The New York Times-20080124-Q-A- -Business-Financial Desk-
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Q&A; [Business/Financial Desk]
Full Text (623 words)Resizing Drives,
For Extra Room
Q. I have a problem that other PC users may share: what to do when your C drive runs out of space? My PC has an 80-gigabyte hard drive that is partitioned into a 20-GB C drive and a 60-GB D drive. I have been told that repartitioning the drive is a risky business. What do you suggest?
A. Hard drives are filling up faster than ever with all the digital photos, music and movies taking up space, not to mention the documents, PowerPoint presentations and e-mail users collect. Many drives are divided into separate partitions, which are sort of like separate containers on the same disk.
Windows needs room to move, though, and if your drive gets too full, the system may become sluggish. The Disk Defragmenter utility program that comes with Windows may not be able to function if your drive gets too full.
When you find your main C drive partition is filling up faster than you can bail data over to the D drive, repartitioning the disk can help. Because you are moving things around, repartitioning a drive can be a little risky, so you should back up your entire computer to an external drive, a set of DVDs or a bunch of CDs before doing anything.
The old-fashioned way to repartition your drive is to copy all the data, erase the disk and reformat it and set up new partitions. (Microsoft has instructions on this for Windows XP at support.microsoft.com/kb/313348.) Once you have set up the new partitions, you have to reinstall Windows, all your programs and all your files. As you can imagine, this is a time-consuming process, but there are easier ways.
A partition utility program lets you resize your disk's partitions without having to erase and reformat your drive. There are several of these programs out there, including Symantec's PartitionMagic ($70; www.symantec.com) and VCOM's Partition Commander Professional ($50; www.v-com.com). SubRosaSoft has a similar $60 program for Mac OS X at www.subrosasoft.com.
Windows Vista includes a utility to repartition your hard drive (snipurl.com/1xkqf), and Tech Republic offers step-by-step, illustrated instructions at snipurl.com/1xkqs.
Learning How
To Use Picasa
Q. I downloaded all my vacation photos to Google's Picasa, but I am having trouble finding information on how to use it. Google sends you to a chat room with other confused users. Any ideas where to look? There doesn't seem to be a Dummies book.
A. If you find that the Help pages (picasa.google.com/support) for Google's free image-editing and organization program are not enough, you can find answers elsewhere. While there may not be many books solely on Picasa, there are plenty of blogs that share Picasa lessons. The site at techtheman.blogspot.com/2007/07/picasa-tutorials.html is just one example.
Video tutorials are also available on the Web. The educational technology company LearningElectric.com has free video lessons that demonstrate how to use many of Picasa's tools and features at www.learningelectric.com/picasa2. Geeks on Tour also has video tutorials at www.geeksontour.com/picasa.cfm.
TIP OF THE WEEK Some audiobook narrators talk too fast -- and some too slow. If you are listening to Audible books and spoken-word content on your iPod, you can often change the pace. Just go to the Settings area on the iPod's main menu and choose Audiobooks. On the next screen, you can adjust the playback speed of the file to Slower, Normal or Faster. You do not have to worry about your book sounding like someone reading underwater or narrating like a chipmunk --the setting you select will not alter the pitch of the narrator's voice. J. D. BIERSDORFER
Questions about computer-based technology may be sent to QandA @nytimes.com. This weekly column will address questions of general interest, but e-mail and letters cannot be answered individually.
