What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP-SP3

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BobH
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What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP-SP3

Post by BobH »

I discovered today that my wife's laptop has two hard drive partitions and that the OS and all of the files she uses are on the smaller of them. There is only about 15% of clear space available on this volume. The other, much larger volume has some back up files but much of the space could and should be reallocated to the primary volume. The system is an older Dell E1505 Inspiron but a larger HDD was installed some time ago. It runs Windows XP Pro SP3 fully updated..

Ideally, I would like to shrink the D: volume that is mostly unused - leaving about 25% free space - and reallocate that space to the C: volume without having to back-up, reformat, and reinstall the OS. (Yes, I will do the backup beforehand.) From the googling I've done, this can be done in Vista and Win7 using system admin tools; but all I've read about reallocating space under XP only confuses me. I respect the skills and trust the advice of the folks here; so I'm asking for recommendations on how to proceed. I have Acronis and Partition Manager (if that makes any difference). Any pointers to articles or wiki or anything relevant to this process would be most helpful.

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Roderunner
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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by Roderunner »

Hi Bob, in my limited experience of using tools or programs to move space from one drive to another I can't advise. The good news is you have Acronis and I have done this successfully many times.
As I don't think it feasible, I don't have an Acronis Secure Zone, all my backups are on an exrenal hdd.
So the first thing you do is, create ASZ on the large drive, carefully calculating its size, then you can delete ASZ and give the gb's to the drive you want. It only takes about 15 minutes, totally safe to do.
Windows 11 Home 22H2

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George.

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Bigaldoc
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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by Bigaldoc »

BobH wrote:... I have Acronis and Partition Manager (if that makes any difference)...
You DO need a partition management program to change the structure of the hard drive. I don't know what you mean by "Partition Manager" But I've used a few of them over time. I last used Paragon Partition Manager and I have a free version of that but it's hard to find. One that has also been recommended and I have installed is EASEUS free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.. But I haven't tried it yet.

You ARE right: make a BACKUP image first, just in case anything goes wrong. Most partition manager programs make it pretty straight forward to shrink one partition and then assign that space to another.

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Bigaldoc
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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by Bigaldoc »

I forgot to say that the thing that puzzles a lot of users of partition management software is: if you shrink the size of the D: partition and it lies in the graphic to the RIGHT of the C: partition, the now FREE space may show to the RIGHT of the D: partition. It then needs to be MOVED so it appears to the LEFT of the D: partition and then the C: partition can be enlarged to take in the free space which will then be immediately to its right.

Sheesh, have I muddied that up with my grammar? I hope not...

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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by PJ_in_FL »

BobH wrote:The other, much larger volume has some back up files but much of the space could and should be reallocated to the primary volume. Any pointers to articles or wiki or anything relevant to this process would be most helpful.
You might consider the option of moving My Documents to the D: drive, and leaving the rest of the drive as is.

To move My Documents:
  1. Right-click on My Documents in an Explorer window.
  • Select Properties
  • Press Move and select a destination on your D: drive.


Windows will move all the files and change most of the references within the system to the My Documents folders.

Once moved the size of the volumes can be optimized with the partition manager of your choice.

That provides a split of OS files and personal files between two separate volumes, which also benefits in maintaining backups of personal files without needing to include the system files in each backup.
PJ in (usually sunny) FL

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John Gray
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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by John Gray »

Another vote for Easeus. I've shrunk or expanded the partitions on the hard drives of a couple of PCs and laptops entirely successfully, and it copes with moving that data around. I always defrag the hard disk to get the files near the front of each partition - no idea if this is necessary, but it seems like a neat idea.

If there's almost nothing on the D: drive at present, back up whatever files are there and delete the partition. Then Easeus will find it trivial to expand the C: drive to the size you require, and you can reallocate the D: drive to occupy the amount of free space left.
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John Gray
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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by John Gray »

PJ_in_FL wrote:That provides a split of OS files and personal files between two separate volumes, which also benefits in maintaining backups of personal files without needing to include the system files in each backup.
If that's what you mean to say, it seems to go against modern practice, which (in some quarters!) suggests that, as far as possible, operating system files should be left in their own partition, separate from the user data files in a second partition.

That way, you can back up each individual partition with different frequencies - e.g. you may wish to back up (the changes in) your data files every day, but the operating system partition only once a week or once a month. You can restore or reinstall the operating system without greatly affecting your user data files. This is easier said than done, because of Microsoft's habit of including user profiles on the C: drive, and (in Windows 7) spreading them out across several directories. Personally, I never use "My Documents", but have always had my own user files directory structure on my D: drives...
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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by Bigaldoc »

John Gray wrote:... Personally, I never use "My Documents", but have always had my own user files directory structure on my D: drives...
Me too, John. My data storage is on a second physical drive with, at present, 25 subdirectories for various types of stuff I save. It's never let me down and I haven't used My Documents ever since MS created it.

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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by PJ_in_FL »

John Gray wrote: If that's what you mean to say, it seems to go against modern practice, which (in some quarters!) suggests that, as far as possible, operating system files should be left in their own partition, separate from the user data files in a second partition.
That's exactly what I meant to say: Windows and installed program files on one partition (C:) and user files in the standard "My Documents" on another partition or drive (D:). Sorry if that wasn't clear in my earlier post.
John Gray wrote:Personally, I never use "My Documents", but have always had my own user files directory structure on my D: drives...
Using the procedure I described moves the Windows standard "My Documents" folder with all the internal links Windows has to that folder to another location, be it another partition on the same HDD or another HDD. It also allows the user to rename the standard folder to whatever they wish, and Windows makes the internal changes to the pointers to the "My Documents" location as necessary. For instance, my "My Documents" folder happens to be located at "D:\PJ", and opening "My Documents" in Explorer goes to that folder.

Many programs are hard-coded to find the user's files in whatever folder Windows had defined by "My Documents", so suggesting to less experienced users to not use the standard file structure I believe to be a disservice unless the consequences are clearly explained.
PJ in (usually sunny) FL

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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by StuartR »

PJ_in_FL wrote:...Many programs are hard-coded to find the user's files in whatever folder Windows had defined by "My Documents", so suggesting to less experienced users to not use the standard file structure I believe to be a disservice unless the consequences are clearly explained.
I keep all files for all users in the house in the same network location. This makes it much easier to do backups, and ensures that people can get to their files whichever PC they happen to be using.

I did try redirecting "My Documents" to this location, but the way this interacted with offline files was not very satisfactory, so I changed the approach and I now just put a link to the network location at the top level of My Documents, and people just follow that link to get to their files.

In reply to the original question in this thread. I use Acronis Disk Director Suite to manage partitions on my PCs, and it seems to do a great job.
StuartR


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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by PJ_in_FL »

StuartR wrote:I did try redirecting "My Documents" to this location, but the way this interacted with offline files was not very satisfactory, so I changed the approach and I now just put a link to the network location at the top level of My Documents, and people just follow that link to get to their files.
Not trying to hijack the thread, but could you explain what problems you had? I haven't seen any so far (3 months in), but would like to know if I'm setting myself up for a fall.

TIA,
PJ in (usually sunny) FL

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StuartR
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Re: What Tools to Reallocate Volumes on HD Drive under WinXP

Post by StuartR »

PJ_in_FL wrote:...Not trying to hijack the thread, but could you explain what problems you had? I haven't seen any so far (3 months in), but would like to know if I'm setting myself up for a fall.
The network location was forced into a special category of offline folders which could not be disabled, when I changed my server hostname this caused all kinds of major grief because I couldn't disable and then recreate the offline folders.

Searching for "Folder redirection" "offline files" shows many similar issues, for example http://forums.techarena.in/active-directory/1006440.htm
StuartR