Vista - out of HD space on partiton C: Best fix?

[delta_charlie]

Hi all, a friend has a Lenovo desktop with Vista 32 bit on it and for some reason Lenovo set up the HD with one small partition (C and one large (D The problem is the C: is out of room and I'm trying to figure out what would be the best way to fix this. Can't figure out why Vista has filled up the 20 Gb of C: Might there be a hidded backup image taking up all the space? What else could be taking up so much room?

Any recommendations on software that might help me clean up C: ?

I'm hoping to not have to re-parttion the HD.

Thanks, DC

 

[Jim S.]

If he's adventurous, partitions can be re-sized without destroying the data in them using third-party software, including free software. (Look up "gparted live cd", for example.) Of course the user assumes the risk of something going wrong and trashing their filesystem, so backing up important files beforehand is recommended. But if it does work fine (and it always has for me), even with backing up irreplaceable files its much faster than backing up everything and reinstalling.

 

[delta_charlie]

Hi Jim and the group, thanks for the reply. I was hoping to be able to clean the drive C: and free up some room instead of re-partitioning the entire HD. It seems strange to me that Vista can't fit on a 20 GB partition. There must be some junk files that are wasting space.

Anybody used a disk cleaner that they liked?

Thanks, DC

 

[Smith P.]

Try internal 'cleaner' first - under the disk properties.

 

[digiblur]

I think this is the one I used in the past....free and very easy to use:

FREE Resize/Move FAT32 & NTFS Partitions in Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Server 2003, 2008. Enlarge or Reduce Partition - EASEUS Partition Master Manual

 

[ab187]

Go to Disk Cleanup in Vista and find the option to cleanup the System Restore files. I just did that and it freed up roughly 16GB.

 

[Ilya]

Other things you can do:

1. Clear web browser cache (temporary Internet files)
2. Move/delete any unneeded pictures or music files if you have any on C:
3. If drive D: doesn't have any programs or system files on it, copy its content to an external drive, then delete volume D: and extend volume C: to the entire disk (in Vista you can do this without any third-party software).
4. If you do want to keep volumes the way they are, you can configure Vista to place the Virtual Memory Paging File on drive D:

 

[brothermichael]

VISTA OUT OF SPACE

Hi all, a friend has a Lenovo desktop with Vista 32 bit on it and for some reason Lenovo set up the HD with one small partition (C and one large (D The problem is the C: is out of room and I'm trying to figure out what would be the best way to fix this. Can't figure out why Vista has filled up the 20 Gb of C: Might there be a hidded backup image taking up all the space? What else could be taking up so much room?

Any recommendations on software that might help me clean up C: ?

I'm hoping to not have to re-parttion the HD.

Thanks, DC

Vista sometimes uses part of the drive as a recovery drive to restore back to factory settings. Try running Adaware 2009 software to remove spyware. Which could be the problem for out of disk space. also run defrag on the Hard Drive.

brothermichael

 

[Van]

Out of curiosity what size is the total hard drive? Most all of the laptops that came with vista had 60 gig drives on up while the lesser drives were found on xp machines.