C: Drive Space

You are supposed to be installing programs and storing data on the D: drive. This has changed recently for most Dell's. The advantage is that if you have to reinstall to OS in the C: drive, you do not lose all your programs and data residing on the D: drive.

Ki, thanks for the reply and info.  I did not know that. 

Followup question:  Can I safety move the programs on the C: drive to the D: drive?  Drag and drop type of thing or uninstall/reinstall? 

Thanks again!

If you haven't installed too much in C:, you could leave them there and start installing new programs in D:. You can not drag-and-drop. However, I think there are programs out there that will allow a transfer from one drive to another. Search the web. Any data you have, pictures, etc. Can be moved to D: in the appropriate folders. If you leave programs in C:, you would need to change the target directory for each of the programs affected so they know where to find things.

Thanks KirkD for the advice.  I'll try and move a few folders around this weekend and see how it goes.  My issue now is the C: drive does not have enough space left to install updates for Win7. 

I'll post on Monday, 10/4, and let ya know how it went.

Thanks again for the help and assistance.

That's the way it's being done nows. If everything is on the C: drive and you need to reinstall the OS, then all programs you have installed need to be reinstalled and all data is lost unless it has been backed up. When you dedicate a partition just to the OS, the re-installation finishes and all your stuff is still there. Turns a 2 day installation to about an hour or so.

:emotion-2: how do you install programs pictures and etc. to the d drive?

Just copy/move them to an appropriate directory in D:. I don't have a newer PC, so I don't know if the Windows installation puts the normal directory structure for user files in the C: or D: drives. Your manual should describe how to handle program installations and data directories.

SanDavis,

Your question tells us that you are very unfamiliar with how Windows works. I strongly urge that you get an introductory book like O'Reilly's _ Windows 7: The Missing Manual_  or _Windows 7 for Dummies_. There are other equivalent titles available. After that, you can graduate to something like _Windows 7 Secrets_  or  _Windows 7 Annoyances_, which go into more esoteric details.

Some background, though:

In general, you cannot drag and drop programs. There are entries in the registry which won't be updated when you do that. You usually have to use the Control Panel to uninstall them, and then use their CDs to reinstall them in the right places.

When you run a program installer, one of the first things it does is ask you where you want to install the program. Instead of just clicking on the Next button, specify the drive (D:) and folder where you want it to go. You can either type it in or use the Browse... button. The easiest thing is just to replace the default C: by D:.

Pictures, spreadsheet, .doc, text, and other types of data files aren't "installed". You can simply drag and drop them wherever you want. (They probably should be put into folders that you've created which have names related to what the files are about.) By default, dragging from one drive (C:) to another drive (D:) does a copy operation, leaving the original where it was to begin with. You want to do a "move" operation, which deletes the original file after the copy has been done. You can either use the right-mouse-button to drag the file (it'll ask if you want to do a copy, move or other things), or you can manually delete the files afterward.

Please note that I have not specified all the details involved in doing this. You really need to read the manuals and understand the steps of what has to be done.

You might consider hiring someone to do it for you. That won't be cheap, though, and you might have private stuff on your computer that you don't want others to see.