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Author Topic: Notebook harddrive upgrade Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-30-2007 10:35 AM                     Consider formatting the drive and installing a new copy of XP Pro, you'll probably get more on the drive this way. Its not unusual for a manufacturers drive to be partitioned the way yours is with the system recovery stuff installed. When I got my new Dell XPS I checked it and luckily its not partitioned so I left that laptop as-is but dumped all the usual junk they load in. Mark  |  IP: Logged Mark Lensenmayer Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1605 From: Upper Arlington, OH Registered: Sep 1999 posted 01-30-2007 10:41 AM                     That C: partition must be really small. I run GOLIVE which is much like DREAMWEAVER, and it doesn't take up much space at all. (Actually, I've come to prefer GOLIVE to Dreamweaver, but that is another matter.) You might want to pick up a partition program that can repartition the machine without destroying the C: partition. That should give you the entire 40-gig's back. I haven't used any, so I'm hesitant to make a recommendation, but you can trial copies on most of the legal download sites.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 01-30-2007 01:12 PM                     If Andrew is running Adobe Audition via a legal copy of Adobe Production Studio he will indeed be losing A LOT of disc real estate. The full install of Adobe Production Studio takes up more than 20GB of disc space (via 4 DVD-R install discs). That suite is just not practical at all to run on a notebook computer unless the notebook has at least a 100GB 7200rpm hard disc or larger. The latest version of Audition alone takes up quite a lot of space.  |  IP: Logged Andrew McCrea Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 645 From: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Registered: Nov 2000 posted 01-30-2007 02:09 PM                        Here's what the partition looks like showing hidden files. Its 16.4 GB and the C:/ is 15.9GB, with 7.1GB free: I'd also like the extra storage so that I can eventually upgrade to Vista and still have enough room.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-30-2007 02:16 PM                        Who is the manufacturer of the laptop? The extra partition likely contains the "system restore" information (because many manufacturers have become too cheap to send out CDs with their hardware). You should either make the restore CDs or order them from the manufacturer. Once you have done this, you can blow away the restore partition or even use a tool like Partition Magic to delete the restore partition and increase the size of your root partition to fill the entire disk. The external USB/firewire disk would be the simplest (and maybe cheapest) way to increase your storage space, however.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 01-30-2007 02:54 PM                        I tend to split my laptop HDD into two partitions; one for the OS and applications, and the other for data. The volumes don't fragment as quickly, and don't take as long to defragment; plus if one partition gets corrupted or virus infected, there's a fair to good chance that the other one will still be intact. You can also restore the system from an image without affecting any document files. But it's quite likely that the partitioning on Andrew's machine has configured a much bigger system partition than he actually needs. On my desktop PC, the system partition is the first 20gb of a 200gb disc, and with XP Pro, Office plus several other major applications, it's still less than half full. For a laptop, I can't see how you'd need 15gb unless, as Bobby points out, you're trying to run the sort of stuff that most laptops simply weren't designed to run. If the total HDD size is 40gb, I'd be inclined to create a 15gb C: partition and a 25gb D: one. Adobe Audition 1.5 (a legal, standalone copy) only occupies 41.5mb on my hard drive. It's not a massive resource hog, in my experience. But there again, I probably don't use its more system hungry functions.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 01-30-2007 02:57 PM                     Dell does that sort of thing with both their desktop and notebook PCs. However, they usually do include discs for the OS and various drivers. Depending on the system you buy, you may have to pay an extra $10-$20 for those discs. Get them anyway. In Dell's case, their system restore partition is supposed to function as a more easy way to get the system back to a "factory reset" with all drivers (and misc. junk software) installed in one fell swoop. Using the OS disc, it's not difficult to format the hard drive completely and get a "vanilla" version of XP Pro installed instead. You'll just have to manually reinstall all of the system's drivers afterward (even things like Bluetooth and WiFi chipset drivers).  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-30-2007 04:31 PM                     Thats odd then that my XPS notebook doesn't have that partition nor did it have any option for the disks you mentioned. It's 80 gb hard drive comes in at 79.4 gig and that small part left is way too small to be partitioned for XP-Pro or anything important. Mark  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 01-30-2007 04:50 PM                     ..with that 2nd partition, makes one wonder if that laptop was set up for dual boot option...running another version of Windows, or even stick Linux in that partition.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 01-30-2007 04:58 PM                     I'm not sure what's going on with the "hidden" partitions on Dell hard discs. I know with mine, about 5GB of my 60GB hard drive was taken up with "hidden" stuff. That would seem to be more than enough room for a basic install of Windows XP Pro and the hardware drivers for my Inspiron 6000 notebook. I can't remember for certain if it was an option I had to check in order to get physical CDs for all the software in my notebook when I ordered it online nearly 2 years ago. It is great having the discs though.  |  IP: Logged Cameron Glendinning Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 845 From: West Ryde, Sydney, NSW Australia Registered: Dec 2005 posted 01-31-2007 01:30 AM                     If you are going to use your computer for editing ect, dont use fat 32 NTFS is better, no 2 gigabite limit. I have a cheap acer, it has a 60 gig drive, 30 gigs in both c and d, which for me is really just enough. I like the idea that your 40Gig drive would move in to a small external case, perfect for hiding from your parents  |  IP: Logged Darryl Spicer Film God Posts: 3250 From: Lexington, KY, USA Registered: Dec 2000 posted 01-31-2007 10:00 AM                    normally the second partition is set up for the purpose that everyone has stated. They use it for system restore information to eliminate all the extra CD's and supposedly help keep the price down since a lot of the programs are trial based software that feeds off that partition for install. The second partition can be used for a second OS but that would be something that was set up by the user. It can also be used for setting up a fat 32 partition and an NTFS partition. The downfall to that is supposedly once set up for NTFS you can't go back to fat 32. This was done a lot early on for older based programs that did not like to run on NTFS drives I read somewhere to that by setting up a second partition and putting the OS on the d/ partition instead of setting it up on C/ as we normally would helps reduce the chances of your OS being corrupted by a virus. How true that is I don't know.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 01-31-2007 02:54 PM                        I guess some badly programmed malware might look for the OS files specifically on C:, and could therefore be fooled by putting Windows on a partition with another drive letter. But some badly programmed legitimate applications might do the same thing, meaning that they wouldn't work.  |  IP: Logged Andrew McCrea Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 645 From: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Registered: Nov 2000 posted 01-31-2007 04:33 PM                        Update: I talked to Best Buy's Geek Squad. They told me to create recovery disks, then put the new hard drive (120GB) in and boot up the computer. They told me to put the first disk in, and press ALT+F10 (as per Acer's specs). It recovered onto the new hard drive and everything turned out perfectly. It also does not have a partition now. I then put Vista on (took about 90 minutes) and everything's running fine. I have 512mb ram, so I'm going to upgrade it. This computer can go up to 2GB.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-31-2007 06:32 PM                        How do you like Vista?  |  IP: Logged

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