In need of some advice

[Peter Appleton]

To those who remember me from days gone by, hello again! To those who've never heard of me, don't worry about it, I'm hoping for a quick resolution of this topic, so won't be around here for too long.

Some background to my problem... Since moving away from the world of AV sequences I have been using PTE to build what I call Project Workbenches. These are simply menu systems which allow me to access, rapidly and easily, the folder system and files associated with my various historical research projects. All my project data, including the workbench files themselves, are stored under OneDrive. I have two Windows 11 systems: a desktop tower (which obviously stays at home) and a Surface Pro tablet (which accompanies me on visits to Archive locations). Both machines have a C: and D: drive, with the OneDrive implementation being on drive D. Because of the small size (128GB) of the D: drive on the tablet, compared to the desktop's 1TB, the tablet's D: drive holds just that subset of data needed by the current project. This arrangement has delivered the functionality I need without any problems.

Or at least, it did!

Earlier this month, the tablet experienced terminally fatal failure. I have purchased a Surface Laptop system to replace it. Since its delivery, I have spent the last three days getting the software installed and customised to give me the function that I need. But I have hit a problem with the workbenches. The new laptop does not have a drive D: Having copied the current Workbench.exe file to the laptop, I find that all the references to folders and files (40 of them) within it no longer work.

What I am hoping for are ideas as to how best I can attack this problem. Can anyone make any suggestions?

Regards, Peter

[davegee]

Hi Peter,

It is nice to see that you are still active!

Is the Laptop Drive big enough to Partition? If so the new partition would be Drive D or could be configured as Drive D.

DG

P.S.

To split a computer drive into two partitions, you can use the Disk Management tool in Windows:

1. Open Disk Management:
   • Right-click the Start button and select Disk Management
   • Press Windows key + X and select Disk Management
2. Select the drive to partition
3. If the drive already has data, you can shrink an existing volume:
   • Right-click the volume you want to shrink
   • Select Shrink Volume
   • Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB
   • Click Shrink
4. Create a new partition:
   • Right-click the unallocated space
   • Select New Simple Volume
   • Follow the New Simple Volume Wizard
   • Choose the volume size
   • Assign a drive letter
   • Format the partition
   • Click Finish 
      
      

Before you create a partition, you should make sure there's enough free space on the drive. You can check this by opening File Explorer. 

 

[smithrg]

Hi Peter, good to know you are alive and well!

[mhwarner]

Hi Peter,

Glad to know you're still around!  We miss you!

[jkb]

Hi Peter,

Good to hear from you & that you are still keeping busy.

If you are using the exe files to link to all of your projects then the only options I can think of are (asuming I am understanding your problem correctly)

1. Save all of your Projects as Templates. That way you can simply set up PTE to have the Template Folder in the correct place for each computer.

2. Remove the Full Path from the exe's & just have the file name. So instead of "D://myFolder/Show1.exe"  Just make it "Show1.exe" keeping the double Quotes at the start & end. As long as all the files are in the same Folder then PTE will find them.

Both of these will mean changes to your Projects so could be a lot of work depending on how many you have.

Hope this helps & you can be up & running again.

Jill

 

[Peter Appleton]

My thanks to Dave (davegee) and Jill (jkb) for their detailed replies. After much careful thought, I decided to try Dave's suggestion of partitioning the laptop's drive. His instructions were exemplary. The process really was straightforward. I then followed instructions from a Microsoft Support topic that guided me through the necessary steps to move OneDrive from drive C: to drive D:. I started the partitioning at 11:30am and had OneDrive up and running, and fully synchronised with the online copy by 1:30pm.

Now I'm off to make a celebratory mug of coffee!

This afternoon's task will be to locate and delete any "Z-" prefixed files and folders. These are copies made, over a period of several years, when making significant changes. They existed to give me a quick fallback should a change go pear-shaped. It's high time they were deleted to reclaim their disk space.

Regards,

Peter

[macian]

This Forum is a mine of information and support.

[digartal]

One other thought.

Some Surface Pro are not expandable as the SSD is soldered on the motherboard. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-ssd-removal-guide

If you run out of space on the Surface Pro, you could use a Portable HDD or SD card (they come is very large sizes and are small and have no moving parts).

Good luck.

Cheers

Mark