need to unpartition hard drive

[Bill]

I've reinstalled XP home from scratch. Started using DOS
and ended up installing on regular FAT. This led to only
two GB of a 20 GB hard drive being recognized. Since
then I converted to NTFS and was stuck with the same
problem. I have since created a new logical drive, but
it's impossible to use MS Update effectively, as there
isn't enough room on the logical drive where the OS is
stored. How can I merge these two parts of the same
physical drive?

Thanks!

Bill

 

[Jason Stevens]

The only way that I am aware of is with the program Partition Magic. It
would allow you to resize your 2gb NTFS partition without losing any data.
However I think it would be much better to start over and create an NTFS
partition to begin with. I'm curious as to why you started with DOS though;
the XP CD is bootable or you can download the XP boot diskettes if you
cannot boot from your cdrom drive. When XP setup begins delete any existing
partitions and create a new partition. On the next screen choose to format
it using NTFS.

Good luck with it

 

[Alex Nichol]

I've reinstalled XP home from scratch. Started using DOS
and ended up installing on regular FAT. This led to only
two GB of a 20 GB hard drive being recognized. Since
then I converted to NTFS and was stuck with the same
problem.

Start over. While you could shrink the logical and increase the boot
partition using third party software, eg BootIT NG, from
http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial),
there is a strong probability that the initial FAT to NTFS conversion
has ended with 512 byte clusters, which are not satisfactory.

You do it by booting the XP CD direct - set in your BIOS setup to have
a boot of CD Rom before hard disk. Enter Setup, and after the license
agreement take New Install. When it asks you to confirm where, hit ESC;
select and delete the current partitions and make a new RAW one of
suitable size to be formatted at the next stage

The important point is the delete. Without that it will just go ahead
and make a new install over the top of the old one. If you want to end
up with a divided drive (basically a good idea if it is a fair size)
make the second partition later, from the XP

Note that if you *cannot* boot a CD and *have* to do it from DOS, at
least get a Win98 startup floppy (if necessary, download from
www.bootdisk.com) and use that. Use its FDISK, and say Y to 'large
disk support' so as to get FAT 32 and be able to make a sensible size
partition. You would then have to delete partitions - Non-DOS for NTFS
ones - before making the new one. And if you do it that way and then
want to convert to NTFS, consult www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm first