Community Newsletter: Q&A: 5/5/06 Removing a partition on a hard drive

Why not use it?

In my opinion, this thread has overwhelmingly advocated the use of multiple partitions. Why not use the nearly empty partition? That is assuming that it isn't actually full of restore information etc.

You can save all your photographs, movies, music etc to the other drive while your programs sit quietly in your C:\ drive. When you save a file, browse through the folders to choose where to save, but browse instead to the other drive (it will be shown under My Computer).

If you want/need to save things to your My Documents, My Pictures etc folders - known as "Special Folders", you can tell Windows to look on the other drive to find them. There are programs you can buy which will move them (see other posts hereabouts) or you can download the Microsoft FREE Utility TweakUI for XP (or whichever Windows version you use - make sure you use the right one!). This was developed by Microsoft developers for their own use (or for fun or something). Go to the Microsoft site and look for Powertoys (for XP = http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx then scroll down to the description and download link TweakUI). Trust me, they are not toys! This one manipulates the Windows registry for you, safely and without you studying it.

Before you run it, open a Windows Explorer window for each of your special folders you want to move. Leave those windows open. (This will save you browsing through "C:\Documents and Settings" etc later.)

When you run TweakUI, choose My Computer - Drives. Then scroll the box to whichever special folders you wish to move and relocate them on your other drive (partition). When that is done, open a corresponding Explorer window for each special folder. Now all you have to do is to Move all the contents of the folders from the old special folders to the new special folder.

After that, check any reasonably complex software which does not use standard folder names and change the option for your "My Documents" folder etc. Most software should be using the special folders by referring to the Windows Registry - for instance it won't even use "C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents" without first looking in the registry to find out where your "My Documents" folder is located. And if the software is written correctly and DOES that, it will find your new location with all your moved files. How? Because by telling TweakUI that you wanted to relocate your Special Folder, it edited the Registry for you.

Some here have a way of doing the moves from My Documents Properties, but as that doesn't work on my version of Windows, I am assuming they have a utility to do it.

Hope this helps with at least part of the problem.