Hello I share a PC at work with other co-workers so a number of user profiles are stored on the C: partition. My problem is that partition is running out of space and I run out of things to delete to recover more space. I used CCleaner, I deleted the cache from Chrome and still end up with low disk space.
The PC has 1 drive with 2 partitions: C: -has windows 10 and our user profiles on it D:- has a lot of free space and its used to store random things. What I was thinking was this: -to use the included disk management tool from Windows and shrink partition D: and reallocate that space to C: We are a small firm and do not have an IT guy so Im scared that by doing this something will happen with the user profiles stored on C: and we lose them or get corrupted somehow. How can I back them up in case something happens? Can I just copy them to partiton D: and if something goes wrong just put them back on C: ? Should I use other partitioning tool that is maybe more reliable?
This is why your company should have storage off the computer. If your that small your sharing a PC, buy a small NAS and tell everyone to store their documents on there, that way they'll have some redundancy with multiple disks.
something like synology or qnap have fairly good OS' on their NAS that are pretty easy to use and have features allowing your to back up parts or all of your NAS to cloud storage as well giving you and off-site backup as well.
As for C: and D:. If D: isn't being used for anything shrink it and expand C: (this should be fine with the built in tool)
Backup your important data to an external portable HDD (until your get a NAS for a proper solution)
Congratulate yourself on becoming the IT guy now with no extra pay :P
I believe there is a larger risk for the data at partition D... If I remember correctly, if there is data on the specific sectors you are going to relocate, Windows will just delete it, so you better back up partition D... You will just add space to C, so if I'm not mistaken there will be no issues with the C...
This is a bit of a myth, probably from the old crap filesystem days. Shrinking the partition shouldn't do anything to the data because it should only reallocate empty sectors.
That said, back up your data anyway (portable hdd is cheap and quick), because you should always have one.
Thank you guys for your input on this. I guess I will bring an external HDD with me and backup the user profiles before relocating the space. I hope all goes well.
Shrinking a partition can only be done by creating unallocated space at the end of an existing partition.
Adding additional space to a partition is only possible if there is unallocated space immediately after it.
Partitions MUST be contiguous.
And thus you will likely need to delete D:, extend C: and then recreate D: in the very likely case that C: is physically first on the disk and D is after it. You can check via diskpart, select disk 0, list partition at a cmd prompt.
Agreeing to back up all data on D:, extend C, and then put the data back also avoids a myriad of very time consuming issues with shrinking partitions involving fragmented, sparce and incorrectly positioned files.
The built in Windows tool is the most reliable tool for the operation.
I would not bother. Backup D: instead, delete it, extend C:, then recreate it and put the data back.