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January 25th, 2024 08:43
C drive is too small, D drive is huge. Do not need D but C drive "expand volume" is grayed out.
I used Laplink to move from an old XPS to a new Inspiron. The Inspiron has a small C partition and a larger D. I do not know why. I do not want a D. I want all my storage space to be C.
Since the C was too small for all my old files, I got help from Laplink to do the migration. After many hours the C drive is completely full. It is larger now than it was prior to the migration. The D shows empty. I moved many GBs of files from the C to the D drive. I probably should not have done that.
I tried moving the files back to C and it says the C drive does not have enough space. What in the world is this?
I went to disk management and shrank D. It now shows that space unallocated. I tried to expand C but the option is grayed out. I can delete D but that means the files I copied from C will be deleted which is not what I want.
What in the world is this? I have never seen this in a PC and I have had many. How can I fix this to delete D without losing 900GBs of data. I do not have external storage that large and if I delete it I am back to trying to use Laplink to get those files back. Since Laplink was so difficult to use to begin with, I would like to avoid it.
Thanks for any help.
Chino de Oro
9 Legend
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8.1K Posts
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January 25th, 2024 16:18
Use your common sense. If you wanted everything on drive C, you will need a larger drive to hold them. Shrinking and expanding partitions don't work with two separate disks.
Two options, use drive C for operating system and applications. Use drive D for all your data.
Or replace drive C with larger capacity SSD to hold everything. Get rid of drive D if it is a spinning hard drive.
Spikesdad
1 Rookie
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78 Posts
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January 28th, 2024 22:11
@WestCoastEastCoast
The problem is that you seem to think the C and the D are the same physical drive that is divide up into separate partitions. That's not what Dell does with their systems.
So, you say you looked in Windows disk management? Did you see a separate line for Disk 0 and Disk 1?
The typical 2-drive setup for Dells are a single solid-state drive (SSD) that is formatted to it's full capacity - I'm guessing it's a 256 GB or 512 GB drive - and designated as the primary boot (C:) drive with the preinstalled Windows on it. And then what is most likely a 1 TB hard disk drive (HDD) formatted to it's full capacity and designated as the secondary (D:) drive.
The C: and D: drives are two separate physical drives, each formatted to their capacity. They are NOT partitions of one bigger drive. What I think you did was shrink the full capacity of the D: drive to something less than what it is and now you just reduced storage overall. It has does nothing to do with the space of the C: drive because that SSD is a separate thing and already at it's max size.
I think using Lablink to move an old system to a new system with a totally different drive storage layout was the first mistake.
RoHe
10 Elder
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45.2K Posts
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January 29th, 2024 01:29
@WestCoastEastCoast - Always include exact PC model in your posts...
If you don't know what hardware you have, go to the Support site and enter your Service Tag. (Don't post Service Tag here.)
When the site recognizes your PC, look on right side under Quick Links for a link to your factory specifications. Open that and it should list what drive(s) you have in this PC. What size is listed for each drive installed in your PC?
Have to agree with @Spikesdad, you likely have two separate drives. C: (OS) would be on an SSD and D: (Data) would be on a hard disk drive.
Windows should be on the C: drive, but many apps can be installed on the D: drive which will save space on a small SSD. You can uninstall them in Windows on the C: drive and reinstall them directing the installations to the D: drive. Just make sure you have the product keys for each apps you purchased before uninstalling on the C: drive and reinstalling on D:. NOTE: Microsoft makes it very difficult to install Word and other Office apps on any drive other than the one with Windows on it (C:) so don't try to move those onto D: drive.
You can also set Windows to store all data files (.doc, pics, vids etc) on D: automatically by telling Windows to move default folders onto D: which will also free up space on C:.
(edited)