Getting rid of the partition on my NC10

I have just received an NC10 for Xmas (yay!).

The person who bought it had already booted it up once and just let the Samsung recovery software do its thing and it has partitioned my HDD into 2 equal size drives. Is there any way of changing this and reverting to one 160Gb drive? Is partitioning a good idea - its not the same as having two physical drives is it?

 

I always partition my HDD and keep all my user files separate from the OS. Then, if you need to restore the OS (which wipes C you haven't lost all your work. The partitions are logical, not physical drives, but you can format one without disturbing the others.

The Samsung recovery solution software makes backup copies of C: (or selected folders) and puts the backups in D:. However, restoring a backup would mean you lose any subsequent work. I set my C: to about 40GB which is enough for XP and programs.

You should be able to delete D: using XP's disk management but I am not sure if you can then resize C: to use the extra space (Vista's disk management is better in this respect). A selection of partition management software is listed here.

John

 

Thanks John,

If I decide to live with the partitions, how do I go about getting my data files (My Documents etc) to default to the D: drive? Also, do the recovery images take up much space?

 

Right click on your My Documents folder, there should be a Location tab and you can set the location there.

 

Remapping My Documents shouldn't be too challenging: Got to My Computer > Explore then change the properties of My Documents so the Target is, for example, D:\My Documents.

The size of the backup will depend on whether you backup the whole of C: and how many programs you have installed. As an indication, I have made one backup and the size is 4.3GB.

John

 

sorry to chip in but i have a somewhat related question (related to things that have been mentioned in this thread at least)

if i move the entire 'My documents' folder in windows xp to another drive, is it going to cause problems with programs that use that folder for storing stuff (they still think its on C drive but its now on D for example) ?

 

How did you move the My documents folder? As suggested above?

Some programs remember the path to My Documents that existed at the time of program installation. You can search the registry to change these to the new path (if that's where the program stores the info).

There's also the problem that Windows will have different sets of My Documents for different users. Life is never easy.

John