Alright you Computer Savvy POTNers...

I'm installing Photoshop and I get to the part where I need to verify the destination location, It automatically chooses my C drive. Well, I change it so it's my E drive(because my C drive is completely packed) and I click next and it wont let me continue because I have less than 400mb left on my C drive.

time to clear the c drive off. you'll notice better performance and better reliability if it isn't maxed out. transfer some files from c to e instead of programs.

It wasn't the best idea making my main hard drive 19gb and my backup 150, I got it going now.

If you can keep your email records and documents/photos on drive E and just the software on the C drive it makes a big difference.

XP needs about 40GB for playing space on the C drive.

Shutter22 wrote in post #2311504
It wasn't the best idea making my main hard drive 19gb and my backup 150, I got it going now.

rhys wrote in post #2311930
If you can keep your email records and documents/photos on drive E and just the software on the C drive it makes a big difference.

XP needs about 40GB for playing space on the C drive.

20 gig is fine if all you keep on your are your program. There is no reason that your C drive needs to be 40 gig. XP will run on a partition of 4 gig or less. However the smaller the drive, the more aware you have to be on what is on it and keeping it clean. Here are some tips to reclaim space fast.
1. When was the last time to cleaned up restore points. If the answer is never, you can reclaim significant space by doing so. Goto C drive properties, do a cleanup, then hit the advanced tab and check clean restore points.
2. Move paging off of the C drive. This is good for another gig. Click My Computer, system properties. Click performance options, click Virtual Memory. On the C drive click no paging file, on the other drive, click System managed size, then reboot.

These two are usually good for 2 gig or more.

gjl711 wrote in post #2312102
20 gig is fine if all you keep on your are your program. There is no reason that your C drive needs to be 40 gig. XP will run on a partition of 4 gig or less.

Do games and flight sims count as programs?
MS FlightSim X is almost 14gigs alone, and some of my other games (about 6 that I play) are 3+gigs each.
My Adobe Suites are almost 6gigs.

With drives so cheap, might as well make a 100gig System drive and use the rest for misc storage, makes it easier to manage so you don't run into complications.

I started with an 18gig SCSI drive for my system, then upped to a 36gig Cheetah and now to a WD RE SATA 250 split into 100/150 partitions, and I am down to 3.6gigs free on the system due to me being a packrat and not offloading files to disc..

I belive there's a pretty easy fix to this...

The main issue is that Photoshop uses the TEMP directory while installing soo.. You should just be able to point your temp directory to something on the E drive and run the install again.

I can't entirely confirm this, but I'm pretty confident this will help.

To change your temp directory...
Right click on My Computer > Properties > Advanced tab > Environment Variables

You'll see the TEMP variables there at the top.
Not sure if you'll need to change both but might as well just to be sure.

Just note the current directory if you plan on changing it back later.

Zepher wrote in post #2313326
Do games and flight sims count as programs?
MS FlightSim X is almost 14gigs alone, and some of my other games (about 6 that I play) are 3+gigs each.
My Adobe Suites are almost 6gigs.

I keep all games off the C drive just because they can get huge. I also am an avid FS'ers and with FS9 taking up 4 gig, FS global data another 12 gig, US roads, perfect sky and perfect water and a few other goodies, it all starts adding up.

Zepher wrote in post #2313326
With drives so cheap, might as well make a 100gig System drive and use the rest for misc storage, makes it easier to manage so you don't run into complications.

This is great when first setting up a new machine, but the Shutter22 has already set up the disk and short of re-partitioning is stuck with what they got. Also, one of the downsides to putting everything on the C drive is if you do have to re-install, you can loose a lot.

My C drive is 20 gig. All I keep on it is the MS stuff like windows and office, a bunch of tools, PS, and drivers. With all that I still have 8 gig free. Everything else, including "My Documents" has been redirected elsewhere.

Zepher wrote in post #2313326
I started with an 18gig SCSI drive for my system, then upped to a 36gig Cheetah and now to a WD RE SATA 250 split into 100/150 partitions, and I am down to 3.6gigs free on the system due to me being a packrat and not offloading files to disc..

I am currently running 4 200gig sata drives set up as a raid-01. I am getting the hankering to rebuild my machine because drives have like you way gotten real cheap. I am looking to get a set of the 500 gig sata-300 drives and set it up as a raid-10 as it is a little better for fault tolerance.

I put all of my important stuff on 3 drives, 2 internals and one USB.
The C: & D partitions are just programs and crap, if it dies, I'll just grab the 2 cheetahs (they still has the majority of my current stuff, with the exception of any games) and ghost them to a new drive.
the other 6 drives in the system are just movies and tv shows, they were in a machine I was using as a file server but sold it to a friend that wanted a gaming machine, and stuck all the drives into my main machine.
If any of those die, I'll feel bad for a little bit, but I'll get over it.

Shutter22 wrote in post #2311504
It wasn't the best idea making my main hard drive 19gb and my backup 150, I got it going now.

If you get a copy of Partition Magic you can probably fix that without having to reformat.

Also, I recommend Acronis True Image. Much better then Ghost.

rhys wrote in post #2311930
XP needs about 40GB for playing space on the C drive.

Right, so the XP Pro install I have on my 40GB drive shouldn't be working?

I didn't say you couldn't use a 40GB hard drive. I was saying that it's better to leave a 40 GB drive purely for software, OS and temprorary files.

So your saying its OK to fill that 40gig drive up to about 38gig, just as long as its only software, OS and temprorary files?

I think what your trying to say is running two or more seperate phyiscal drives can boost system performance, and that 40gig is an ideal size for the boot drive containing your OS etc. But it dosn't have to be 40gig, infact its getting harder and harder to find new 40gig drives any more, and anything larger will work just as well.
I have for example have two 40gig drives, one for the OS and software, the other for all the extra software that won't fit on the 1st drive. And at the rate my better half buys games its going to have to get bigger. Which means at least 2nd 250gig to complement the existing one I use for photo storage.

I tend to prefer to keep one drive that contains the O/S and software with another that contains the data. I can backup the data drive easily that way. I can format the O/S drive easily without worry and without shedding a tear.

Laptops make it harder because of their single drive format.

rhys wrote in post #2316337
I tend to prefer to keep one drive that contains the O/S and software with another that contains the data. I can backup the data drive easily that way. I can format the O/S drive easily without worry and without shedding a tear.

Laptops make it harder because of their single drive format.

One can do the same with logical drives as well. Set up the C drive as your primary partition and the rest of the drive as an extended partition. Then set up the logical drives on the extended partition. You can the reformat the C drive to your hearts content without affecting any of the other logical drives. This work on laptops no problem.