Merge partitions (recovery)

[Jim]

I bought a new HP laptop over the weekend. The hard drive is
partitioned into 3 drives. The OS (99 G NTFS), the recovery
(HP_Recovery - 12 G FAT) and a hidden partition (1 G). I created
recovery DVDs and would not like to reclaim the space that the recovery
partion is residing on and merge it with the primary partition. Is
this something that I need partition magic for and will it merge the
partions without losing the data on the primary partition? Or is there
another utility that I can use to do this without having to purchase an
expensive program that I will in all likelihood only use once? Or
another workaround, perhaps creating an image of the drive?

TIA!
J

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

I would recommend leaving your partitions as is.
Otherwise, you'll need a third-party partitioning
program, such as PartitionMagic:
http://www.symantec.com/partitionmagic/

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP 2007
Windows - Shell/User

Enjoy all the benefits of genuine Microsoft software:
http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/default.mspx

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:

| I bought a new HP laptop over the weekend. The hard drive is
| partitioned into 3 drives. The OS (99 G NTFS), the recovery
| (HP_Recovery - 12 G FAT) and a hidden partition (1 G). I created
| recovery DVDs and would not like to reclaim the space that the recovery
| partion is residing on and merge it with the primary partition. Is
| this something that I need partition magic for and will it merge the
| partions without losing the data on the primary partition? Or is there
| another utility that I can use to do this without having to purchase an
| expensive program that I will in all likelihood only use once? Or
| another workaround, perhaps creating an image of the drive?
|
| TIA!
| J

 

[Rock]

I bought a new HP laptop over the weekend. The hard drive is
partitioned into 3 drives. The OS (99 G NTFS), the recovery
(HP_Recovery - 12 G FAT) and a hidden partition (1 G). I created
recovery DVDs and would not like to reclaim the space that the recovery
partion is residing on and merge it with the primary partition. Is
this something that I need partition magic for and will it merge the
partions without losing the data on the primary partition? Or is there
another utility that I can use to do this without having to purchase an
expensive program that I will in all likelihood only use once? Or
another workaround, perhaps creating an image of the drive?

BootIt NG from Terabyte Unlimited has a 30 day full featured, free trial
version that can do this. You might want to make sure you know how the
recovery process works, possibly even call tech support, to make sure it
will work properly if you remove that HP-Recovery partition.