Saving to D: instead of C: Drive

danny_bhoy

danny_bhoy

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Jeez - I used to be good at this stuff!

Anyway, bought a new desktop a few months back and have been merrily pottering on with it until today I start getting messages about low disk space etc - I check and it seems it's set by default to save files to my C: Drive......which now has about 100MB left! :eek:

My D: Drive is sitting there with over 750GB of disk space left on it.

I know it's something to do with partitions but that's where my knowledge starts and ends. I've searched online to find the solution but I'm none the wiser. Is it easy enough to change the drive to which everything is saved by default?

Cheers.
 
sounds off hand that your pc was stupid and gave its self way to much space for a recovery drive. unless im there I cannot state if this is the case. BUT if you want my opinion it'd always be pop on the net and get yourself a second dedicated HDD for your photos and such.

my desktop I use for photos had a 500gb drive split into two partitions. a smaller section for the recovery hp drive and roughly 450gb for the os and programs. I then have a 2nd drive which is a 2tb drive for photos. because if one drive is likely to fail its the one with the os and such on it as this is being accessed constantly. whereas the 'photo drive' is only being accessed to check its still there and when I wish to use the photos.
 
barratt1988 said:
sounds off hand that your pc was stupid and gave its self way to much space for a recovery drive. unless im there I cannot state if this is the case. BUT if you want my opinion it'd always be pop on the net and get yourself a second dedicated HDD for your photos and such.

my desktop I use for photos had a 500gb drive split into two partitions. a smaller section for the recovery hp drive and roughly 450gb for the os and programs. I then have a 2nd drive which is a 2tb drive for photos. because if one drive is likely to fail its the one with the os and such on it as this is being accessed constantly. whereas the 'photo drive' is only being accessed to check its still there and when I wish to use the photos.
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Cheers Phill - it's strange, never had this issue before.

I've got a few portable hard drives as backups for the wedding photo's and important stuff so losing data shouldn't be an issue. Is there any way I can correct this without going back to square one?
 
Put all pictures on the D drive & place a shortcut onto the desktop.
 
danny_bhoy said:
Cheers Phill - it's strange, never had this issue before.

I've got a few portable hard drives as backups for the wedding photo's and important stuff so losing data shouldn't be an issue. Is there any way I can correct this without going back to square one?
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id be cautious changing saving destinations as yes you could say install program x to partition D but id question what that is there for in the 1st place. im not sure if partitions can be altered once past the initial creation stage.

ill have a look like about the net see what I can dig up
 
Ah fine just save to the other drive then. Or delete the d partition and roll it into the c drive. Assuming it just 2 partitions rather than 2 physically separate drives.
 
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neil_g said:
Ah fine just save to the other drive then. Or delete the d partition and roll it into the c drive. Assuming it just 2 partitions rather than 2 physically separate drives.
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Good stuff - just out if curiosity what is the purpose of a partition? Is it absolutely necessary?

I'm assuming here it's just one physical drive.
 
danny_bhoy said:
Good stuff - just out if curiosity what is the purpose of a partition? Is it absolutely necessary?
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Some people like to run them to separate out the operating system and their files so if something bad happens to the operating system they can format the c drive without affecting the files.

Personally I don't subscribe to that thinking, I have backups so doesn't really matter too much if in the rare event of something going wrong if I wipe the drive. Plus it doesn't help if the drive fails anyway.
 
neil_g said:
Some people like to run them to separate out the operating system and their files so if something bad happens to the operating system they can format the c drive without affecting the files.

Personally I don't subscribe to that thinking, I have backups so doesn't really matter too much if in the rare event of something going wrong if I wipe the drive. Plus it doesn't help if the drive fails anyway.
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Thanks for that - learned something new there :thumbs:
 
Probably too late but when I set up windows XP onwards I put Programs, Users & swap file all on different partitions or drives. I initially set up a temp account on C drive i.e. T1. I then Copy Users folder with all its security to the D drive. I then edit registry HKLM\software\Microsoft\windows Nt\currentversion\profilelist and make default, profilesdirectory & public to D:\users\Default, D:users & d:\users\public. Doing this make all programs and users will default to using D drive for data.

Not sure if you wanted this type of fix
 
Can I kind of hijack this with a similar question?

I have a 120GB SSD drive [C] that was originally planned to contain just the operating system, W7, and programs like Photoshop, Office etc. Any other programs I wanted to install onto my other 1TB [D] drive.

The problem I get is that everything I install wants to go onto the C drive and I have to keep an eye on it and change the install to D if I can. Some programs don't give you that option (Canon I'm looking at you!) and go straight onto C without any way of stopping it. I then have to manually drag the files over to D with the associated risks of corrupting the install.

I too would like to know if it's possible to change something in the registry, or suchlike, in the future. Once I can do that I can empty my almost full C drive of clutter and get it back to being, in theory, the boot drive.
 
But some don't give you that option so I'd like it be able to force the PC to do it by default.

Is there a way to do that?
 
But why. Programs will launch faster (and to some extent run faster) from the SSD. Kinda defeats the object otherwise.

If you're concerned about space then concentrate on saving your documents/media on the slower drive (apart from the current files you are working on).
 
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