-----Original Message-----
Hi, George.
DiskPart is a great utility. But it is TRICKY!! Ya gotta read those
instructions, then print 'em out and read 'em again!
I've only used it twice and made the same mistake you did - both times. The
WinXP Help and Support file (search for "extend") says it clearly enough:
At the DISKPART prompt, type:
extend [size=n]
Extends the selected volume by size=n megabytes (MB).
But you, like me, typed "40" instead of "40000". We gotta type the size in
MEGAbytes, not GIGAbytes. In my case, it treated the command as though I
had not put in a size at all and extended the first volume (D:, in my case)
to the max - which is just what you wanted. I only wanted to extend my 2 GB
volume by 3 GB to be 5 GB, but when I typed "extend size=3", it extended D:
to 8 GB, using the entire 6 GB that was available from the 3 old FAT16
volumes I had deleted. (I left it at 8 GB and have not regretted my
mistake.) I'm not clear on what it did in your case, though. Do you now
have 40 GB PLUS 20 GB? 60 Gb on a 40 GB HD?
Of course, another line in the Help file says:
You cannot extend the current system or boot partitions.
Apparently, you were trying to extend your system partition (Drive C
,
which was also your boot partition (where \Windows resides). :>(
I have a very small (under 1 GB) Drive C: for my system partition, with
WinXP installed on Drive D:. I also installed a second copy of WinXP on my
second physical drive in a volume marked Drive X:. When I wanted to extend
Drive D:, I booted into WinXP on Drive X: so that D: was - temporarily - NOT
my boot partition and I could use DiskPart on it.
Since Drive C: is your system/boot partition, you might think you could boot
from the WinXP CD-ROM into the Recovery Console and use DiskPart from there.
Trouble is, the RC version of DiskPart does not include the Extend function.
As I said, it's TRICKY!
So the only way to use DiskPart /extend in your situation, I suppose, is to
put that physical HD into a second WinXP computer and run the command from
there.
I'm having trouble picturing how your Partition Table must look now. It's
only 64 bytes long, of course, a part of the MBR, the first physical sector
on your HD. Good old DiskEdit from the Norton Utilities could fix that
pretty quickly. (DiskProbe probably could, too, but I'm not very familiar
with that.) All you gotta do (I think) is zero out the 16 bytes for that
funny 40 GB partition, leaving the entry for the 20 GB good one. Then use
DM or some other tool to clean up things. Have you tried to use Disk
Management to delete the 40 GB volume? If it works, you're good to go:
WinXP is still installed, along with all your applications. I'm just
thinking out loud at this point, but maybe it will give you some ideas; or
somebody else can jump in to amplify - or correct - my thoughts.
Let us know what you try. And what works. ;^}
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
George Claborn said:
40Gb drive in my new laptop arrived with 2 NTFS 20Gb
partitions, C: & D: C: is system partition. My goal was to
get rid of D: and extend C: to 40Gb.
So, in Disk Management I deleted D:'s partition. No
problem; space shows unallocated.
Then, since the GUI doesn't have an extend option, from the
command line I executed DISKPART, selected disk 0, volume
1, the system partition. I then executed 'extend size=40'.
OOPS.
Diskpart was happy with this, but only did half the job:
Back in the GUI, Disk 0 now shows a 40Gb NTFS partition in
the lower half of the disk management screen, but drive C:
in the top half still is only listed as 20Gb, and I'm stuck.
No GUI *or* diskpart commands appear to allow me to even
get back to my atarting point of 40Gb accessible in 2
partitions. I've lost 20Gb!
Are there any other options besides:
A. Completely reformat and re-install WXP
B. Spend $70 for Partition Magic?
Thanks, George
.
