Forums | MacLife

Bat · 2009-04-20 7:22 pm

Well, this has gotten redonkulous. Last week's patches (~21.4MB, IIRC, including the Malicious Software Removal Tool) ate drivespace enough to reduce free space on the Windows partition from over 700 to a little over 370 now, at best, after much recovery work. The hardware is showing its age, and I don't know if I'll have time to finish the new base (non-gaming- ok, mostly non-gaming 'cept for strays and maybe whipping sturner's butt at a game or three, but the main rig to come is another) machine really soon. What measure would the assembled savants recommend as a stopgap, like the touch of cement filling my tooth got today pending a visit to an oral surgeon?

I've always avoided compressing any drivespace, but apparently could gain about 2.25GBs by compressing old files- and that seems plausible, given the amount of space apparently eaten by SP, patch and hotfix uninstall files, archived old drivers etc. in those usually inwisible $NT$-type folders that need never be accessed again. The Winders folder is up to 6.25GBs on an 8GB partition, which seemed big enough 5 years ago.

Now tho, it's tiresome to DL a 100MB video file or whatever and get a low drivespace warning.

There's repartitioning; plenty of space in the other one on that physical drive. Sturner's agin, Books says yuzzley safe- any other opinions or suggestions?

Last edited by Bat (2009-04-20 7:24 pm)

Booksley · 2009-04-20 10:13 pm

Bat wrote:
Well, this has gotten redonkulous. Last week's patches (~21.4MB, IIRC, including the Malicious Software Removal Tool) ate drivespace enough to reduce free space on the Windows partition from over 700 to a little over 370 now, at best, after much recovery work. The hardware is showing its age, and I don't know if I'll have time to finish the new base (non-gaming- ok, mostly non-gaming 'cept for strays and maybe whipping sturner's butt at a game or three, but the main rig to come is another) machine really soon. What measure would the assembled savants recommend as a stopgap, like the touch of cement filling my tooth got today pending a visit to an oral surgeon?

I've always avoided compressing any drivespace, but apparently could gain about 2.25GBs by compressing old files- and that seems plausible, given the amount of space apparently eaten by SP, patch and hotfix uninstall files, archived old drivers etc. in those usually inwisible $NT$-type folders that need never be accessed again. The Winders folder is up to 6.25GBs on an 8GB partition, which seemed big enough 5 years ago.

Now tho, it's tiresome to DL a 100MB video file or whatever and get a low drivespace warning.

There's repartitioning; plenty of space in the other one on that physical drive. Sturner's agin, Books says yuzzley safe- any other opinions or suggestions?

Partioning is 100% safe if you make a back-up first wink

I'd just make a big C: drive... I have a 1TB C: partition on my new build. If it dies... oh well, I download all my games from Steam again.

Bat · 2009-04-20 10:58 pm

To be clear, this used to be for gaming and general purpose use. It's been years since I gamed on it or any other machine, it's used for utilitarian, general purposes only these days. It's the old nForce2 Abit NF7-S/ X800/ 512M RAM machine from Halo days, and I'm just looking for a way to extend its working life a bit longer until newer hardware in two different builds can split future duties.

A lower-power, low-wattage machine using either an S754 A64 & a GB of RAM for surfing, email, printing etc general purposes running XP or an older Athon XP on a compact mobo that's still unused likewise, and an S939 A64, X-Fi, 2GBs RAM & whatever vidcard I replace the sold 3870 with on a dual boot for gaming, video, image batch compression and other power work will reuse existing HDDs (one still virgin). It's what my budget will handle, which a new TB+ drive is not.

No need to fire up the fire-breather when a low-power unit is around to do email, surfing etc. Maybe later there'll be money for a platform &/or display upgrade, but not now. I still need to eat, which reminds me, it's time for brunchner. hmm

:: starts boiling shoelaces ::

Booksley wrote:
Partioning is 100% safe if you make a back-up first

I'd just make a big C: drive... I have a 1TB C: partition on my new build. If it dies... oh well, I download all my games from Steam again.

Hello, there's 5 years of data and more here, some dating back to the '90s from older machines. That stuff I can't just re-DL.

Last edited by Bat (2009-04-20 10:59 pm)

sturner · 2009-04-21 1:26 am

Well, if you have a spare hard drive you can connect to it, then Ghost the partition first. That way you can recover it. It sounds like you have enough data files etc, to warrant using a Blu-ray disc for backup.

wink

You do have one don't you?

This is the same problem I face on how to save partitions for VMWare. Finding the way to save it economically before you try to work magic on the partition is problematic. But we all know that in a perfect world we'd have about 10 hot-swappable hard drives laying around, ready for use.

Forums | MacLife

#1 2009-04-20 7:22 pm

Partition, compress old...?

#2 2009-04-20 10:13 pm

Re: Partition, compress old...?

Bat wrote:

#3 2009-04-20 10:58 pm

Re: Partition, compress old...?

Booksley wrote:

#4 2009-04-21 1:26 am

Re: Partition, compress old...?

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