[quizbuff2000]

Having just bought an Acer Aspire 1642 (with which I'm happy) laptop, I do however have one query for anyone with an Acer laptop.

The hard drive is only 40GB and that's partitioned into a C drive and a D one. By default everything goes onto drive C, including programs and data, and already I note that this drive only has about 7GB left to play with. Drive D conversely has about 17GB, but it's not clear to me how I access and utilise that drive.

E-mail customer support just doesn't seem to be designed to address this issue, and telephone support results in dying of old age before you reach the head of the queue.

I'd like to know essentially how I utilise Drive D, so as to ensure plenty of storage capacity.

The way it's been done here is wierd to me. With my old HP one, they would partition the drive, but Drive D would simply have all the factory files and Windows files on it, taking up a few GB, with Drive C being fully open for use to do with as you please, so to speak.

Whilst this is not a life or death issue, clarification would be appreciated if any Acer users can enlighten me.

[JamesE]

Just tell all your programs that the data is to be on drive D:. Make a start by creating a new "My Documents" on D: Put all your Word/Exel/mp3/photos etc. etc. on it. Then "cut" the data which you have put on C: and "paste" it to D:

[quizbuff2000]

Originally Posted by JamesE

Just tell all your programs that the data is to be on drive D:.

I get the idea. Forgive my naivity, but how do I make that configurational change within my programs?

Your assistance is hugely appreciated I hasten to add.

[jagger2k]

if you have a recovery media on disk, why dont you use fdisk and delete both partitions and install windows on the new big partition??

[JamesE]

Originally Posted by quizbuff2000

I get the idea. Forgive my naivity, but how do I make that configurational change within my programs?

Open Windows Explorer, click on Drive D: then go to the right pane and right click, hover over "new" and left click "folder". A new folder appears - while it is blue type in the name or later right click it, click "rename" and give it a name. Do this for all your data folders. In MS programs such as Word or Excel then when you save data do a "save as", browse through the drives and folders in the window which appears until you get the one you want. You should find that next time it will go to that. Some programs have an "options" in which you can select where data is to be saved, temporary files run, etc. There isn't just one method but if you fiddle about with each program you will find that there is alway a way of making it put data on D:.When you have everything as you want it then transfer your data from C: to D:. Either transfer complete folders - in Win Explorer click on C:, right click on the folder, left click "cut" then left click on D:, right click in the right hand pane, left click "paste". Voila! folder transfered. Use the same procedure to transfer contents of folders.

[quizbuff2000]

Went about it in the manner recommended, and it'll do the trick fine. A very good laptop this one, but why Acer felt the need to partition in this way, with a data drive on Drive D, while sticking My Documents in Drive C, goodness only knows.

[fenlander]

It's good practice to keep your data on a different drive from your operating system and software. If Windows goes pear-shaped and you have to reformat C: and reinstall, your data stays safe on drive D:.
It always annoys me when I get a new PC with only one partition. First thing I do is delete everything, partition into C: and D: and then reinstall the OS on C:. You're fortunate that Acer seem to know what they're doing.

[JamesE]

The only trouble is they split it 50:50. I prefer 15:85, or even less on C: with a very big drive. My current used space on my C: which has XP and loads of programs is only 5.16GB so 10 GB is really plenty.

With hindsight I would have partitioned into 3, 1 for OS, 1 for all other programs and 1 for data.

[Ziggurhater]

Originally Posted by fenlander

It always annoys me when I get a new PC with only one partition. First thing I do is delete everything, partition into C: and D: and then reinstall the OS on C:. You're fortunate that Acer seem to know what they're doing.

Which begs the question, why stick the contents of My Documents by default onto Drive C?

[quizbuff2000]

Originally Posted by JamesE

Just tell all your programs that the data is to be on drive D:. Make a start by creating a new "My Documents" on D: Put all your Word/Exel/mp3/photos etc. etc. on it. Then "cut" the data which you have put on C: and "paste" it to D:

In the end, I discovered none of that was necessary. All you need to do, is go to My Documents through the Start menu: select properties, then click on Move. You're then invited to select a target area, so you select D:\ after which a dialogue box offers to transfer all your data to the new destination. You accept this invitation and Bob's your uncle!

[JamesE]

That's it! I remember now. I thought there was a clever way which Uncle Bill had devised because everything gets directed there then automatically. I really must write this down (probably have and forgotten where I put it).
I should have arriving today a Caddy and 2.5"HDD. I shall clone this from the Acer (using Casper XP), whilst at the same time altering the partition ratio. I shall then have the partitions as I want them and a back up. (i.e. swap the drives and keep the original as back up)

[JamesE]

To update the above, the parts arrived from CCL later yesterday morning and I duly assembled the 80G drive into the caddy and plugged in. I set Casper XP going to copy the entire drive (it was still going at 23:00 telling me there was 3:30 to go). This morning all was complete and I have just swapped the drives. Perfect - it all booted up correctly and I now have an 80G drive in the Acer 3610, 2.25 GB EISA hidden, 11.93 GB C: and 60.35GB D: plus a system back-up in the form of the original drive. I was somewhat staggered by the time it took - it takes about an hour or so on internal drives - but it worked. I haven't tried cloning to a USB drive before.

[quizbuff2000]

Originally Posted by JamesE

To update the above, the parts arrived from CCL later yesterday morning and I duly assembled the 80G drive into the caddy and plugged in. I set Casper XP going to copy the entire drive (it was still going at 23:00 telling me there was 3:30 to go). This morning all was complete and I have just swapped the drives. Perfect - it all booted up correctly and I now have an 80G drive in the Acer 3610, 2.25 GB EISA hidden, 11.93 GB C: and 60.35GB D: plus a system back-up in the form of the original drive. I was somewhat staggered by the time it took - it takes about an hour or so on internal drives - but it worked. I haven't tried cloning to a USB drive before.

Nice work James.

[Ugg]

I think that Acer format this way because their backup software uses an old version of Ghost to image C to a file on D and restore it. At least, the one Acer laptop that I've seen was set up like this.

So if you're putting data on D and using Acer's "eRecovery" backup software, it's probably not getting backed up. I think that eRecovery relies on drive C being FAT32, too.

If you're using something else, like Windows' NTBackup program, or just copying files you want to keep somewhere safe, you should be OK.

[wilson500]

I used the spare partition on my Acer laptop to install linux. As the C partition is formatted at fat32 (normally NTFS for Win XP) there's no problem reading and writing to the C partition when running linux.

Ian.

[***FREEVIEW***]

Hi,
I too have an acer 1642 and am annoyed about the partitions, if i format the hard drive and then use the acer recovery disk to reinstall windows would i still have partitons or would it be one big drive like i want.
Thanks

[JamesE]

That's a big question. I would be inclined to completely clone the HDD as I described above and THEN start playing with it. Besides the two obvious partitions C: and D: there is the usual hidden one where the vital stuff is, so don't format the whole drive. Why do you want one big drive? By having the system + progs on a smaller partition and all your data on another big one, then should you have to do a new clean install you don't wipe the data as well.