Transferring main drive from C: to D: or E:
I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, so please let me know if I should post this to a different group instead.
I have 3 drives on my current PC, but the C: drive is almost full (it keeps bouncing around between 2-1 GB left) and it seems to be slowing some programs down. Most noticeably Audacity stores temporary files in C: while I am working on large files and it often changes wait times on an edit to upwards of 30 seconds (meaning literally nothing happens for 15-45 seconds and then the change takes place, even if it's only a simple few second deletion).
Is there a way to set my D: or E: drive as the default drive of the computer so I can clear out some space on my C: drive and use the extra space I have on those drives? Thanks for any help or information you can give me.
This would depend entirely upon which OS you are using.
On most versions of Windows you can't set your "default drive" as anything other than what you installed the OS on, but you can change many default system directories to alternate locations.
E.g. If you right click a default system directory such as 'My Documents', 'Downloads', 'Pictures', 'Desktop' etc... and click Properties, on the 'Location' tab there is a 'Move...' option. You can also move your pagefile and virtual memory locations off your primary drive (which take up a lot of space) through the Control Panel - System - Advanced System Settings - Advanced tab - Performance 'Settings...' - Advanced tab - Virtual Memory 'Change...' which allows choose a new drive to use for those.
In most OSes you can also use Symbolic links which allow you to shuffle around whatever data (files or directories) you want to wherever you want using the command line... but if you are unfamiliar with using the command line you can just google for Symbolic Link Creator type applications that can move the data and create the symlinks automatically for you.
Sorry I forgot to mention I'm on Windows 7. I'll give all of these things a try, thank you!
I set most of my directories to download to other drives and I try to install as much as possible on other drives. I honestly can't tell what is taking up so much space on my C: drive. It looks like it's all "Microsoft Essentials" and folders like that.
What files are absolutely needed on C: that I can't move? Can I move my user folder and everything. Windows 7, btw sorry I forgot to mention.
Try WinDirStat, it'll show you a visual representation of what files and folders are taking up the most space.
This looks neat, I'll give it a shot, thanks!
Edit: okay I downloaded WinDirStat, and after running it I got this screen but I have no idea what it means or what to do. https://imgur.com/QgRl0ZF
Looks like you probably have/had an issue with Windows Update and log compression. Go to c:\Windows\temp\ and delete all the files in that folder that start with cab. Then go to c:\Windows\logs\CBS\ and delete all the old logs leaving only the CBS log file.
This is a pretty common problem with Windows 7, and I've done the above on 40+ systems over the years to resolve it.
Edit: I just saw in another comment you ran ccleaner. This may have already deleted the above referenced files.
Yea I think it did. Pretty much all of the temp folder is gone. Thank you, though!
Oh my. I agree with @PsychoticEvil, but also look into CCleaner. It'd help a ton in your case. You could remove gigs of temp with that program.
I also run win7 and multiple disks bc it's an old desktop with an old C drive. I regularly (like once every couple months or so) run CCleaner, clean out old drivers (looking at you AMD), and checkout what's eating up space with WinDirStat or something similar.
Try not to let C drive get more than 70-80% full if you can. Moving the page file, journal, swap file and not crucial programs and files off are a massive help.
I ran WinDirStat and it showed me how bogged down my temp folder was. I don't know how, but I ran CCleaner and it removed 40 gigs of stuff from my C: drive.
My C: drive is 111GB only. I got an SSD about 6 years ago so it was one of the higher ends at the time, if I recall properly.
I saw the comment about a similar "space-using" tool called WinDirStat, so I'm downloading that. If it isn't my fancy, I'll check out Everything. Thanks!
I'm using the Disk Cleanup tool now, and I had approximately 3 GB of temp files. That feels like a lot, and at least that can mitigate the size issues for now until I find a better solution. Thanks for your help!
I'd recommend breaking down what user data you have that is taking up that most of that space (distribution tends to be dominated by one or two types of files, video /audio / games) and figuring out how to migrate that somewhere else. So for audacity it looks like https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/directories_preferences.html is the answer, I'd rinse and repeat for other disk heavy software you have. I'd personally also recommend if possible moving to an OS that allows you mount disks however you fancy, but that's probably slightly obnoxious as advice goes.
I went into the uninstall directory and sorted everything by C:, but it looks like most of it can be attributed to Microsoft files I'm not sure if I can uninstall or not. Here: https://imgur.com/SK4uNaA .
I already switched my Audacity directories, but I think a better option is to uninstall everything from C: that I can and reinstall it in another drive. What OS did you have in mind? I am open to many options.
On files: I'd get something that can scan your FS in aggregate and show some kind of tree map, that will give you the real picture.
The suggestion to move is obnoxious because it is a big investment.The biggest thing being figuring out if must have software is supported or if a worthy alternative that you want to learn is available. The reason people keep saying stuff like "switch" is that linux allows you to arrange your drives just about anyway you please into a unified hierarchy so this kind of issue is basically non-existent. On the other hand you inherit all the problems of being a minority citizen. I love linux, I wouldn't use anything else, but its something you choose. If you are interested in getting your feet wet, consider spinning up an ubuntu vm (make sure you tell virtualbox to stick the vm + disk on a different drive)
To make the disk solution on linux a bit more concrete I have something like the following:
1 SSD, with the root fs installed on it and 2 8tb spinning disks arranged in RAID1. The raid array has a number of application directories installed on them (like a media library, database data etc), that are mounted into the root. So my plex media is mounted under
/srv/media/plex, which is access the same as any other directory, in spite of the fact that its a different disk. So even if I had a particularly stupid piece of software with paths that were non-configurable, I can just mount the disk where the program expects it and not worry about it.I have to admit I'm completely naive to the entire concept of Linux, and after reading your comment I'm about as novice as you can get when it comes to computers. You started to lose me in the second paragraph and the last may as well have been another language. I thank you for your information, but I'd need to do a lot of research and learning before I fully understand what you're talking about. Pardon my ignorance, I've been able to get by with my basic knowledge of windows and using Google to understand most issues I faced.
It sounds like you solved your problem. That makes you better than novice in my books!
Migrating a primary OS drive can be done, but there are usually complications. If you're like me, your primary is an SSD and the secondary(s) are mechanicals, so keeping only the important stuff on the
Cis a constant tactical decision. Even SSDs suffer from performance degredation when they're down to the last GB and the OS has to work harder to manage temp files and the like.Your specific issue with Audacity might be alleviated by changing both where you store your projects and your temp directory. You can change the temp location by going to
Edit > Preferences > Directoriesand there should be aTemporary files locationthat you can point at your D or E drive.As a stopgap measure, you can run something like CCleaner to try and free up some space on the primary drive.
Another tactic I've done in the past is to make a full backup of the
Cdrive to another drive ( robocopy can help with this) and then reformat the C drive and do a fresh install. You'll have to re-install all your applications, but you can do this with the mindset of "do I really need this on the primary drive?" and only keep what you think is critical. (pro tip, when you reinstall the OS on C, physically unplug all the other drives so you can't even accidentally reformat the wrong one)My temp files directory on Audacity was already set to D: because I was having issues with this in the past. When it started to slow down I noticed I was at 1 GB in C: so I made this post. Audacity is installed in C:, so I could switch that installation as well. I was thinking of doing a fresh install but I don't have another operating system besides windows 7 and this computer came with it so I don't have an install disk or anything.
Okay guys update I was messing around in the C:/Windows/Temp folder and I found hundreds of text logs. They are mostly stuff I can't decipher but they have this at the top: "Claymore CryptoNote CPU Miner v3.3 Beta " . Can I get some help? I'm in way over my head.
Edit: I'm still not sure if I solved the weird CPU Miner problem, but I did some google searching and found a similar person's problem. I downloaded CCleaner and ran it, and it removed 40 GB of stuff from my C drive.
You can't remove malware by using anti-malware tools. You'll need to wipe the drives, re-install the OS, install anti-malware, then very carefully restore your data from backup.
Are you still getting extended support for Windows 7? If not you should consider moving to an OS that has support.
Damn this sounds difficult. Plus I don't have an OS to move to. Thanks for the info, though.
Not a student, so unfortunately that's not an option. I'm completely new to Linux I don't even have a cursory knowledge, but I'm willing to look into it. Any resources or tutorials or deep reading I can check out so I know what I'm getting into?
Okay sounds good. I'll try it out. Thank you!
Windows 10 has some folders for the stuff you create and download. It stores these in (for example) C:\Users\YourName\Documents
You can change the locations for these folders. Right-click start, click system, click storage, and there's an option there to change the location of these folders.
As always, take backups first. I'm not sure if this moves the files already in your C drive, so check that they get moved (or move them yourself).
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/change-default-save-location-windows-10
Sorry I forgot to put I have Windows 7. My apologies.