Today I did a clean install of Windows 7 on my Alienware m17x. I've had problems with that earlier last year but managed to perform a clean install without any issues. This time however, I installed windows on my C drive and expected it to path programs and downloads to my much bigger D partition. It however doesn't do that. It tries to install everything on C (which has about 14.6 gig). So much so that I can't even install Java.
How can I change that? I believe I'll have to do another clean install, but what else do I have to do? Or do I have to change things in the BIOS?!
I am not an expert but are the programs being downloaded automatically? If they are not then I am sure that there is some setting you can mess with in Windows that makes all of the non-Windows programs go into the D drive. I would probably let the programs that connect(for lack of a better word) to Windows go onto the C drive.
Aye, they're not, and yet some (like Java) don't give me the possibility to save them to a specific place. Besides I'd like to be able to donwload stuff without having to check how the C drive is doing. When I first got this laptop and every time I did a clean install I didn't have to worry. Everything was fine.
I think the reason as to why this is going on is because at some point I installed windows on both partitions (don't ask me why...I don't know how it happened...brain-fart).
windows always saves to the C/ drive, if you want stuff on D/ you have to move it there
you can also make folders on D/ and have shortcuts on C/, for my-pictures/my-documents though, and make sure your web browser is set to save downloads to a folder on the D/ drive
Hmm...but how come that now, all of a sudden I can't do stuff because C is saturated? Everything goes to C but that partition is only 14 gig strong. I didn't do anything different compared to previous clean installs and as I said, I never had a problem. I'm missing something somewhere.
Install windows but at the user creation screen press SHIFT F10 and create junctions to move all your programs and user folders to the D; drive. there is step by step guide how to do that here - it will NOT work for win 8 though - only win 7 or lower
Right so I figured out the problem. I think I do at least. I did a clean install on what was then the D partition. It's now the C partition and it has plenty of space. Do you guys think it's a good idea to merge the two partitions? I usually use my 1TB ehd for clean installs so I don't really need a backup partition.
How you manage Windows installation on a 14gb partition is beyond me. I've had my C drive at 20, 30 and 40 gb's, but it just takes too much effort to keep it clean and nice. My C partition is at 60 Gb now and it has 30 gb free and there's no worrying about what goes where, I can install any crap I don't care to lose when re-formating.
Why save few GBs for C when you have a 1 TB drive? Mine's only 320 GB...
I'll take that as a compliment! I have no idea. But my laptop did notify me that it'd be best to install it on something bigger, it worked nevertheless.
It's external though, I keep it hooked up most of the time though. I plan on putting all the programs I can start from that drive on there in order to save space for important things (I have tons of music as well).