The Hindu Business Line : Maximising disk space

I have a system with P4, with 512 MB RAM and Intel motherboard. A 40 GB hard disk is installed in my system and Windows XP professional is loaded. I have partitioned my hard disks as C drive - 10 GB, D drive - 20 GB and E drive - 10 GB while F drive is my CD-ROM drive.

My idea is to keep all my installed programs stored in C drive, all my data stored in the D drive and keep the E drive for audio (mp3) songs and videos.

I have installed a lot of applications on my C drive. So I have only about 150 MB free space left on it. I have already done some of the tuning such as clearing Temp files and temporary Internet files also. I have moved my pagefile to D drive. When I try to install one of my CAD applications, it calls for more space on the C drive, which I am unable to manage.

Is it possible to merge the C and E drives without losing data? Please suggest a solution.

Vijaya Bhaskar

Please follow these steps to gain more disc space:

Delete unnecessary files and folders and also uninstall unwanted applications through add/remove Programs.

To gain more disk space, you can reduce the amount of disk space that System Restore uses. By default, it reserves 12 per cent of each logical drive, which you can reduce to 5per cent.

To do this, please right-click My computer - Properties - "System Restore" tab. Select each drive - click settings and drag the slider to 5 per cent. Hope this considerably improves your disk space.

Next, if you do not want to use Hibernation, disable it. To access this, please open control panel - Power Options - Hibernation. Disable (uncheck) "Enable Hibernation" check box.

The Next entry to check is "Recycle Bin". By default, Windows reserves 10 per cent of your hard disk for your "Recycle Bin".

To improve disk space, we can reduce this entry to say 2 per cent. To do this, please right-click Recycle Bin - select Properties - Global tab - drag the slider to say 2 per cent and click ok.

If you have a lot of mail in your Outlook or Outlook Express e-mail client, then you may compact your mailbox.

You can increase disk space by using NTFS compression. This may be applied for individual files and folders, or entire drives. Please note that compressing files may cause the computer to slow down while it compresses and decompresses the data, so apply compression only on files or folders that are rarely accessed. Also, do not apply this for system attributes, say files on C:\Windows.

To use this compression on a file or folder, please right-click on the file or folder in Windows Explorer - select Properties. On the General tab, click Advanced. Tick (check) the "Compress contents to save disk space" check box and click ok and ok.

To compress a drive, open my computer - right click on the drive - select Properties - General tab - Tick(check) the "Compress drive to save disk space" and click ok.

Please note that compression is only available on NTFS Filesystems. If you have FAT32 filesystem, then you have to convert it into NTFS filesystem. To convert a FAT or FAT32 filesystem to NTFS, please do the following: click Start - Run - type "convert C: /fs:ntfs" and click ok. Here C refers to the C drive to convert.

In your case, another option is "Mount drive as folder".

You may mount your E: (10 GB) as one of the directories (create an empty folder say "extra") in your C drive. Windows will take care of this as a directory of C drive.

To create a mount drive in C drive, please follow these steps: Start - Run - type "diskmgmt.msc" and click ok.

This will bring up "Disk Management" snap-in. Right click the partition or volume (say E:) that you want to mount, and then click "Change Drive Letter and Paths".

Remove the current option (E:), then click add. Click "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder" ratio button and then click "Browse" button.

Now locate the empty folder (extra) on your C drive and click ok, and then click ok.

Close the Disk Management snap-in.

The advantage is you may move this volume to any empty NTFS folder to another folder.

If you wish, you may remove the directory (extra) and choose a drive letter as before, and data will not be lost. For more information, please refer http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307889&sd=tech

Solution by M. Sampath

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