Almost Full C Drive

[finfly1]

First, thanks mightily for past help. It has been invaluable and very much appreciated!

This morning, I got popup warning about something already troubling me, which was that I was running out of room on the C drive of my Dell Inspirion which has two hard drives.

From the very beginning I was saving photos deliberately on the D drive, but paid insufficient attention to where My Music was going. I looked at the files on the C drive and they all looked too important to delete.

Finally I found the music under 'user', and copied the 'My Music' file onto the D drive and created a desktop shortcut to get to it.

My question is--can I now delete these files from the C drive without ruining anything?

Less important question, but will future downloads find their way to D drive or will I need to periodically move them (if safe)?

Thanks once more for the lucid and patient responses to a non-techy no longer young puter user.

[Loose rivets]

Be careful about actually filling a drive. I loaned an IBM to a pal's son once, and when he wrote the last byte to the disc, it ALL became inaccessible.

[Sprogget]

IF you have copied music files, then you are safe to delete the originals. For future downloads, you should direct your browser to download to the location of your choice, which will save you the added task of having to move them after the event. Look in your browsers download settings to do this.

[finfly1]

Thank you, both. HUGE relief!






Anything to avoid getting on the phone with Dell!

[green granite]

Treble check that it's actually put the files on D and not just put a shortcut there.

[finfly1]

Excellent point GG, and fortunately it is so. I got real daring and used the same process with a thousand or so short video clips (quite a few liften from a jetblast thread) and now have breathing room on C.

The downside is that I deleted the apparent target location (My Music) and now the remaining CDs won't copy. I have already got a work-around in mind involving my fiance's laptop and a 32 gig flash drive, so no immediate worries. Unable to find the spot to tell the software where I want the stuff to go. As I said, not a biggy.

Thanks again to all.

[BOAC]

Which software?

[finfly1]

Windows 7 based.

[BOAC]

Ok, but what is 'copying' the CDs? E.G Media Player or other software?

[finfly1]

Sorry. Says Windows Media Player. Not trying to be dense. I am.

[Mac the Knife]

Junction Link Magic 2( Freeware Files.com - Download (http://www.freewarefiles.com/downloads_counter.php?programid=3435) ) lets you move stuff off your main drive but keeps a symbolic link to it.

You can move big apps (like games) off your main drive and onto another drive and the game doesn't know it (thinks its still in /Program Files/Mygame/)

Wonderful app - use with care - learn about NTFS links and reparse points first.

Link Shell Extension - Link Shell Extension (http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html) - is an alternative.

:ok:

Mac

[BOAC]

Dinna wurry!

"Says Windows Media Player".- look for 'Tools' /'Options' and something like 'Rip music' and see if the destination can be changed there.