Hard disk partition

[Monoriu]

When I bought my computer, they asked me if I wanted to do a hard disk partition.  I said yes.  They put operating system in C:, and everything else in D:.

Trouble is, they put *barely enough* in C:, with only a few gigabytes to spare.  Now, for some reason, C: has been slowly filling up, while D: is barely occupied.  I install all games in D:, but for some reason, the games tend to put the save games in C:.  The problem is also caused by increasing number of music files, and little applications that I download every now and then. 

So, is there anyway I can put some of the space in D: back to C: in a relatively painless way?

I use Vista, BTW. 

[DontSayBanana]

Best suggestion I could offer is to move the music files into the D: drive.  I'm fairly sure there's no "soft" method to inflate a disk partition- to repartition the drive, you're going to have to reformat it.  For future applications, though, I'm going to tell you the same thing I told somebody asking me earlier this week whether or not they should partition an external hard drive they had just purchased:

It's a trap.  The platters are constantly having bytes of data written, erased, and rewritten all over the disk; after a certain point, the drive has to spin up to look for pieces of every file it accesses.  Windows can do a bit of damage control in the form of disk defragmentation, where it tries to make sure as many files as possible are written contiguously on the disk platters, but once you partition the drive, it makes it that much harder to organize the data, since for all intents and purposes, that drive is now two drives.

If you must have an anal-retentive low-level organization system on your computer, make it based on folders and subfolders in the C: drive, unless that drive is HUGE (lately, 1 TB+) and would cause Windows to suffer performance loss simply from opening the folder.

[Monoriu]

The question is, if I move the music files to D:, will itunes be able to recognize them?

[DontSayBanana]

iTunes heathen.

Seriously, yes, with at most a minor tweak on your part, if you don't let iTunes manage the library (editing the XML playlist to point to the correct file locations): Manually managing moved items in iTunes.

[Barrister]

Badmouthing iTunes.

[DontSayBanana]

Badmouthing iTunes.

I have an image to maintain.  Actually, I run iTunes as a secondary on here, so that I can listen to S' and my DRM-AACs without having to convert them (I've got Wondershare for emergency DRM-stripping).  I remembered how to do this from when S made the switch from a Dell to a Mac and needed to manually move her library.

[CountDeMoney]

Games go over here, porn goes over there.

[Grey Fox]

Yes.

[DisturbedPervert]

I install all games in D:, but for some reason, the games tend to put the save games in C:

I hate how some games put their saves in the My Documents folder instead of where you installed the game.

[grumbler]

Mono, make sure "My Documents" is on the D drive.  That alone will solve many of these problems.  On XP, you can move it just by renaming it, and answering "yes" when the OS asks if you want to move the existing documents.

Partitioning makes sense for three reasons:
(1) It protects data from most viruses, which cannot see partitions;
(2) It makes defragmentation much, much faster (though it increases defragmentation a bit); and
(3) It allows for fairly painless reinstallation of the Operating System, so long as you keep a copy of the registry on your D drive or whatever.

I have 7 partitions between my two drives, and that works out great for my needs.

[DGuller]

That's why I like Windows 7.  Save games go God knows where.  You have to search for the file to know where save games are going, which is fun, because Microsoft modified the Windows search function to remove its functionality.  Thankfully there are some third-party search programs for those who want to find the files they're searching for.

[frunk]

Can't verify this, don't have Vista (I always used to use Partition Magic) but supposedly you can resize partitions natively

[DGuller]

I think you can resize partitions in Vista and Windows 7, but I don't think you can move space around from one existing partition to another.  At least one of the partitions has to be unallocated (the one which provides additional space).  I don't know if you can shrink your existing partition without data loss.

[Grey Fox]

You can.

[grumbler]

frunk's link seems to indicate you can shrink and enlarge partitions without losing data.  You could do this with Partition Magic, so I see no reason you couldn't with the Vista OS.