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[smack that isaiah]

My girlfriend IM'd me worried that she's having this huge problem with her comp.  She's using windows 7, and all my experience since high school has mainly been Linux.  I won't see her till Thursday, so I won't have any 1st person details till then, but this is what she told me:
she opened up her "My Computer" folder and found this: (click for bigger)

The problem being that the C: drive is small and D: is big, but all of her files have been saving to C: and space is being used up quickly.
She didn't check the size of C: vs. D: when she first got the computer, and this is the first time she's looked at them, so there's no knowledge if this is how they're supposed to be.

one thing I suggested is moving the directory tree for all of her files to D: from C:, and leave C: for program files and windows stuff.

Some computer tech guy on the phone suggested "merging C: and D:" which I don't understand.

Any help guys?

[Ozymandias]

Weird!

Does she have two drives or is one just partitioned odd. Windows put a System Reserved partition in my HDD but it's only 100MB- 60 gigs is crazy.

[smack that isaiah]

What I'm guessing is it's a weird partition (she says it's supposed to be a 500Gb harddrive, so I think it's one split like this).  What I'm used to seeing with respect to something like this is a 2Gb (at the most) partition like you mentioned.  But, that 2Gb is the D:, C: is reserved for the main directory tree and everything.

Does anyone know what's meant by "merging" the drives?  Can a person actively mess with partitions like that without needing to do a massive system overhaul/reinstall?

[GenericName]

Go to Control Panel, type "partition" in the search bar. Click on the link for "create and format hard drive partitions." That should have options for managing partitions- the easiest thing I can think of would be just to (back up and) delete D: and resize C: with the empty space(EDIT: simpler idea below), but it may have some sort of merge option too.

EDIT: If you don't want to have to transfer data you could always just make D: the small one and C: the large one. That would probably be a better option.

[Alex C]

It's not really that insane. It just looks to me like someone made an system/app partition and a data partition, a habit that can simplify backup management and system restores a bit if you know what you're doing. A Windows 7 64 bit installation takes up something like 20 gigs on its own, so even the size isn't really that crazy if she has just been saving documents and installing stuff without paying any particular attention to where she's been sending it.

[KvP]

Yeah, it's basically what I do, even though I leave about 10 gigs on the OS drive for wiggle room. Depending on how heavy your "My Documents" load is going to be it's probably a good idea to make it even bigger than that, since it's a pretty big hassle to program the My Documents tree onto a partition that doesn't contain your OS (and I've been fiddling with Windows through my entire life). First things first would be to go into the settings of any program that automatically saves files on the OS drive and redirect them (iTunes, etc.) your temp folder will also be on the OS drive so if you're downloading huge files or whatever you'll definitely want wiggle room if you don't want to run a system cleanup whenever you use a web browser.

Really the biggest thing to do is discipline yourself into changing "C:/Program Files/xxx" to "D:/Program Files/xxx" whenever you install new software.

[smack that isaiah]

thanks for all the ideas, guys.  I'll communicate them to her.  The only work i've done with Windows 7 was trying to set up a wireless router for my grandmother last Christmas (I really didn't like it.  I don't like all the handicapping and assumptions that the user's an idiot that Windows makes)

I think moving her directory tree to D: is the best option, but we'll see what works.

[est]

Yeah, that is probably a good idea.  In Win 7 I think you can add another library on the D drive and move things over to that, then remove the library that exists on the C drive.