How do I move files/folders from the main C drive to another drive.

M

musicfan

Registered User
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Hi All

I have an acer laptop where the C drive is almost full - I need to remove some stuff in order to clear some disk space.

Basically, I want to move some of the big files eg itunes etc to another drive. There is a D drive (a data drive?) on the laptop which has loads of space. Is there any reason why I can't move my itunes onto this drive? If I drag and drop from the C drive to the D drive, it says it is only copying the files - if so, the original itunes will still be on the C drive so will not be freeing up any space. Can I cut and paste - am kinda hesitating doing this as I dont want to lose all my music.

Would I be better off getting an additional hard drive and move stuff onto this?

I am using Windows Vista.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
 
Yes you can cut and paste but if you are a bit fearful after you have dropped them to the drive you want you can delete from the C drive.

I don't think you're getting more room overall though just more in the C drive.
 
Yes, if your C drive is almost full, you should consider getting an external hard drive for back-ups. I believe Lidl have a 500GB for €80 at the moment, and I recently bought a 500GB Maxtor drive in PC World for €90. You would then be able to drag and drop your files onto the external drive and delete from your C: drive.
 
musicfan said:
There is a D drive (a data drive?) on the laptop which has loads of space.
Click to expand...
Are you sure that's not just the CD-Rom/DVD drive? It's unusual for laptops to have multiple internal hard drives.

When you copy files over from the C:\ drive to the D:\ drive, can you then access them and play them?

If so, then you can safely delete the copies on C:\. If not, then you probably need an external HDD. See this previous thread.
 
OK, so for the moment, I can drag and drop them from the C drive into the D drive and then cut from the C drive? The fact that it is my C drive is the problem (thats the one thats full) will it still say that the drives are nearly full even though I am moving stuff from this drive?

Also, the D Drive says its a data drive. Is this just the name on it or does it mean I can only move certain types of files onto it?

I will get an external hard drive - must look into it - when I get this can I just move my music files etc onto this?

If I do drag and drop and then cut from my C drive, this won't delete all the stuff in the destination folder will it?


Thanks again

Crossed with above post - there is also and E drive - a DVD RW drive.
 
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OK then, I stand (well, sit ) corrected. When you display the properties of this D:\ drive, does it indicate its capacity? (80GB/120GB/160GB, etc.)

If it is a second internal drive, you can move whatever type of files you want onto it — music, photos, video files being the biggest space-hoggers, typically. You don't need to keep them on the C:\ drive as well. But it might still be worth buying a 2.5" external drive for backup purposes, if the files are important to you.
 
How many drives are listed? What sort of icon does the D drive have? Check it's properties etc. If still in doubt that it is a hard drive, open the CD/DVD drive and try to open a file from the D drive...

You probably realise this, but in general you can only copy data manually - if you need to move applications e.g. iTunes, you'll need to uninstall from the C drive, then reinstall on the D drive.
 
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Hiya
the D Drive is 51.8 GB and the C drive is 52.1 (this one only has a few MB free)
Thanks
 

Can I not just drag and drop the music folder? It seemed to be letting me do it earlier but then I paniced, cancelled it and thought I better ask for advice!

If I uninstall and then download it again - will I have lost all my music??

The logo is just like a white 3d box - same as the C drive only without the windows logo.

OK I've just gone into the properties for the D drive - it says its a local drive.

There is also an option to compress files to save disk space - what does this do or can I do htis on the C drive.

God, the world of computers is confusing!!!
 
Is the D: drive a mirror of the C: drive? Is it a recovery drive? Have a look at what's on the D: drive.
 

You should be able to move just the music & movies without moving iTunes itself.
 
Rois said:
Is the D: drive a mirror of the C: drive? Is it a recovery drive? Have a look at what's on the D: drive.
Click to expand...

Very unlikely - very few home users would pay for 100 Gb of storage to be able to use only 50. Most likely that just set it with 2 approx 50 Gb partitions as the factory default.
 
Why don't you just try it with one file (such as a freely downloadable exe file that's easily replaceable or a sample word doc) and drag and drop to your D drive and then delete from your C drive and see if it still works?

I'd recommend a separate hard drive back up as well in any case.

Sprite
 
From what you have said above it seems that you have one harddrive which is separated into two partitions (C and D) and so far you have really only been using the C partition to store music and movies on.

The only problem (if you haven't already realised it) cutting the music from the C partition and moving it to the D partition it that when you try and play the songs in iTunes, the file will not be located as iTunes will be looking for the song in the path (for example)
C:\Music\Kings of Leon\Album
but you have moved it to
D:\Music\Kings of Leon\Album
hence when you move all the files to the D partition you will have to reimport them into your iTunes library.

Also as mentioned by others, if you don't already have one, you can get a high capacity external HD for less than €100 and you can backup your music there aswell (always nice to have a backup of your music/films/other files incase the HD on your laptop becomes defective!
 
Removing and resizing partitions (e.g. to merge two partitions on a single hard disk into one) is easy. You can use free tools such as PartedMagic to do this. You should only do this if you backup the partition to be deleted first and if you know what you are doing. Ditto for moving files around. You can't arbitrarily move anything.
 
Partitioning is what you need to do.Shrink the D partition to within 1GB of its minimum permitted size.Then increase the C partition to claim this space.
 
caff said:
Partitioning is what you need to do.Shrink the D partition to within 1GB of its minimum permitted size.Then increase the C partition to claim this space.
Click to expand...
Subject to there being no data that you need on D: you can delete it and then expand C: to occupy the fully disk if necessary.
 
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