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  1. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    current config:
    cpu amd 2core, windows xp home, sp2, 32bit, 2gig ram
    160 hdd, three partisions, as (c:10gig[40meg free], e: 50gig[1g free], and f:90gig[5g free])
    File System for all partitions, (c, e, and f = NTFS)

    device manager says my internal hardware is:
    * Processors: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+
    * (IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers)
    * * Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

    i am having so much trouble installing various software in my full win xp home. now, some software won't uninstall- probably because of this, maybe. anyway. i am heading down to one of the stores in hopes to pick up a 320 gig hdd, so that i can swap it for the 160 gig hdd.

    plans: --> assuming replacement is a 320gig hdd:
    i want to partition it the same as in the above, but increase the root c: drive to 50gig.
    the rest, i will split to 135gig even.

    whats the quickest and easiest way of doing this w/out purchasing/downloading other software (if possible) and, *not* triggering the reactivation in the process ?

    thank you.
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  2. Member Evil_Burrito's Avatar
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    Buy a much larger hard drive, at least 500gb. Don't repartition the new one, since you will already have 2 actual hard drives. If the store you go to is too expensive check out http://www.newegg.com/.

    The easiest way is to clone the old one onto the new one. If you buy a new boxed hard drive (not oem) from a big name brand (ie western Digital, it will likely include this software. If you buy a hard drive without included software I think the free program gparted should work http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php. Also, when you finish cloning if the program doesn't extend the partition to the full size, do that as well.

    One last thing, you didn't describe your actual problem in much detail and it doesn't sound like you "need" a new hard drive. Because a hard drive is not going to deny uninstalling a program, that would be an operating system problem. So if you just clone the exact system you will have the same problem.
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    Also if your controller is reporting you have IDE drives you will have trouble finding any IDE drives any more. Almost everything is SATA now.
    I'm not up on how old that AMD CPU is but SATA's been around for the last few years at least. You may be opening a can of worms that requires a new mainboard, CPU and RAM.

    Also I agree with Evil_Burrito that you may have OS issues rather than disk space ones. Unless of course you are really really low on disk space (less than 5% free)
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  4. Even if you don't buy a boxed retail drive you can download and use the drive cloning software from the manufacturer of either the old drive or the new drive. All the major manufactures make the software available for free. They just require that one of the drives in your computer is made by them. If you're on a laptop this is more difficult since you can't put both drives in the computer at the same time. Use an external USB enclosure or dock.
    Last edited by jagabo; 8th Sep 2012 at 19:58.
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  5. Member yoda313's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by d_knife
    Also if your controller is reporting you have IDE drives you will have trouble finding any IDE drives any more. Almost everything is SATA now.
    I'm not up on how old that AMD CPU is but SATA's been around for the last few years at least. You may be opening a can of worms that requires a new mainboard, CPU and RAM.
    You can get pci sata cards so you can add sata drives. I have one.

    But at least the last time I looked I think even best buy carried ide pata drives. But I don't remember how long ago that was. I've recently been buying alot of harddrives but they are usb for backup purposes.
    Donatello - The Shredder? Michelangelo - Maybe all that hardware is for making coleslaw?
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  6. Originally Posted by vhelp View Post
    160 hdd, three partisions, as (c:10gig[40meg free], e: 50gig[1g free], and f:90gig[5g free])
    Wow, if those numbers are correct, it would be a wonder if your computer is NOT flaky.

    A few observations:

    1) Ideally, you shouldn't use more than, oh, 70% of the space on a partition. You can quibble about the proportion, but you're way too close to the capacity of your partitions. All of them, but particularly the C drive.

    2) You don't have to limit yourself to IDE drives if you have a PCI or PCIe slot available. You can get a SATA controller or even a combination IDE/SATA controller (I have one of each, one in the office comp, the other in this one), from Newegg for less than $20 bucks.

    3) You really shouldn't use more than 2 partitions on a drive, lots of people here would say one. I can see the point of making a partition just for the C drive. The rest is excessive. Transfers of files between partitions on the same hard drive will be *SLOW*. Better to get a couple large hard drives while you're at it and forget the multiple partitions. You can get a 2 TB HD from Newegg for $100, or a 1 TB for $70-80 if you watch for deals.

    4) If you get a WD or Seagate drive, you can download free software for them that offers a fairly comprehensive array of tools. You'll want particularly the free Acronis program. WD calls it the free Acronis WD Edition; Seagate calls theirs DiscWizard.

    The Acronis program can clone your C drive to another hard drive or partition. And it doesn't insist the target partition be the same size as the original, just that there is sufficient space. (Unlike some others.) You can also make backup disc images with it which can save your ass if your C drive fails. Save the image on one of your extra hard drives.

    -------

    Once you've cloned your C drive to a new hard drive and verify everything works, you can re-partition the old drive and clone back to it, if you like. Personally, I think 160 Gb is a good size for a C drive, with just one partition.

    Good luck.

    [EDIT] Durn it, jagabo and yoda are always quicker than me.
    Last edited by fritzi93; 8th Sep 2012 at 20:31.
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  7. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    yes, it is true, i battled it out for space on the c: drive. today it was down to 12mb, i was always deleting opera temp folders every few minutes or so. however, in a freak coensidence, i was able to reclaim 700mb from a folder i did not know was hiding data from old IE versions, 5, 6, and 7. i only reclaimed from the IE.5 temp folder since that came up in a freak happenstance (a twebbrowser tool in delphi crashed and this folder popped up) i looked and deleted, and the rest is history. if you know where the IE6 and IE7 folders are, let me know so i can delete those and gain more space maybe. fwiw, yesterday, a message popped up in my IE.7 browser that youtube will soon stop supporting it unless i updated to 8 so i did.

    its scary how you can find things on youtube..just about anything. i typed in "how to clone a hdd" and a gazzion hits came up. i seen a few videos already, and will, some more. i have found a new hope for youtube viewing.

    i was able to locate a WD Caviar Blue, PATA 8MB Cache, IDE 320gig, shrinkwrapped, but no software.
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  8. Member darkknight145's Avatar
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    Also: If you don't use "Hibernate" disable this and it will recover a large amount of space by removing the "Hiberfile"
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  9. Member olyteddy's Avatar
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    +1. It doesn't even care if the WD is part of the cloning. I just plug my WD external in when I want to use it.
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  10. Member AlanHK's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by vhelp View Post
    yes, it is true, i battled it out for space on the c: drive. today it was down to 12mb, i was always deleting opera temp folders every few minutes or so.
    Check out Opera's icon cache.
    It stores an icon for every bookmark, and my bookmark file is about 15 years old and pretty huge.
    The bookmark menu taking 2 minutes to appear when I first start the app.
    Then I found the icon cache, which is annoyingly stored in
    c:\Documents and settings\Appliation Data\Opera\icons
    and there were tens of thousands of icons, totalling 600 MB. I deleted them and now it loads in a snap. So now I periodically clean it out. (It stores one every time I visit a page.)

    I'd like to just turn off this stupid feature. I don't need icons in my bookmarks. Opera is getting less and less usable as it gets more bloated and useless features. I use Firefox often now and may switch over completely.
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  11. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    thanks for the link..will d/l now, its big file i see.
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  12. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    i don't particulary like FF. it seems more prone to virus attacks than opera.

    i'm using opera, version 11.52, but the last time i recall...the good old days of operas speedyness left after ver 6 point something.

    anyway, i will look into those locations for the icons, but so far i don't see them on my setup, not in the location you described.
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  13. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    i just found Lavasoft on my system. i uninstalled that last year but it seems to have not removed the files and it does not show up in my Add/Remove app. so i have deleted that folder and now have 1.34gigs to show.
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  14. Member AlanHK's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by vhelp View Post
    i don't particulary like FF. it seems more prone to virus attacks than opera.

    i'm using opera, version 11.52, but the last time i recall...the good old days of operas speedyness left after ver 6 point something.

    anyway, i will look into those locations for the icons, but so far i don't see them on my setup, not in the location you described.
    It keeps nagging you to upgrade, so I'm on 12.02.

    If you see icons in your bookmark list they are being stored somewhere, and if you have a big bookmark file, showing and storing them can be a real drag on the system.

    I occasionally sniff around the various "application data" and "temp" folders and sometimes find huge files there, broken downloads, installers, etc, that I can just delete.

    If you have a way of showing the total size of a directory tree it helps to find the space hogs.
    I use the "Far" file manager.
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  15. Member Evil_Burrito's Avatar
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    lol, if multiple people tell you the same thing, it is likely true.

    12mb!? That is just sad. Use disk cleanup or download the more thorough ccCleaner.
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  16. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    haa..i found the (2475) icons here:
    C:\Documents and Settings\..\Local Settings\Application Data\Opera\Opera\icons
    to be safe, i deleted from 9/7/2012 and older.

    [rant]i don't like opera's latest cache folder scheme. i haven't quite figure out its cryptic system but it create a bunch of folders and they keep growing after a certain size is reached or some other critier. the old 9.24 used to create one cache folder and dump all the files there. now it harder to find files like the youtube clips not to mention that they break them up into pieces- pieces that don't play in vlc or other player. anyway[/opera rant over].
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  17. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    well, 12mb will soon be a thing of the past, as soon as i get this new hdd in place..probably tomorrow or later. but just so you know, i am currently up to 1.3 or 1.4 gig hdd space. thanks to this discussion, i'm safe for now.
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  18. Member AlanHK's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by vhelp View Post
    haa..i found the (2475) icons here:
    C:\Documents and Settings\..\Local Settings\Application Data\Opera\Opera\icons
    to be safe, i deleted from 9/7/2012 and older.

    [rant]i don't like opera's latest cache folder scheme. i haven't quite figure out its cryptic system but it create a bunch of folders and they keep growing after a certain size is reached or some other critier. the old 9.24 used to create one cache folder and dump all the files there. now it harder to find files like the youtube clips not to mention that they break them up into pieces- pieces that don't play in vlc or other player. anyway[/opera rant over].
    You can delete the cache files completely with no problem. But it will just start accumulating them aqain.

    As for copying stuff en masse, I use XXcopy, a command line program with lots of options, basically a more efficient version of DOS Xcopy.

    something like
    xxcopy /s/h *.* e:\
    run from the root of C: will copy everything to the E drive.
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    Originally Posted by AlanHK View Post
    Originally Posted by vhelp View Post
    yes, it is true, i battled it out for space on the c: drive. today it was down to 12mb, i was always deleting opera temp folders every few minutes or so.
    Check out Opera's icon cache.
    It stores an icon for every bookmark, and my bookmark file is about 15 years old and pretty huge.
    The bookmark menu taking 2 minutes to appear when I first start the app.
    Then I found the icon cache, which is annoyingly stored in
    c:\Documents and settings\Appliation Data\Opera\icons
    and there were tens of thousands of icons, totalling 600 MB. I deleted them and now it loads in a snap. So now I periodically clean it out. (It stores one every time I visit a page.)

    I'd like to just turn off this stupid feature. I don't need icons in my bookmarks. Opera is getting less and less usable as it gets more bloated and useless features. I use Firefox often now and may switch over completely.
    But yes, we can tell Opera to show NO "favicons".

    Besides, in Preferences -> Advanced -> History, untick "Remember content on visited pages"
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