Annoying hard disk shortage error

[Rave]

Hi all, wonder if you can help.

About 8 months ago I decided that my old Athlon XP system wasn't cutting it any more, so I decided to hit the overdraft and enter the modern age with a new dual core system. Got myself a secondhand p35 board off these forums and built it up with an E5200, 4830, 4GB of DDR2 and a 1 Terabit (I.E. 930GB) Spinpoint F1. I decided to give Vista 64 a try at the same time. Thing was I wasn't sure if it'd work that well so I thought I'd go dual boot with XP.

So I partitioned the F1- two partitions of 20GB each, C: and D:, and the rest on E:. I installed XP on C:, Vista 64 on D:.

It quickly became apparent that Vista actually works perfectly and I've had no problems at all running any of the stuff I want to. I haven't booted XP in approx 7 1/2 months. Not long after I started running Vista full time it started complaining that the C: drive was full. For some reason it always wants to install new software on the C: drive despite being installed in the D: drive itself but I always tell it to install in E:\Program Files\.

I then clocked that the swapfile was on the C: drive, and moved it to the E: drive. That worked fine for a while. But now I'm getting a constant message that the C: drive is full again. Yesterday it reckoned that there was only 30mb left. Now it thinks there's 3mb left, and it's started doing annoying stuff like refusing to scroll through folders of JPEGs, with an error "This picture cannot be displayed. You might not have enough memory available. Close some programs or, if your hard disk is almost full, free some disk space and try again". Just now it's refused to load and play an MP3.

I have 4GB of RAM FFS. I've just been on the C: drive and sure enough the C:\Windows folder claims to be 22GB (when there's only 20GB of space on the partition?). But having laboriously gone through all the folders therein I can't find any adding up to 22GB- in fact only two are above 1GB.

I suppose I could just start again, wipe the disc and not bother with the dual boot any more. But having installed Steam and bought a few games, that seems like it could be a lot of faffage. If anyone has any ideas what's going on I'd be grateful.

[aidanjt]

As far as Vista is concerned Disk 0 Partition 1 (it's system partition) *is* C:, it probably thinks of D0P0 (XP's partition) as D:. I'm honestly surprised you managed to get Vista onto a 20GB partition in the first place. Since you're happy enough with Vista, I'd merge the two 20GB partitions and give that to Vista.

[Rave]

Well I had XP running for years on Duron system with a 30GB HD- with plenty of space for games, MP3s etc.- so I figured 20GB would be ample for any operating system? I've now solved the problem temporarily with Disk Cleanup, by deleting all the old logs, system restore points etc. I also deleted 2.5gigs of 'temporary files'. And now drive C: is showing, erm, 1GB free.

So, merging partitions. Sounds like a good idea. How'dyadothatthen?

[aidanjt]

So, merging partitions. Sounds like a good idea. How'dyadothatthen?

The easy (and 'safe') way, delete both partitions, create one in it's place, then reinstall Vista.

The hairy and put-you-hdd-in-the-hands-of-symantec way is to use PartitionMagic. Gparted is another option. The procedure is basically i) delete the XP partition ii) move the Vista partition to the beginning of the disk, iii) extend the Vista partition to use the 20gb of space that Vista used to occupy.

[arthurleung]

If you are getting space problem due to temp file
Why not change your temp folder path.

It is under the Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Environment Variables

It is also a good idea to do a chkdsk c: /f, that might clear up space that have been "locked up" for whatever reason.

[12GaugeShotty]

I would never have used 20GB for the OS partition for Vista x64. It includes far too many DLLs for 32-bit and 64-bit access and builds more as you use more 32-bit programs.

Not sure how much data you have but it would be best to reinstall your OS and when doing so get rid of the two 20GB partitions and install the OS on that. Then use a partition program to resize your data partitions. You want at least 100GB (depending on your applications) for the OS partition. You have a 1TB drive so it's not like you are running short on storage space or anything.

[jonathan_phang]

for the space issue you could just a free visual disk scanning utility eg. Spacemonger - though there are prob loads of alternatives, and then you can kinda see whats taking up so much room - may be something that you hadnt considered. I find it useful at work for when I realise i still have loads of DB backups on my laptop - or a lot of temp ASP.NET files...

Also, is you swapfile static? Dynamic? If the latter, whats the boundaries yoiu have it set to?

[Rave]

Bumpage for this. The shortage of space is now causing me all sorts of problems, not least with BioShock, which for some reason insist on storing its save games on the Vista partition. So I decided that drastic action was necessary- I bunged in my old XP installation disk and used the partitioning tool to delete the full c: partition, assuming that this was the XP one. I figured I could then fix any problems it caused, reinstall any vista drivers etc.

Unfortunately I should have paid more attention to aidanjt:

As far as Vista is concerned Disk 0 Partition 1 (it's system partition) *is* C:, it probably thinks of D0P0 (XP's partition) as D:. I'm honestly surprised you managed to get Vista onto a 20GB partition in the first place. Since you're happy enough with Vista, I'd merge the two 20GB partitions and give that to Vista.

....because he's absolutely right. I actually managed to delete the Vista partition instead. D'oh! So I figured never mind, all my data's on the main e: partition, I'll just delete the XP partition as well, merge the two, and then reinstall Vista on the new, empty 40GB partition. But no matter what I tried with UBCD etc. I could not persuade Vista to see the space as a 40GB empty partition- and it refused to install on its old 20gb partition too. Eh?

Luckily I found a tool to restore my old partitions (using my old computer, glad I bought a backup CDR drive now, thanks quackers!), and so after a whole day of faffing about I'm back where I started. I now think that what I need to do is shrink the XP partition and add the space to the Vista one. Using the Vista partitioning tool I've had no problem shrinking the XP partition, but I can't get it to add the space to the Vista one, it only wants to add space that's further out on the disk (er- or further in, on the physical platters, I suppose)- and there is none, because that's where the data partition is. Anyone know a tool that can add space that's located on the side closest to the start of the disc?

I would add a picture of the vista partitioning tool as it is now, but I can't, because paint.net can't load the printscreen due to lack of space.

[Rave]

Sorted it now, added another 8gb to the partition which will hopefully buy me a few months more. When that runs out I'll buy an SSD and boot from that.