D Drive

Sound_Asleep · May 17, 2008

I have a Compaq Presario laptop
my C hard drive is 60gb with it half full
that is not problem
but my other drive
my D drive is 5gb and it only has 72.1mb left on it
does anybody know a way to get space back?
anybody know what I can do to stop it going down?
i defragment the computer every month
i delete shadow copies
i did consider compressing the folder
but i read somewhere that is a bad idea
what should I do to get the space back?

thankyou x

roy69 · May 17, 2008

5gb is a very small drive, is you c: drive partitioned?

Sound_Asleep · May 17, 2008

i don't know really

i never partitioned it myself
and i'm the only person who uses it
it came like that
a 60gb C drive and a 5gb D drive
i have way more space than I need on my C drive
and not enough on my D drive
how do I partition it so D drive has more space?

Sound_Asleep · May 17, 2008

my D drive is where my recovery system is so I cant access it either

ferrisits · May 17, 2008

THe D partition on the computer is Called the Recovery Partition where you have the Back Up of the Operating System and all the Drivers along with the Prebundled applications of the computer. The Reason for minimizing the D partition is to avoid any writing on this Drive, YOu can delete the partition if you need. The Compaq Presario computer comed with a Recovery Disks Creator application create the Recovery Disks and delete the Partiton. It is recommended you leave the Recovery Partition untouched as this is a Back up for the computer.

Chappy · May 18, 2008

Hi

DON"T TOUCH THAT PARTITION!!!

Even if you made the "Recovery Disks", they do NOT contain the OS image, they only provide access to the image stored on the D: drive!! You cannot "delete the partition" after you make the Recovery disks as "ferrisits" says or you will lose your OS recovery options forever!

The D: drive will not run out of space so there is no need to do anything there, the 5G is what's needed to store the OS image and any Compaq specific drivers and applications that come bundled with your computer, nothing is written to this drive EVER..so the space will not decrease anymore. But if you go mucking around with it, you'll most likely lose the ability to reinstall your OS, so please...just forget it's even there. (until you need it that is)

Sound_Asleep · May 18, 2008

oh ok
thanks :D
I havn't touched it
I just wonderd because it keeps saying it's got low memory
it used to be all full of space

like 4gb of 5gb when I first got it
but in a year it's gone to 72.2mb of 5gb
so I was just abit worried about it

Chappy · May 18, 2008

That is strange, that partition should not be growing at all.
The Vista image is just under 5G's and should take up most of that partition and that's why the 72MB's left over sounds just about perfect, but you say it used t show almost 4G's were free before???

Nothing should be accessing or writing to that partition, keep an eye on that 72MB's left and let us know if that changes at all. Maybe contact Compaq support also and see what they say about it.

Sound_Asleep · May 20, 2008

wow thanks chappy
i'll be sur to notify if it goes down any more

at the moment it's 72.1mb of my 5gb :D

Chappy · May 21, 2008

Alrighty then, Glad to have helped you out here!

Oh...wait..are you still getting Low Space messages on this?
And were the others Low Disk "Space" or Low "Memory", because if it's Low Memory messages you were getting, that's coming from your system resources and not the D: drive and either means you need more RAM or you need to boost your Virtual Memory settings.

Sound_Asleep · May 21, 2008

oh right
i think it may be that
my laptops got no problems

very fast still :D
Physical memory:
Total 1013
Cached 377
Free 17-20
72%
CPU Usage 12%
my cpu is quite laid back at the moment lol

Chappy · May 22, 2008

Cool then!

If you do get that message again and it's for low Virtual memory, go into Control Panel - System, click Advanced System Settings on the left side. Then in the popup, click Settings button in the Performance section, click the Advanced tab and then the Change button under Virtual Memory. The best way to have this run is by letting Windows decide so make sure the "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" checkbox is checked and OK out.

If you still get this message after that, then maybe you should try a fixed setting for the page file (virtual memory), and set it at what it shows as the recommended size for it on that last tab. Sometimes, but not all that often really, the Windows managed size just doesn't seem to satisfy the system.

ferrisits · May 22, 2008

Hi,

The reason why you are loosing the space on the D drive is due to any automatic back Up application getting stored on the D Drive, visit the URL below for an Idea on this ;

HP Notebook PCs - Low Disk Space Error Appears During or After Backup

This is a know issue with the Compaq and HP Computers.

Chappy · May 22, 2008

Good catch Ferrisits!
That could be exactly what he's seeing. I had never seen a recovery partition give that kind of error before so that's why I wondered if it was possibly a Low Memory and not a Low Disk Space error instead. And since nothing should be accessing that partition, other than the recovery disks, it just doesn't make sense when the space shrinks.
But this error only happens if Sound_Asleep was doing a backup when this error happened, according to the HP Support page. So...were you doing a Backup of your data when this error occured S_A?

Poorly written backup software indeed, that defaults to the first available drive after the C: drive, since it's common practice for OEM machines to have the logical recovery partition to be the D: drive, so that's a problem just waiting to happen.

Sound_Asleep · May 27, 2008

it just popped up randomly saying low disk space for my D Drive
I wasn't doing a back up
It's so wierd

btw i'm a girl :D
hehe

ferrisits · May 27, 2008

Hi,

you may refer the below URL it is exactly the issue you are having. All you need to do is find and delete the Folder and change the Path :

HP and Compaq Desktop PCs - Problems Occur after Using Microsoft Backup Tool in Microsoft Vista

SCSIraidGURU · May 27, 2008

Can you get another hard drive and move your paging file to it? Check the system restore area size. Do you have your temp and temporary internet files on this drive? Check for hibernation files. I have seen them get huge.

johngalt · May 27, 2008

Michael - the drive is running out of space because it is not supposed to be used in the first place - HP / Compaq dropped the ball in not making this a hidden partition....

SCSIraidGURU · May 28, 2008

Does it matter if its HP fault now, Vista will move the paging file off of C: onto another partition without asking first. It did this on my workstation. When E: was formatted the 16GB paging file moved to it.

Another drive partition will allow Vista to use it instead of this one. You find out what does not belong and redirect it to the new drive.

johngalt · May 28, 2008

http://www.vistax64.com/drivers/154055-d-drive-2.html#post728065

The Microsoft Backup Tool tried to store files to the recovery partition and ran out of space. The recovery partition is a reserved section on the main hard drive that should only be used for an HP System Recovery.

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