Creating more space on C drive (installing a small SSD)

Quite often people run out of space on their hard-disk, or more specifically on their system disk or c-drive.  This can make the computer run very slowly or crash.  Or it could be that like me you want to install the latest SSD technology but couldn't afford a bigger drive.

Actually my drive is a couple of years old now and I've installed it into a new computer and transferred that computers operating system over to the SSD, which is only 30Gb.  So how did I get over 200Gb down to 20Gb?  That's a 90% reduction.

It might be a good idea to perform a full backup before attempting these steps.  We use Acronis but Windows 7 backup will be better than nothing and make a recovery disk also, and make sure you store the image file somewhere safe, i.e. not a volume which you're going to delete later.

1. Empty the recycle bin
2. Delete all temporary files
3. Uninstall unnecessary programs
4. You need additional storage on which to store the files we're about to move so either an internal HDD, or else a USB HDD or NAS (this procedure will assume an internal HDD as use of external drive may introduce additional problems)
5. My additional storage was the existing HDD I was moving from, so I created a new partition as the temporary storage.  Using Windows Disk Management, and Shrink Volume option.  Once a temporary volume has been created, ideally give it the letter D (use of another letter will not be documented)
6. Figure out what is actually using the space - using www.windirstat.info
7. Using Windirstat I could see that most space was taken up by a hidden folder ~LD.  This is actually the local cache for a cloud storage service known as Livedrive.  So I then deleted some items from Livedrive which didn't really need to be there, such as OS isos, all my music collection etc.  Once that is done you can move the Livedrive cache as follows:
1. Select all files in Livedrive folder in explorer (Ctrl-A).
2. Right-click and select Livedrive > "Do not keep a copy on my computer"
3. Right-click the Livedrive icon in the bottom right-hand corner and select "Settings".  Then choose the "Online Files" tab
4. Now select a new cache location, such as D:
5. Wait until the synchronization has completed.
6. Select all the file again and choose to store a local copy
8. For Dropbox the moving procedure is much more simple, but again, move the files to D: (Dropbox > Preferences > Advanced > Move dropbox location)
9. Another source of large files is the pagefile.  I suggest moving it from C: to D:.
1. From the start menu launch "Advanced System Settings".  Under Performance, choose "Settings", select the Advanced Tab, and then select the Change button.
2. Unselect "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives", select D:, and set a custom size.  Standard figures are 1.5x RAM.  I chose to use an initial size of 8Gb and maximum size of 15Gb.
3. Select C: and set to "No paging file".
4. Press OK to all those windows and then reboot the computer (NB: Livedrive may still by synching and so best to not reboot until it is finished).
5. After the reboot check that the page files are actually what you set them to be.
10. The next biggest consumer was the Users directory but because moving it was so involved I wanted it to be the last step I did. At this point do the sums and make sure that you can fit everything onto the C-drive, you should only need Windows, Program Files, Program Files (x86) and ProgramData.  There may be ways to move these too but I didn't need to.
11. I did need to move the Windows Installer directory from within Windows to D:.  The steps are similar to moving the Users folder but without the recovery console.  From the Command prompt within windows enter the following commands:
• robocopy /copyall /mir /xj /MT C:\Windows\Installer D:\Installer
• rmdir /S /Q C:\Windows\Installer
• mklink /J C:\Windows\Installer D:\Installer
12. Finally I needed to move the Users directory so I managed to get that moved using the instructions here:  http://lifehacker.com/5467758/move-the-users-directory-in-windows-7
• NB: If there are files you don't need to keep, before is a good time to delete them (think ISO images, DVD images etc, also unwanted folders etc.)
• NB: When in recovery mode ensure that your additional storage volume has the letter D.  You can do this using the command tool diskpart and the command assign letter=D.  You may need to move some volumes around to made that volume D.
• NB: With robocopy I use the /MT switch all the time as it speeds up the transfers by 8 times by default.
• NB: When I rebooted I couldn't log in anymore after following these steps!! That's why I include step 13.
13. When I rebooted having moved the Users directory I could log in "The User Profile Service failed the logon".  If you received this error also then the fix below will hopefully work for you:
• Reboot into safemode, you should find that you can log on here but you won't have the usual desktop.  Now you need to enable the Administrator account, type the following into an administrative command window:
• net user administrator /active:yes
• net user administrator Password1    (where "Password1" is a temporary password)
• Reboot the computer normally and log in as Administrator
• Next follow Method 1 here:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947215
• Reboot and log in as normal.
14. So hopefully everything is up and running and you've got C-drive down to about 20Gb of space.  Now shrink the volume again to 30Gb, or the size of your SSD and copy the volume over to the SSD.  I used Acronis and took a full disk backup and then recovered the MBR and C drive to the SSD.
15. Change the BIOS boot options so that the primary boot disk is the SSD and now you should be set to go.

If you need help with this or any other PC related problems then please speak to The PC Support Group on +44 (0) 845 2233116

Installing a New SSD

So you've got a new computer and along with it you bought an SSD, and why not, because the transfer rates are much faster, the power consumption is much lower and there is no noise associated with it.  However, SSDs are more expensive and so while your new computer came with a 1Tb HDD, your SSD is only 120Gb, for example.  How do you get everything from that HDD to the new SSD?  The way we do it here is to use Acronis.  We have the Advanced Workstation 11 version, although True Image Home 2013 will work more or less the same.

The method is simple:
1. Boot windows and resize the partitions to the size you require
2. Reboot into Acronis Recovery CD and perform a Disk Backup.
3. Install SSD into the computer
4. Boot into Acronis Recovery CD and perform a Volume Restore (select all Volumes)
5. Reboot the computer into Windows

I will assume that most of these steps you can figure out for yourselves but I will comment on a few of the steps.

Step 1. Use Windows Disk Management, you will likely find 3 volumes on Disk 0.  SYSTEM, OS and RECOVERY.  OS is the volume with Windows installed and takes up all but 10Gb of the drive.  Right-click on this partition and select "Shrink Volume".  You probably want this volume to take up all the space you can on the SSD.  Which in this case is 120Gb - 100Mb (system) - 10Gb (recovery) = 109Gb, it is better to underestimate at this stage.  If your SSD is smaller than 60Gb  then see my next article on shrinking the boot partition.

Step 2. On the Sony Vaio that we recently upgraded, Acronis would not boot.  The answer was to change the Boot option to legacy.

Step 4. You have to perform a volume restore because your disk is smaller, however, we've seen tutorials saying you need to do one volume at a time and create the partitions in advance.  No you don't!  At least not with the later versions of Acronis.  Simply select all the partitions and restore them to the SSD.

NOTE: My latest post specifically about creating space on the system drive may offer further steps to help with installing an SSD http://pcsupportgroup.blogspot.com/2012/10/creating-more-space-on-c-drive.html

NOTE: UEFI boot records are becoming more common.  The later versions of Acronis are EFI aware but prefer to create a new EFI partition rather than work with the existing one.  In our tests this has resulted in an operational OS but the boot-time recovery options did not work.  We felt this was acceptable as a separate image backup was being used anyway so it was unlikely that this recovery option would be required.  We also kept the original HDD.  There may be ways to correct this but we did no further investigation.

Please contact The PC Support Group on +44 (0) 845 2233116 if you require further help with this.