Need HELP - out of space on primary drive

[hestaman]

I have a very old PC - about 8 1/2 years. (Pentium III 450) I plan on upgrading my PC in the next few months (actually weeks), however, have run into a problem in the past few days and was hoping somebody could help me out...

My primary drive is 6GB and I have a secondary 300GB hard drive. I thought at the time of my last OS installation that 6GB would be enough if I installed my applications and all user data on separate partitions of the secondary hard drive. However, I have just officially used my last 75MB of primary hard drive space The documentation that came with my very old pc says that the IDE controller does not support drives larger than 100GB so I bought a controller with my large hard drive. Everything has worked fine for about a year and a half now.

I have more than enough space on my secondary drive to reinstall the OS, however, when I go through the installation, Windows does not acknowledge the secondary drive that is connected to the secondary IDE/SCSI controller.

Really what I'd like to do is 'move' all data from my primary partition to another partition on the other drive and then 'swap' primary/secondary partitions. Since I only plan on using this PC for a very short time - I don't want to invest in a program like partition magic. Is there anybody who can help me get this all sorted out so I can use my PC again? HELP!!! (Thanks in advance...)

 

[DelJo63]

First of all, cleanup old files (and there's tons of them)

cp->change a setting->Perform & Maint->Free up Space

 

[hestaman]

Thanks for the reply -- because this is a small drive and this disk space issue didn't exactly come out of the blue I performed weekly disk cleanup. So, I have already performed this step and only saved myself about 5MB. I've done all of the 'basic' steps to keep my disk space low (I even have 5GB partition set aside on the secondary drive to store the page file). What should I do?

 

[PeeWee89]

can't you compress all data by right-clicking the partion and press "compress data to save space"?

not a very exact guide perhaps, since i have my OS in swedish i dont know what it says in english =)

 

[DelJo63]

compression is BOUND TO FAIL -- it requires MORE space to do its work
before swapping files.

cleanup and move are the only choices that will get you back more space

 

[Rick]

can't you compress all data by right-clicking the partion and press "compress data to save space"?

The idea of resorting to this makes me shudder.... eeeeyyyoouuhuhuhuh.... On an old machine like this one, you'll end up with one hell of a slow volume.

PC - about 8 1/2 years. (Pentium III 450)

This computer probably only supports up to 32GB.

Really what I'd like to do is 'move' all data from my primary partition to another partition on the other drive and then 'swap' primary/secondary partitions. Since I only plan on using this PC for a very short time - I don't want to invest in a program like partition magic.

gParted might be able to do this. It's free.

 

[Tedster]

please read here:

https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic36678.html

 

[hestaman]

Good article. However, I didn't see anything regarding the solution I came up with which was to buy a new controller. This has worked fine for me now for 18 months - no problem. The only problem I have is that now I'd like to put the OS on one of the partitions on the large drive and when runnings Windows install, I can't seem to find any drive connected to the new controller. I don't believe the controller came with any drivers or install disk.

 

[Tedster]

most controller cards require an install disk. Check with the manufactuer.