"Un" partitioning a hard drive?

[Romac]

Hi fellow newsgroupies,

I'm hoping once again that everyone can be as helpful as
they have been for me in the past.
The "problem" that I'm having is that my computer's hard
drive was inadvertently partitioned.
Is there a way to unpartition the hard drive (without
purchasing software)?

TIA

 

[Alvin Brown]

Hello

Yes you can, but keep inmind that before doing
that I would recommend that you backup any important
data that you have just to be safe.

Here is a link to where you can get a win98 bootdisk

Link to where you can download a win98 bootdisk
http://www.bootdisk.com


Alvin

 

[JAX]

Only way is by doing a clean install.

JAX

 

[Guest]

You need to pay for and get partition magic. How much is
the data on that partition worth to you??? There is
no "unpartition" command.

 

[sgopus]

What exactly are you trying to do?
just saying unpartition a hard drive is not explaining
much!
Do you just want to have the hd one big partition, or are
you trying to recover data, or what??
Just curious what is the size of your hard drive?
it might be a benefit to have it broken into smaller sizes!

 

[Tim Slattery]

Hi fellow newsgroupies,

I'm hoping once again that everyone can be as helpful as
they have been for me in the past.
The "problem" that I'm having is that my computer's hard
drive was inadvertently partitioned.
Is there a way to unpartition the hard drive (without
purchasing software)?

No. The only thing you could do would be to boot from the WinXP CD,
use its tools to destroy the existing partitions, create one large new
one that covers the entire drive, and reinstall the system fresh. All
your currently installed applications would have to be reinstalled,
and all data would disappear.

Partition Magic (www.powerquest.com) and other third-party utilities
can combine existing partitions into one without losing data.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

I'm hoping once again that everyone can be as helpful as
they have been for me in the past.
The "problem" that I'm having is that my computer's hard
drive was inadvertently partitioned.
Is there a way to unpartition the hard drive (without
purchasing software)?

You presumably don't want to "unpartition" it, but to change it
to a single partition (the drive isn't usable without at least
one partition on it).

There's no way to change the partition structure of a drive
non-destructively with native Windows facilities. You have three
choices:

1. Buy and use a third-party program, such as Partition Magic or
Boot-It Next Generation, that can do this. Boot-It Next
Generation is shareware, and you can do this within its free
trial period.

2. Re-partition, reformat, and reinstall Windows. That involves
the loss of everything on the drive.

3. Live with it the way it is.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I'm hoping once again that everyone can be as helpful as
they have been for me in the past.
The "problem" that I'm having is that my computer's hard
drive was inadvertently partitioned.
Is there a way to unpartition the hard drive (without
purchasing software)?

If it has been divided in two partitions and you want to put it back to
a single one that needs third party software (Partition Magic 8; or
BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full
functional Trial))

But be sure you need to: A split is usually a good thing. Look first
at getting data files onto that second partition. In particular move
'My Documents' over: Open a window on
C:\Documents and Settings\<you>\
to show it, another on the other partition and then *right* drag it
across, taking *Move* here