Un-Partition a Hard Drive

[Guest]

Is it possible to Un-Partition a Hard Drive, the reason I ask is because a
friend has recently installed a new Hard Drive (80GBs), which is divided 75
GB for ‘C’ drive and 5 GB for ‘D’ drive, his ‘D’ drive consists mostly of
hidden files but a few days ago he inadvertently loaded XP Pro on to his ‘D’
Drive also. Although his XP Pro loaded alright he now finds that his ‘D’
drive with only 2% space left and he cannot download updates or load on
Office Suite due to his ‘D’ drive being full.
His ‘C’ drive has 82% free space and the stuff he has on it is of no
consequence, to un-partition the hard drive to one single drive would seem to
me to be the best way forward, how do we go about this or is there any other
better alternative?

History to this is that his hard drive originally failed he then sent it
back to manufacturer and on return he managed to re-install hard drive
himself he has no idea why there is hidden files and was unaware that his
drive was partitioned (suspect that hard drive was partitioned when he
purchased the PC, friend has limited knowledge of PCs). He has XP Home on
his ‘C’ drive with nothing of any consequence on it and no longer wants as it
had been causing him problems before hard drive failure.

 

[Rich Barry]

I would just start over and do a clean install of XP. That would
include deleting the partition and formatting the entire drive. You can
accomplish that with the WinXP CD during the install procedure. If you would
like a graphic showing you
the progressive screens of the Install check here.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/xp_pro_install_-_graphic.htm

 

[John Barnett MVP]

Before jumping in with both feet does this friend have a boxed copy of XP
home that was originally on his computer or was he supplied with recovery
disks. If he has neither then the 5GB partition was put there by the pc
manufacturer to hold the backup copy of windows xp. I suspect that this is
what the 5GB partition is, especially since you say i contained hidden
files. However, since yuor friend has installed xp pro onto the D partition
he has overwritten the original files so the partition is useless.
From within XP you can delete the partition but that would not 'add' the 5GB
back to the C partition to do that you would need a third party application
such as partition magic. At least with partition magic you would be able to
shrink or extend partitions. Using the whole hard drive for windowx xp is a
waste. Realistically you only need around a 20GB partition (depending upon
what other applications you want to load afterwards. I only have a 20GB
partition and i have a full install of Office 2003 plus Visual .NET,
Photoshop and a host of other applications) It is always wise to have a
seperate partition for backups. I regularly image my drive using Drive image
so i have a 10GB partition for image files and a further 5GB for document
backups etc.

 

[Stephen Harris]

Is it possible to Un-Partition a Hard Drive, the reason I ask is because a
friend has recently installed a new Hard Drive (80GBs), which is divided
75
GB for 'C' drive and 5 GB for 'D' drive, his 'D' drive consists mostly of
hidden files but a few days ago he inadvertently loaded XP Pro on to his
'D'
Drive also. Although his XP Pro loaded alright he now finds that his 'D'
drive with only 2% space left and he cannot download updates or load on
Office Suite due to his 'D' drive being full.
His 'C' drive has 82% free space and the stuff he has on it is of no
consequence, to un-partition the hard drive to one single drive would seem
to
me to be the best way forward, how do we go about this or is there any
other
better alternative?

History to this is that his hard drive originally failed he then sent it
back to manufacturer and on return he managed to re-install hard drive
himself he has no idea why there is hidden files and was unaware that his
drive was partitioned (suspect that hard drive was partitioned when he
purchased the PC, friend has limited knowledge of PCs). He has XP Home on
his 'C' drive with nothing of any consequence on it and no longer wants as
it
had been causing him problems before hard drive failure.

Bootit Ng has a trial download that will take unused space
from one partition and add it to another.

 

[Al Smith]

Is it possible to Un-Partition a Hard Drive, the reason I ask is because a

friend has recently installed a new Hard Drive (80GBs), which is divided 75
GB for ‘C’ drive and 5 GB for ‘D’ drive, his ‘D’ drive consists mostly of
hidden files but a few days ago he inadvertently loaded XP Pro on to his ‘D’
Drive also. Although his XP Pro loaded alright he now finds that his ‘D’
drive with only 2% space left and he cannot download updates or load on
Office Suite due to his ‘D’ drive being full.
His ‘C’ drive has 82% free space and the stuff he has on it is of no
consequence, to un-partition the hard drive to one single drive would seem to
me to be the best way forward, how do we go about this or is there any other
better alternative?

History to this is that his hard drive originally failed he then sent it
back to manufacturer and on return he managed to re-install hard drive
himself he has no idea why there is hidden files and was unaware that his
drive was partitioned (suspect that hard drive was partitioned when he
purchased the PC, friend has limited knowledge of PCs). He has XP Home on
his ‘C’ drive with nothing of any consequence on it and no longer wants as it
had been causing him problems before hard drive failure.

Borrow a Partition Magic CD from a friend, and use it to merge the
two partitions. Or if you feel like Rockefeller, buy Partition
Magic and do the same thing. Back up your critical data files
first, though.

 

[Michael Stevens]

In

Borrow a Partition Magic CD from a friend, and use it to merge the
two partitions. Or if you feel like Rockefeller, buy Partition
Magic and do the same thing. Back up your critical data files
first, though.

This would take care of the partition, but XP would not boot and everything
would be pointing to a non-existent drive if he does get it booted.
He needs to backup and start over.
Click on or copy and paste the link below into your web browser address bar.
How to clean install XP.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm

 

[Guest]

Seems to be a conflict of opinion between clean install and acquiring
Partition Magic or trial version of BootIt Ng, the latter seems like the
simplest option for me, is there any hidden dangers that I should be aware of
if I expand the ‘D’ drive to 20GB, and should I keep his old version of XP
Home on his ‘C’ drive.
His XP Home came installed on his Compaq computer and he has Compaq recovery
disks.
A little bit of history again; when he got his hard disk back from the
manufacturer after failure he re-installed it but forgot to activate his ICF,
thereafter finding that his PC was gradually running a tad strange, hence his
warped logic of deciding to upgrade to XP Pro and starting afresh but
unfortunately loaded XP Pro onto wrong partition. I have since activated his
ICF and cleaned up much of the debris and installed appropriate safeguards.
My train of thought then was to expand his partition or make it into a single
hard drive with XP Pro as his sole Windows and erase/delete his XP Home.
Convoluted and maybe naive I agree, but is it workable or would clean
install be the best way ahead.

 

[Michael Stevens]

In Perplexed <[email protected]> respectfully replied ;-)

You don't seem to be as perplexed as me. LOL. Yes, using BootItNG to resize
the D partition is the way to go. I was in a different mind set, only
thinking you wanted to get rid of the D partition and combine it with the C
partition. Please forgive my muddying the water.

detailed answers in line below.

Seems to be a conflict of opinion between clean install and acquiring
Partition Magic or trial version of BootIt Ng, the latter seems like
the simplest option for me, is there any hidden dangers that I should
be aware of if I expand the 'D' drive to 20GB,

None hidden, but when making major changes to a hard drive, a backup is
essential before initiating the process.

and should I keep his
old version of XP Home on his 'C' drive.

Delete the Windows and Documents and Settings folders on the C drive, but
leave the hidden root files that you can find referenced in my remove a dual
boot item on my FAQ page.
Remove a dual boot.
#19 on the FAQ list
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/xpfaq.html

His XP Home came installed on his Compaq computer and he has Compaq
recovery disks.

This is good, it means the hard drive can be completely formatted if
necessary and he can still return the system to it's original shipped state.

A little bit of history again; when he got his hard disk back from the
manufacturer after failure he re-installed it but forgot to activate
his ICF, thereafter finding that his PC was gradually running a tad
strange, hence his warped logic of deciding to upgrade to XP Pro and
starting afresh but unfortunately loaded XP Pro onto wrong partition.
I have since activated his ICF and cleaned up much of the debris and
installed appropriate safeguards. My train of thought then was to
expand his partition or make it into a single hard drive with XP Pro
as his sole Windows and erase/delete his XP Home.

This would not have worked and is what I was warning about.

Convoluted and
maybe naive I agree, but is it workable or would clean install be the
best way ahead.

A clean install might be the best way to go if the resize and deleting the
folders is not satisfactory.

--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm

 

[Lil' Dave]

They usually hide the partition with the XP installlation stuff on it, not
the hide the files on a visible partition.
If the install CD is available, it will allow removal of any and all
partitions on the hard drive where you intend to install XP. It will allow
installation of multiple partitions as well during the install process.
If its a factory install CD or floppy that accesses the hard drive for the
installation source information files, it won't usually allow deletion of
this partition if it has install files on it.
Hidden partition are widely used both with laptops for additional bios and
OEM software drivers, and factory PCs with the installation files on them.
Some with both.
I agree that one should not use aftermarket partitioning software to remove
the second partition until its contents can be assessed. Removing XP Pro,
and its applications may be okay. Modifying the boot.ini file will be
required to only refer to C: for the actual OS.