Switching Drivers

[ReformedChapin]

How do I switch Drives? The default drive that my computer with has limited space and I wanted to switch my backup driver as my main drive. My computer is a Sony Vaio and it's about 5 years old.

 

[Edward]

You are probably thinking about drives, not drivers. It's really easy to add a drive to a large desktop; much more difficult to add a drive to a laptop.

If you have a CD burner (and you probably do) the cheapest option is to move unneeded data to a CD and delete them from your computer. You can reload them if you ever need them. If you have the original install CDs for software (AND THE ACTIVATION CODES), you also could delete unneeded programs.

The next option would be to add a USB external hard drive. (From well under $100 to several hundred dollars, depending on the size and features). That way, you could back up on the external drive, and leave it at home, and only take what you need on your laptop. That's probably what I would do.

 

[ReformedChapin]

I just want to switch my secondary drive to be my primary drive because it has more space on it. What can I do? I already have an external drive which I could use as well but how do I do it?

 

[DonP]

You would have to reinstall windows to do that. It installs on C and what you want to do is never install programs on C if it is the small drive.

Tell all programs to install on D drive. Make a new folder called Programs or Program Files on D drive then you can browse where to install when you install new programs.

This way you will not fill up C drive.

You can do this from now on if you want. Programs run just as well from D as form C

There may be a program ro change partitions and move C to D etc. but you would have to by this and read instructions and could lose all.

I suggest either doing as I mention or adding another Hard drive as a backup Clone drive, you can do it internal or external and clone everything to this hard drive. Then you can switch partitions or reinstall Windows after repartitioning your hard drive to only have a C drive, all in one partition or make C bigger.

 

[Edward]

You probably only have one hard drive in the computer, partitioned into 2 or 3 virtual drives. You can re-size the partitions, but it isn't for the faint of heart, and make sure you have everything backed up if you try that. (My laptop has a C: partition with the operating system and other programs, a hidden partition with the backup for the operating system, and a virtual D: partition for data. I have a hard drive for a desktop that I put a dozen partitions on - it shows up as 12 drives on the directory.)

With an operating system of XP or older, you can install new programs to any drive you want - some don't behave properly if you do that (poor programming), others are fine.

As noted above by another poster, if you make another drive your C drive, you probably will have to reinstall the operating system on the new C.

 

[DonP]

The quickest easiest solution is to uninstall smaller programs with no data files that you have added to it.

Then reinstall these programs on D drive and from now on install all new programs on D as I mentioned above.

 

[Seb]

I do this quite often at my job.

The best way is to mirror the smaller drive to the larger one.

You need some good mirroring software such as Acronis True Image Home 2009. It's fairly cheap for $50.00.

Install the software, mirror the smaller drive to the larger one. After it's finished remove the smaller one and your system will boot to the larger drive.

Careful though, in the mirroring process you'll lose everything on the larger drive. Before you start make a copy of all it's data to a CD / DVD or even copy the data to the smaller drive beforehand if there's enough room.

My only concern with this process for you is that your computer's BIOS may not be able to boot directly to an external drive. If you know how to get into your PC's bios/setup you can see if you have an option to boot from the usb port.

 

[DonP]

If you use the online downloadable software called Casper
it will clone all of your drives to the spare hard drive.

It will be a bootable hard drive as well. Its faster than most other software as well so you can do it often as a backup

You lose nothing.

 

[Seb]

If you use the online downloadable software called Casper
it will clone all of your drives to the spare hard drive.

It will be a bootable hard drive as well. Its faster than most other software as well so you can do it often as a backup

You lose nothing.

Acronis also has a free trial although it's only 15 days whereas Casper's is 30 days.