Tim's Tech Tips

Question from: deal.me.out07

Is it possible to drag my ( C ) drive and put it in the (D) drive, or how can i take memory from D and put it in C?

Well, there are a couple of possibilities here that I’ll eliminate off the bat. I’m going to assume that your “D:” drive is NOT an external USB drive of some sort. I’m going to assume that it’s internal. That means it’s inside your computer’s case and connected directly to the motherboard or to a PCI card internally, via SCSI.

That leaves us with two possible options. The first option is that your “D” drive is a second physical hard drive inside your computer. From the wording of your question, I’ll assume that this is the least likely of the two, and get it out of the way first. The second option is that you have one physical drive inside your computer and either the manufacturer has partitioned the physical drive into two “virtual” drives on your computer. This means that all of your data in drive C: and all of your free space in drive D: are physically on the same drive. In this case the solution is simpler. I’ll address this second, though I find it to be the most likely option.

2 separate hard drives:

In this case, your only option for merging drive C: with drive D: would be to set up a RAID array. This is a system whereby two or more physical hard drives can be made into a single drive on your computer. RAID stands for “Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks”, and comes in many varieties, numbered “RAID level X”. Most commonly you’ll see RAID 0, 1, 5, and sometimes 6. You’ll have to do your own research to determine which would be best for you, but if your only concern is drive capacity, I’d go with RAID level 0. You should note however, that if one of the two drives is lost, all data on both drives will be un-recoverable. Remember that RAID is only available if you really do have two or more physical hard drives inside your computer. If not, go to option two for “2 separate partitions”.

2 separate partitions:

If you only have one physical drive in your computer, but have 2 drives on your “My Computer” window, you might have 2 separate partitions on the same disk. If this is the case, then you can easily move around some data and change where one drive “ends” and where the other “begins”. For example, you could easily expand C: while contracting D: – or you could get rid of D: all together, merging all data and free space into your C: drive.

WARNING: SOME MANUFACTURERS, ESPECIALLY HP (COMPAQ), EMACHINES, AND DELL USE SOMETHING CALLED A “RECOVERY PARTITION”. IF YOU SCREW WITH THIS, YOU WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO RECOVER YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM TO ITS’ ORIGINAL STATE WITHOUT A WINDOWS OPERATING SYSTEM CD. THEY’LL PROBABLY CHARGE YOU FOR THIS.
[Most of the time when this is the case, the drive is called something like “RECOVERY (D:)”]

Anyway, if this is the case you can just get some software that will re-partition your hard drive for you. There is a ton of different software out there for this purpose, so I’m not going to pick a particular one to walk you through using. Just remember to read the documentation on it before you go messing around with your disk partitioning.

There’s some pretty good paid software (if you’re into that sort of thing); the best of which, is probably Partition Magic 8. As for free software, this program looks pretty good: http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

I hope that helps you mate, and I’m sorry that particular question took so long to answer! I had stopped doing the blog for a short while, but I’m back in full swing now!