best way to add more space to C without adding drives

[williez]

Hello Tek-Tips,
I have Win2K server with PERC4/Di RAID1 and 2 36gb drives with C: at 92% full, and E: with +10Gb of space beggin to get used.

BTW- I havent before used the Array Manager (Ver 3.3), or restored from the Veritas BackupExec (Ver 8.6).

Since I can't get more drives yet, what would be the easiest way to take from E: and give to C:? Or are there better ideas?
Thanks.

 

[xmario2013]

lets not creating traffic by building highway first,
what do you have in C drive, is that strictly for the system files, program install or data or all ?

you need to figure out a way to clean it up, by searching the largest files reside on the C drive (ie. more than 10MB), you probably have page file and other big DLLs, system file etc, dont delete or moved those, look for temp file, log files, dmp file or other unecessary file you see, if you can find out what is movable on the top 20-30 space takers that is about 70-80% of the space wasted realized

how is the PERC configure ? is that a RAID-1 ?

then we can talk about adding disks or creating space on C, is your E drive continues from C drive, (I am assuming your D drive is the CD), if so, you may consider convert C and E drive to NTFS dynamic disks, that way you can expand size of C drive by taking from E drive

 

[williez]

Thanks xmario2004.
The two 36Gb drives are mirrored in a RAID1 config. The 'single' drive has Csystem) D: and Elots 'o space). I've pretty much removed extranious stuff from C:, but am only down to 92%(~2Gb tot) capacity, yet E: had +10Gb unused.
Taking into consideration both Veritas restores and Array Manager are new to me... whats everyones 'easiest solution'.

 

[NickFerrar]

You absolutely want to move the pagefile to E: if you haven't done so already. If there's nothing else you can free up or re-install onto E: (you can't have 34GB of system stuff...) then you're pretty much stuck.

Assuming you mean C: and E: are on the same RAID-1 container then Partition Magic would allow you to increase the C: volume (at the expense of E: space). Other than that you'd have to backup, rebuild the OS with a larger system partition and then restore/re-install.

You could also try compressing individual folders on the C: partition, it's not recommended for system files but if you have data areas etc you may gain more space by compressing these.

 

[williez]

Thanks NickFerrar.
While checking the pagefile, I noticed that both C: and D; have pagefiles.
Is there greater efficiency in having a single pagefile since C: and D: and E: are on the same physical disk (space permitting)?
I'll be moving C:'s pagefile to E:, but might as well combine D:'s into E:'s, no?

 

[technome]

Aside from the other recommendations...
On all my servers I do not install any programs which are not Os requirements to the system partition, so basically I have very little in c:\program files. In the second partition I create an \apps directory and install all programs to subdirectories below it. Unless you have a particular reason for two pagefiles, Nick is correct. With two pagefiles, the drive head must move unnecessarily between both, bad enough having a single pagefile on the same spindle as the OS and data, no less two

 

[NickFerrar]

Well I actually meant move it just to free up space. If all the partitions are on the same RAID container then it's not really going to matter which partition it's on in terms of performance.

I'd either add the space to the D: pagefile or move the whole lot to the E: partition, whichever makes more sense based on free space.

Splitting pagefiles and moving them off the system partition are good ideas for performance when you have multiple controllers/independant disks (although personally I've never seen a performance improvement from splitting a pagefile up) but in your case I'd just be concerned about freeing up space. On most of our systems we run a single RAID-5 container with a C and D partition. The pagefile usually starts out on the C partition and gets moved to the D partition if we need the space.

 

[williez]

To summarize, I've shifted around some core config stuff: I've minimize C's pagefile and gained some breathing space on that partition, and shifted/increased the pagefile on D: to E: where there is a plethera of disk space.

Thank you everybody for your input. Good forum... think I'll wander through the stacks -n- postings.