Second hard drive: Questions about default folders

[Heretic Apostate]

As for upgrades, I had to toss in an additional 512MB of RAM--the 128MB I had just wasn't able to handle WinXP Home and anything else--and a CD-R/DVD-ROM, as well as the DSL card I got for free for joining SBC Yahoo! DSL.

I would love to get rid of the 5GB set aside for backup purposes, that would leave me with 80GB of external storage (I've got about 5GB of RPG stuff and about 500MB of iTunes stuff so far) and about 14GB to use for programs--more than I used with my old computer.

So, if anyone knows how to eliminate the partition and set my computer to do regular backups to an external drive, I'd appreciate it!

As it is, I'm also going to get a CD-RW and use it for further backups...

 

[Ranger REG]

Have you tried a drive partition software, like Partition Magic?

 

[Heretic Apostate]

Nope. How much does it cost, given that I'm cash-strapped?

Huh... I just found out that my computer has a 1.7GHz Celeron, not the Pentium 4 I thought it had... I also found out I have only 608MB of RAM, which means that I must have started with 96MB before I added the 512MB.

No wonder the thing still lags.

Oh well. It's a nice interim computer, and I still paid less than 30% I paid for the Gateway that drove me nuts...

Next computer, though, is going to be decent...

 

[Ranger REG]

I don't know the exact price ... under $100?

 

[ciaran00]

My particular advice would be this: Don't move your My Documents and all that specifically. Some malicious viruses are meant to target these very folders for mayhem. Instead, create your document folders in your second drive and populate your default My Documents with shortcuts.

If not, use TweakXP to change these default locations.

Alternately, use a program call junction to make hard directory links (like symbolic links in linux)... hard directory links aren't shortcuts, they're actual "pipes" from one directory to another...

Let me know if you want links to these programs.

ciaran

 

[ciaran00]

I'd also like to re-route some programs from my C drive to my D drive. Adobe Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Office, iTunes, and so on. Is there some easy way to do it, that doesn't involve uninstalling? Microsoft Office, at least, I've made the effort to download all the patches and updates, and that's several hours I don't want to repeat...

Actually for this function, junction is perfect. You can create an empty directory under Program Files called "Overflow" then point your programs directory on your second drive to this with junction.

Read about junctions here:
http://www.codeproject.com/w2k/junctionpoints.asp

Program here:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/misc.shtml#junction

ciaran