Advice on Reformatting C Drive

AfronovA

Member
Hi all!

I wonder if anyone could help, reason why I'm looking to reformat the C drive (OS) is cos I'm running low on space, I have partioned it to have limited space just for the OS, but have found some of the programs i.e Nvidia experience needed to be installed on this drive and a few other progs.
I have plenty of space on other drives/ partitions my real question is,

can I just move everything thats not the OS to the others or would i have to reformat and start again and be vigilant in where things are saved?

Thanks
 

Spuff

Expert
You can just move anything on a non-system partition drive to another drive then extend the system partition (Extend Volume in Windows Disk Management). You don't need to format.
 

AfronovA

Member
I have tried doing that before but it made some programes "unstable" so I had to do a system restore...whats the best way of doing this?
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I have tried doing that before but it made some programes "unstable" so I had to do a system restore...whats the best way of doing this?

You can't "move" programs once their installed, you'd have to uninstall them and reinstall them specifying the data drive as the destination. Point is, you don't need to touch windows, that's fine.
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Hi all!

I wonder if anyone could help, reason why I'm looking to reformat the C drive (OS) is cos I'm running low on space, I have partioned it to have limited space just for the OS, but have found some of the programs i.e Nvidia experience needed to be installed on this drive and a few other progs.
I have plenty of space on other drives/ partitions my real question is,

can I just move everything thats not the OS to the others or would i have to reformat and start again and be vigilant in where things are saved?

Thanks

Have you already moved your user data (everything under c:\users\your_name\) off the C:\ drive? If you haven't that will be why you're running out of space. You can't simply copy them onto another drive because Windows has to know where they are. If you have not moved your user data off C:\ come back and I'll tell you how. :)
 

AfronovA

Member
Have you already moved your user data (everything under c:\users\your_name\) off the C:\ drive? If you haven't that will be why you're running out of space. You can't simply copy them onto another drive because Windows has to know where they are. If you have not moved your user data off C:\ come back and I'll tell you how. :)

Hi I guess that's what I've been trying to do but last time I did this it went abit funny :wacko: so can you tell me how I can do this effectively?

Thanks :)
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Hi I guess that's what I've been trying to do but last time I did this it went abit funny :wacko: so can you tell me how I can do this effectively?

Thanks :)

On the target drive (D:\ drive?) create a folder called D:\Users, that's where we'll be moving all the user data off C:\ into.

Open Windows file manager and navigate to the C:\users\your_name\ folder. You will have to repeat the following for each major folder in there (so do Contacts, Documents, Pictures, Downloads, Music and Videos). Leave the Desktop folder where it is, it's pretty small anyway.

Right-click on the folder to move (let's say we're moving Contacts) and select Properties.

Click on the location tab. (If you don't see a Location tab for a folder it can't be moved).

Click the Move button.

Navigate to where you want to move to (D:\Users\Contacts) - you should create the Contacts folder if it's not already there.

Click Ok, and click the Yes button when you see the confirmation prompt.

The Contacts folder will be moved from C:\Users\your_name\Contacts to D:\Users\Contacts and Windows will remember this so that all future reads and writes to the Contacts folder will go to D:\Users\Contacts.

Now repeat this process for the other folder under C:\Users\your_data\ and you're done!
 

AfronovA

Member
Thanks, I've done these steps, I presume I could delete the ones that are on C then to free up some space.
Now what about the big progs like Nvidia Experience that gets updates etc how would I move that? would I need to uninstall and reinstall onto the right path?
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Thanks, I've done these steps, I presume I could delete the ones that are on C then to free up some space.
Now what about the big progs like Nvidia Experience that gets updates etc how would I move that? would I need to uninstall and reinstall onto the right path?

If you've done the move properly there won't be any of these folders left on the C:\ drive. If you still have folders called Documents, Pictures, etc. on the C:\ drive then you didn't do the move properly.

How big is your C:\ drive? Once you move the user data off you shouldn't be using more than about 60GB for Windows and all programs. If your C:\ drive is an SSD then take a look at this sticky thread, it will help you recover more space. On my Optimus IV laptop my C:\ drive (SSD) has Windows and all programs installed on it and the total space used is a shade over 30GB.

What might help you is to download and install WinDirStat from http://windirstat.info/, this will graphically show you what files and folders are using the most space on your disk. You might want to post an image of the output on here.
 

AfronovA

Member
This is what my disk space all looks like after the moving of the files/folders atm..
disk space.JPG
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
This is what my disk space all looks like after the moving of the files/folders atm..
View attachment 6433

You're right that the C: partition is too full and if you've moved the user data off there I'm surprised you're still using over 70GB. I notice that your J: partition is nearly empty (82% free) so why not simply shrink the J: partition and expand the C: partition into it? If you shrank J: by 100GB you'd hardly miss that space, but you'd then have a 178GB C: drive which would be plenty.
 

Tom DWC

Moderator
Moderator
Also might be worth running disk cleanup and then selecting clean up system files. Over time unneeded Windows update files and old temporary files can take up a bit of space. Also within disk cleanup under more options you can choose to remove all but the most recent restore point. Depending on how many there are this can free up a significant amount of space.
 

Spuff

Expert
WinDirStat as mentioned already is really useful. It enabled me to solve my recent bloat situation. There was a file that Windows creates that is not necessary (I can't remember what it was called), and for me it was 10GB.
 

AfronovA

Member
You're right that the C: partition is too full and if you've moved the user data off there I'm surprised you're still using over 70GB. I notice that your J: partition is nearly empty (82% free) so why not simply shrink the J: partition and expand the C: partition into it? If you shrank J: by 100GB you'd hardly miss that space, but you'd then have a 178GB C: drive which would be plenty.

So, do you think thats the best option then?
thing is when I got this rig built, I purposefully wanted limited space for the OS, hoping that it should just stay the same...but obviously I'm wrong.

I will take onboard all the advise given here and once done I'll do another screen shot of the partitions :)
 

AfronovA

Member
hi, I've tried shrinking the J drive and extending it to the C, for some strange reason, I'm unable to do this, even when I unallocate the partition that I have "cut" out when I right click the C drive it only gives me the option of Shrinking it, expand is greyed out :\
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
So, do you think thats the best option then?
thing is when I got this rig built, I purposefully wanted limited space for the OS, hoping that it should just stay the same...but obviously I'm wrong.

I will take onboard all the advise given here and once done I'll do another screen shot of the partitions :)

hi, I've tried shrinking the J drive and extending it to the C, for some strange reason, I'm unable to do this, even when I unallocate the partition that I have "cut" out when I right click the C drive it only gives me the option of Shrinking it, expand is greyed out :\

I did wonder whether you'd be unable to expand the system partition, there are some unmovable files on there.

You're right that it was a mistake to allocate the system partition so small, although almost 80GB should be plenty for Windows and a whole bunch of applications. I would suggest you get WInDirStat as advised and run it on the system volume and post the results on here. We can probably help recover a lot of that allocated space.

As a start you might try disabling hibernation if you don't use it. Open a command prompt and enter the command "powercfg -h off" (without the quotes). That will both disable hibernation and delete the (large and hidden) hiberfil.sys file saving you several GB. You might also try moving the pagefile to another partition, instructions are given in the SSD sticky thread at https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?14728-SSD-Management, that will save you several GB of space too (I know you don't have an SSD but the procedure is the same for a hard disk as well).

It was a mistake to allocate too small a system partition, but 80GB should really be big enough. Post the WinDirStat results and we'll be able to advise.
 

AfronovA

Member
Why am I unable to extend it? i just don't get it cos this is from 1 drive but has been partioned up, also I think i have a hybrid ssd/hdd on there...just feeling abit confused, also I've downloaded that Windirstat prog....no idea what I'm looking here :wacko:
windirstat.JPG
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Why am I unable to extend it? i just don't get it cos this is from 1 drive but has been partioned up, also I think i have a hybrid ssd/hdd on there...just feeling abit confused, also I've downloaded that Windirstat prog....no idea what I'm looking here :wacko:
View attachment 6481

The hybrid nature of the disk isn't important from a space point of view, think of it as an HDD with a massive cache and that's what a hybrid drive is.

The first thing to look at is the list of what's using space at the top left, your partition is using a total of 69.2GB and the entries underneath show you how much is being used by each type of data. The one entry that stands out there is the top one (Files) that is using 27.8GB (or 40% of the occupied space). Everything below there looks perfectly normal (22.4GB for Windows etc. is perfectly normal). So expand that Files entry by clicking on the + sign and you'll see what these files are.

The coloured blocks at the bottom of the output show you graphically what is using up space, you can clearly see two large blue blocks on the left, they key shows them to be "system files". These will be probably be the files that are listed under the Files entry in the list at the top left, my guess is that they are hiberfil.sys (the hibernation file) and pagefile.sys (the pagefile). If that's the case we can recover that space without changing partition sizes.

So before going any further click on the + sign next to Files and let's see what those files are....
 

AfronovA

Member
windirstat.JPG
ok as you've suggested I've opened up the files and it shows the hibernation file and pagefile, what do I do next? do I delete?
I also want to have some backup aswell, hibernation, surely shouldn't take THAT much memory? but its neither here or there cos I never use that option...
 

Tom DWC

Moderator
Moderator
If you don't use it then hibernation can be safely disabled. Type cmd into search and run it as an administrator, then input "powercfg.exe /hibernate off" without quotes and press enter. That will net you a chunk of space.

The pagefile does seem excessively large, type systempropertiesperformance into search and open it, go to advanced and look at virtual memory. If you click on change it will tell you the recommended size and how much is currently allocated.
 
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