sony vaio laptop

[scaramanga]

girlfriends laptop is painfully slow . dont know what she has done but for some reason it shows that it has 2 hard drives...c and d. it appears that every program is running from drive c and it has about 1% free space where as the other drive,d, has 99% free space ! any ideas what can be done, can i some how make it 1 hard drive again or can i shift some programms to the other drive and if i do that will they all run ok together. i am no computer expert so any advice is greatly appreciated. thanks

Edited 24 September, 2008 by scaramanga

[Al de Man]

You need some kind of disk partitioning tool.

 

However, if you don't know what you're doing, this carries a risk of losing all your data.

 

Also, I doubt a full C: drive is the real cause of your laptop running slowly.

[scaramanga]

forgive my ignorance, how will a partitioning tool make the two hard drives become one hard drive? do i just install one and follow the instructions?

thanks

[Al de Man]

You don't actually have two hard drives. Being a laptop, you only have one physical drive but it's been divided up into two partitions or logical drives.

 

A disk partitioning tool will allow you to remove the unused D: drive, then expand the C: drive to take up the space freed up without losing any data (hopefully).

[saint_stevo]

Are you sure D: isn't the recovery partition?

 

What are the sizes of each 'drive'

[scaramanga]

Are you sure D: isn't the recovery partition?

 

What are the sizes of each 'drive'

 

they both appear to be exactly the same size so some how she has managed to split the one drive and create two !

[Al de Man]

Are you sure D: isn't the recovery partition?

 

I did wonder this but it doesn't explain how there is 99% free space.

[saint_stevo]

I did wonder this but it doesn't explain how there is 99% free space.

 

yeah that bit flummoxed me, just thought it was worth makin sure

[red&white4life]

My wife and i both have Vaio's and both have "2" drives. To help eleviate your problem move some of the files (photo's, video, documents etc) to the other drive. Dont move programme files though, unless you know what yous are doing.

As for the slowness, she probably has loads of stuff running in the background, press "ctrl" "alt" "delete" at the same time to check how many processes are running.

 

Col.

[Weston Super Saint]

You need some kind of disk partitioning tool.

 

However, if you don't know what you're doing, this carries a risk of losing all your data.

 

Also, I doubt a full C: drive is the real cause of your laptop running slowly.

 

It would if windo$e is using 'virtual memory', and is using up all the remaining space on the 'c' drive.

 

As Red n White said, move all of the documents / pictures etc to the 'd' drive and that should solve the problem - easier than reconfiguring windo$e virtual memory if you don't know what you are doing...

[Al de Man]

It would if windo$e is using 'virtual memory', and is using up all the remaining space on the 'c' drive.

 

If it was relying upon virtual memory, it would be slow, full stop.

[EastleighSoulBoy]

My wife and i both have Vaio's and both have "2" drives. To help eleviate your problem move some of the files (photo's, video, documents etc) to the other drive. Dont move programme files though, unless you know what yous are doing.

As for the slowness, she probably has loads of stuff running in the background, press "ctrl" "alt" "delete" at the same time to check how many processes are running.

 

Col.

 

Also worth remembering is that if you move anything (Progs, files etc) that any shortcuts (desktop Icons etc) that currently point to those items will no longer look in the correct drive for them and you'll get the little 'torch waving about in the breeze' message!

[EastleighSoulBoy]

If it was relying upon virtual memory, it would be slow, full stop.

 

Also would have flagged up, even if set for windows to manage virtual memory itself. Don't they now call it 'Paging File something or what'?