
I then combined C and E and then formatted and re-installed XP. (this was after XP lost it's file table and would not boot even from cd or emergency disk)
An external drive is a great place for data storage, if your internal drive has a failure your data is still safe. A physical failure on a HDD can affect all it's partitions, so data is just as vulnerable on E as it is on C.

If you want to stay with the 1 drive then just change the "My Documents" path to E:\ by right clicking the icon and changing target folder location to E:

Quite cheap now to get external drives.
Even Tescos do them! Linky

 

[Dave-exfairy]

Cheers folks, I heard some computer geek of my aquiantence mention something about "hotlinking" the C drive to his E drive on his computer and though he was linking the 2.

 

[steve_k243]

Hotlinking is linking 2 websites. Also your friend could even be referring to a drive on another computer, basically file/folder sharing.

Next have you tried using the "disk clean-up" feature? This can find/delete a huge amount of crap on a drive, such as temp internet files (cache) and expired / unwantedcookies etc You can also delete all but the latest 1 or 2 restore points. Following that I would defrag the drive also.

Another thing to beware of is "manually" moving files, especially programs from 1 drive to another. Basically your Win Registry is a database of locations and this will well and truly bugger it up. If after all cleaning attempts you are still short of space try uninstalling (using control panel) some programs and re-installing on E:\

Downloading Ad-Aware from Lavasoft is also a good move, run a full scan everyday to get rid of temp files and tracking cookies, popup inviter's etc.
Even the free version has captured a virus my expensive security program's firewall didn't stop.

 

[grumpyoldb]

Downloading Ad-Aware from Lavasoft is also a good move, run a full scan everyday to get rid of temp files and tracking cookies, popup inviter's etc.
Even the free version has captured a virus my expensive security program's firewall didn't stop.

I had an ongoing problem with Ad-aware. It kept seeing one of my operating system files as spyware and deleted it. Next time I came to boot up, I got a system failure.
It happened several times untill I removed the program. I haven't had a problem since.

I use spybot s&d, and kaspersky, and everything runs nice and smooth.

 

[Ex-Bay]

This is for XP, it may be the same or similar for Vista or it may not.
Copy 'My Documents' to your E: Drive
Then;
Go to Start, My Documents and Right clicking on that.
Select 'Properties'.
Click the Tab 'Target' and select 'Move'.
Browse to 'My Documents' on your E: Drive Click Ok.

Job Done.

If you mean you would like to combine the partitions, as long as they are on the same physical drive that could be possible, although risky.
If they are separate drives, it's not possible.

Thanks. The drives are not partitioned (as far as I know), but are separate physical drives. I had to do some hardware work insode the box so switched it off, did the job and switched on. Somehow I've screwed the bios so that my plug-in (caddy) drive (one IDE) thinks it's C: and the 'pooter wants to find the NTLDR file (which ain't there 'cos I re-formatted the whole damned thing).

Heaven only knows what I did wrong. The boot-seek sequence is all right (FLoppy, Hard, CD). More study of that most uninformative of documents, the BIOS stuff in the so-called 'manual).

 

[R_Squared]

NTLDR is the bootloader for windows. (as in 'Windows NT' Loader).
At the moment, (without seeing your setup or knowing what you've done) the chances are the BIOS is looking for the boot block on your master drive (ie the new one), if it isn't there it can't go any further.

Chances are when you installed your second drive you may have missed 1 or 2 things.

If they are on the same channel (ie on the same ribbon cable plugged into the same port on the mobo) have you made sure that the jumpers on your first hard drive are set to master and the second new drive to slave?

If you have connected it on the same cable as your DVD/CD Rom drive you will also have to check that you have the right Master/ Slave jumper settings.

(BTW the master/ slave settings are controlled by jumpers on the rear of the drives, try not to use CS or Cable select)

 

[steve_k243]

Another fave along this line is simply forgetting to connect the power cable to one drive. Make sure things like Ipods are disconnected too.
Check in BIOS to see boot order. Can't think of much else without seeing it.

 

[Ex-Bay]

Thanks chaps.
I have found the answer in the 'F12' entry for the BIOS. It has a more detailed boot sequence selector; just pick the SATA channel! Result !!