Windows partition question

Forums › Microsoft Windows › Windows partition question

mdav056

607 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#281107 30-Jan-2021 09:22

My main drive which contains both my system disk C: and a data drive D: has an annoying unlettered partition *: of 455 mb sitting between C: and D:, and this is labelled just Primary.

It contains similar (but fewer) files as the System Reserved partition, but the dates in the unlettered partition are 2015/2016, much older than the System Reserved files (up to 2020).

It is annoying when I need to change the sizes of C: and D: partitions.

Question is: Can I delete this partition and make the C: and D: drives adjacent?

Thanks

gml

xpd

Geek @ Coastguard NZ
13765 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2644336 30-Jan-2021 10:10

If its System Reserved, don't touch it.

How often are you resizing your partitions for it to be viewable ???

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

LinkTree

mdav056

607 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#2644397 30-Jan-2021 12:39

Yes, I know.

Resize about 2x/year. Yesterday, and when I replaced the drive just before christmas. EasUS partition master 15.

Don't understand the implications of the viewable question -- answer is, when I replaced the drive, and recently many times as the C: drive got overfull, yesterday about 10x as I repartitioned it.

gml

xpd

Geek @ Coastguard NZ
13765 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2644408 30-Jan-2021 13:27

99.9% of users don't view their HDD partitions that often thats all :) Where it sits in the partitions shouldn't matter either.

Honestly, don't worry about it, its usually only around 500MB. If your C drive is getting full all the time, you need to look at how you're storing your data and the size of the drive you're using.

My C drive (120GB SSD) consists of the OS and core program such as Office etc - anything else gets installed to a secondary physical drive (480GB SSD) as D. I do have a server though that contains all my media/docs etc, so I can get away with minimal space on the desktop PC.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

LinkTree

mdav056

607 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#2644437 30-Jan-2021 16:25

OK, thanks. All my data are stored on D:, and there is a lot of this, but I have a lot of applications for work purposes (blame COVID) that I have needed to install on C:.

The crunch is probably OneDrive, where I like to backup my D: data, and to do this I robocopy it to C:\onedrive for automatic synch. Which means that C: also contains a copy of d:... I have tried to do this in other ways (like give OneDrive the d: drive letter -- because I have legacy one-off programs to analyze data, going back years -- talking thousands here -- that look for data from the current d: drive). I do have 2 or 3 other backups too on removeable disks), and I had to do major sortouts on my laptops etc. Gave up. So C: just gets more full with more data collection to d:.

I don't know what would happen if I made the onedrive folders residing on c: on demand only, and backed up directly to the onedrive cloud?

I just wish that OneDrive wasn't free with Office 365, so that I could justify a terabyte of cloud storage elsewhere to which I could back up in a more sensible way. I find OneDrive difficult and annoying to use.

As you can probably see, I have a legacy system that goes back to the start of PCs when I thought I had a good and usable data system (twin floppies!), and have just been updating windows ever since. Old dog.

Suggestions welcome, apart from spending lots of money or retirement.

gml

rhy7s

623 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2644439 30-Jan-2021 16:33

Would junction links work for you to manage your OneDrive storage space? e.g. https://simpleitpro.com/index.php/2020/07/24/how-to-onedrive-folder-sync-any-directory-on-your-pc-via-mklink/

mdav056

607 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#2644482 30-Jan-2021 21:31

rhy7s: Would junction links work for you to manage your OneDrive storage space? e.g. https://simpleitpro.com/index.php/2020/07/24/how-to-onedrive-folder-sync-any-directory-on-your-pc-via-mklink/

Thanks, @rhy7s, That looks interesting, but I don't think it would work for me -- I often want to use some file I've just produced immediately in further analyses (part of a batch file sometimes), and I wondered what the network latency to OneDrive might do to this. Though, maybe, if I always save files to the D: drive and call files from the D: drive in the next program, this would not be a problem.

I also wasn't clear if all sub directories would be synched from a single parent directory -- I'll have to look at the info on this command and find out.

gml