Do you know what a Datapart1 (D:) is? If you do, please HELP!

ETA - I am going to see if I can clean up the pics a bit, be right back.
Sorry they are so big. That is the only way I could get the words clear enough to read.

So, I admit I have a lot of junk on my pc. I have over 5000 pics and about 350 songs. Also, some videos copied off of my phone. I have erased some 200 photos to see if this would have an effect on the dataport storage but it didn't.

I have no idea what all of all those folders with the numbers are and if I should delete them. This is the point I get a little nervous messing around with the brains of my baby. I have fixed viruses and freeze ups on my own, but this is where I have to draw the line without outside help.

I am asking, no begging really, for help cleaning up my datapart. I have tried to google it, but I guess I am calling it by the wrong name because I don't get any relevant hits. DO you know how to bring my baby off of life support and get her running on full speed again?

Here are the insides -




This is where I get scared -



and this is where I have no idea what is going on after I open the datapart D -

DataPart is probably short-form for Data Partition, which is nothing more than a logical hard drive carved out of a physical one.

Let's say you have one actual hard disk drive on your computer. You can "cut it up" into as many pieces as you want to make "other" drives besides the C drive. In your case, it looks like you only have one other drive, which is D. Ignore the name DataPart, it is meaningless, it's just another place to store things on your computer and acts as a separate drive.

The numbered folders have letters and numbers which are often referred to as GUIDs - globally unique identifiers - and are generated by the operating system or anti-virus software when quarantining a virus or infection. For the most part, if you don't know what they are for, or what is in them, leave them alone. There are times where the operating system may also put Restore Points (system backups) into those folders depending on how your computer is configured.

If things are running slow, there are other steps you can take, such as un-installing any programs that you don't need or don't want running on your computer. The other is to disable any Windows Services that you don't need, but this is more difficult of the two and should be approached with caution.

If you're looking to free space on your D: drive, you should search for files that are over a certain size and see if they are any that you recognize first before deleting them.

Hope this helps!

~Namaste

reply to post by Doodle19815


That is Dells recovery partition. I wouldn't delete anything out of it, as you may need to utilize it later for recovery.

reply to post by SonOfTheLawOfOne


Thank you for your explanation! I had no idea what it meant. This all came around by my computer freezing up after about 10 minutes of use. I googled away and found that I needed to download a service pack. My computer still hasn't completed the download after trying various different things. I thought maybe the full Datapart might have something to do with it.

Sounds like maybe I need to keep investigating.

reply to post by Doodle19815


Depending on how the computer freezes up, it could be several things...

If you right-click on the blue bar at the bottom where your start button is, and select "Task Manager", check for programs running at 100% as these will often give the appearance that your computer is frozen. Whatever is consuming 100% cpu, if it is, will be the suspect program and you should consider turning it off or removing it. Most programs have an option to disable themselves, so that's a good place to start.

If there is nothing running, and the computer becomes completely and totally unresponsive where not even the mouse will move, then you have a different problem at the operating system level that a service pack MAY fix, so it's worth a shot. If the service pack does not fix the problem, you may need to see if booting into Safe Mode stops the freeze, and if so, you should consider that it might be an out of date driver or a software update that you are missing.

There's a million things that can cause a computer to slow down and freeze, but some basic steps that you can do to identify them. This should help get you on that track.

~Namaste

reply to post by SonOfTheLawOfOne





This is another of those areas I really don't like to mess around with. It throws up that scary prompt about ending processes might mess up your programs. I should have married a computer geek instead of a chef. I can cook my own meals but I can't fix the dang computer (which in my book is way more important).

I have deleted all non used programs on my computer though. Did that last night. I forgot how much crap I actually had on this thing.

reply to post by Doodle19815


If you do end a process make sure it is one that has Amy next to it. System, and other processes shouldn't be messed with. Along with (Explorer.exe)

Thanks guys! I know you are offering help that some charge big bucks for. I appreciate it.

reply to post by Doodle19815



dude thats alot of crap running you really dont need. that will cause system freezes as well. a good site I have used in the past to tweak systems and shut down things that just drain system resources is here

www.blackviper.com...

that site has been around since the windows 98se days i believe. he does a very good job explaining what things are and what effect it will have on the system if you change it.

My quick advice, beyond what others have posted here is this:

Go grab a cheap external hard drive (1 Tb) and copy all your music and photos to it.
Basically put all your goodies and extras on it so you can procure some space again.

It's very simple to do and these days external hard drives are cheap.
This won't speed up your computer per say, but it will rid you of memory loss due to storage.

A great site for computer parts is Newegg.

Then, you can work on turning your computer into a more efficient machine.

I'm not reading everyone else's comments. sorry guys.

If you want to know how to maintain a well groomed computer, never keep anything you wouldn't want to loose on your home computer, store all important and valuable information on an external hard drive.
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1340556199&sr=1-5&keywor ds=western+digital+1tb" target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow">Western Digital 1tb
This is one of my favorite drives (not the best though), it is powered by your computer through the usb so no additional cables, you can get a nice travel case for it for $5, It has not bloatware or additional information on the drive like nearly every other external drive, or any drive for that matter, on the market. Once you have this handy-dandy contraption onto the next step

Which is wiping your computer and starting over, remove all keepable content to the external drive once you have it, then pop in your windows disc (which ever version your using) then restart your computer, pressing F12 immediately as it loads, this will send you to Multi-boot, allows you to choose to boot your computer from the CD, there should be straightforward instructions there on how to format your computer.

Once it's up an running, go through programs/features and remove any obviously unneccesary programs, like manufacturers up keep programs, windows numerously outdated services and so on. Remove any anti-virus programs and hop online an install avast! it's free once you register, and the pro edition is on $10 for life and it's the 2nd best (1st IMO) anti-virus/firewall/etc. software on the net.

You're now in great shape, if the computer is still slow, it's time for hardware upgrades and that's a completely different best. Good luck.

Side note: My girlfriend got both a Chef and a Geek.

Okay, thanks guys. I will try out getting an external hard drive. I know I have a whole lot of stuff on here. So far it hasn't given me many problems except this freeze up thing. Avast has cleared it for viruses and Spybot says I am fine. I am going to wait for the hubby to get home and let him end processes on the task manager, (not only is he braver than me but then I can blame him for crashing my pc, hehehe).

If it only froze up occasionally it would be ok, but this every time after I start the dang thing. If I let it sit for several minutes after it freezes, sometimes it comes out ok and others I have to reboot. I love my technology but dang does it get frustrating. Kinda like a young kid getting a fancy sports car only to burn the clutch up because he can't shift it right.

On a side not - Hubby is okay with computers and can get me out of most of my binds. He just cooks better than he can navigate on a keyboard. (Just in case he reads this.)

reply to post by Doodle19815


Actually beware of things like this, because your computer may seem fine now, but it'll be 10x worse in a few weeks. Usually once something has been corrupted, it's time to start over. If it's working a little better, awesome. just understand that if the problem wasn't specifically detected and fixed there is a high probability it will occur again, and furthermore it's never good when your computer crashes, it can corrupt start-up files and dynamic libraries. There is a reason they give you the option of shutting the computer down properly, which may actually be part of your problem, if you've ever had to just hit the power button to turn it straight off it can damage files. Make sure you're shutting the system down with the windows button or through ctrl+alt+delete.( a menu will pop up)

The D: drive is where your computer is placing its backups. If there is only one physical hard drive in your computer your are playing with fire. It probably does in fact have one hard drive and you have two partitions. C: and D: So when it "backs up" it is just making the hard drive work very hard copying information from one side of the disk to the other.
Besides the hard drive wearing out faster it is actually not protecting your data. If the hard drive crashes it will take out both partitions. The only reason for a second partition d: is because Dell is cheap and does not give out restore disks. Like the person said before, it's the restore partition. It needs the restore partition to reload Windows on the C: when it goes fubar.
Get an external and copy your data to it. You should also reconfigure windows backup so it will use and external on not the D: It's not doing you any good and actually accelerating the eventual death of your hard drive.

If you have not made your DVD restore media then do so. Probably need about 4-5 DVDs because of Dell Bloatware. Once you have your restore DVD's made and you have your documents in a safe (two) locations you are good to go on figuring out why your i5 with 6 gigs is slow,

Ccleaner and Glary Utilities are good to use to disable all your unnecessary programs and services on start up. Good for cleaning up your computer and other uses too.

Your D: partition still has 26 Gigabytes of free space. Not enough space to backup C: to D: but plenty of space for normal use.

If it were my PC I would get my data off of the computer and onto a external drive. Two of them but I am paranoid. I would then use the restore DVD(s) and reload windows. During setup you have the option to re-partition the hard drive. Here is where you would wipe out both and just use one partition for windows.

With a fresh copy of windows on a single partition your computer will be faster than when you bought it.

I know there are legitimate uses for multiple partitions but in this case I doubt they apply. eg. second OS