Partition Question

[E. Barry Bruyea]

I recently purchased a 200 gig drive and wish to re-partition one of
my old drives which now has 3 partitions, D, E, F, into one partition.
This is not a boot drive. I'm not sure how to do this as I've never
had to do it before, and I've found windows help to be kind of
confusing. I'm running XP Home. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[JS]

See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000/

Keep in mind that any data on these partitions will be lost when you do
this.
So backup (copy) any files of importance before you start

JS

 

[Rock]

I recently purchased a 200 gig drive and wish to re-partition one of
my old drives which now has 3 partitions, D, E, F, into one partition.
This is not a boot drive. I'm not sure how to do this as I've never
had to do it before, and I've found windows help to be kind of
confusing. I'm running XP Home. Any help would be appreciated.

XP does not have the tools to repartition a drive non destructively, keeping
the data intact. 3rd party tools are needed such as Symantec's Partition
Magic, Acronis Disk Director, or Terabyte Unlimited's BootIt NG. This one
is a 30 day, full featured trial version.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I recently purchased a 200 gig drive and wish to re-partition one of
my old drives which now has 3 partitions, D, E, F, into one partition.
This is not a boot drive. I'm not sure how to do this as I've never
had to do it before, and I've found windows help to be kind of
confusing. I'm running XP Home. Any help would be appreciated.

Answered in another newsgroup. Please do not send the same message
separately to more than one newsgroup (called multiposting). Doing so just
fragments the thread, so someone who answers in one newsgroup doesn't get to
see answers from others in another newsgroup. And for those who read all the
newsgroups the message is multiposted to, they see the message multiple
times instead of once (they would see it only once if you correctly
crossposted instead). This wastes everyone's time, and gets you poorer help
than you should get.

If you must send the same message to more than one newsgroup, please do so
by crossposting (but only to a *few* related newsgroups).

Please see "What is the accepted way to share a message across multiple
newsgroups?" at http://smjg.port5.com/faqs/usenet/xpost.html

 

[Jonny]

XP does not have the tools to repartition a drive non destructively,
keeping the data intact. 3rd party tools are needed such as Symantec's
Partition Magic, Acronis Disk Director, or Terabyte Unlimited's BootIt NG.
This one is a 30 day, full featured trial version.

Along with Rock's fine suggestion, there can be problems in combining
partitions and retaining file data, even with these specialty software.

My method is to move as much folders and files to an adjacent partition in
XP environment. Shrink or eliminate the prior partition and to expand the
partition where you moved the folders and files with the specialty software.
The partition and file allocation table may change, but the file data itself
is not moved in most cases like this by the specialty software. Continue
the process until all the file data is in one partition, and all the hard
drive space is incorporated into the single partition. Its not as time
consuming as it may sound as the file data movement occurs in XP. But, if
all the current 3 partitions are nearing full, this will be a time consuming
process irregardless how its done.

If possible, in any case how you do it; backup your data first.

 

[E. Barry Bruyea]

Along with Rock's fine suggestion, there can be problems in combining
partitions and retaining file data, even with these specialty software.

My method is to move as much folders and files to an adjacent partition in
XP environment. Shrink or eliminate the prior partition and to expand the
partition where you moved the folders and files with the specialty software.
The partition and file allocation table may change, but the file data itself
is not moved in most cases like this by the specialty software. Continue
the process until all the file data is in one partition, and all the hard
drive space is incorporated into the single partition. Its not as time
consuming as it may sound as the file data movement occurs in XP. But, if
all the current 3 partitions are nearing full, this will be a time consuming
process irregardless how its done.

If possible, in any case how you do it; backup your data first.

I guess I should have made it more clear; The Drive in question has
been cleaned off, so retaining Data is not a concern. I've put all of
the files either on my new drive or DVD data disks. I simply want to
take an 80gig drive that has 3 partitions and make it a single
partition.

 

[Rock]

I guess I should have made it more clear; The Drive in question has
been cleaned off, so retaining Data is not a concern. I've put all of
the files either on my new drive or DVD data disks. I simply want to
take an 80gig drive that has 3 partitions and make it a single
partition.

Install it as a slave drive and do it through Disk Management.

 

[JS]

As Rock said, the tool is Disk Management. Use it to delete the existing
partitions by right clicking on the partition you wish to delete and select
the 'Delete' option.

JS

 

[Jonny]

I guess I should have made it more clear; The Drive in question has
been cleaned off, so retaining Data is not a concern. I've put all of
the files either on my new drive or DVD data disks. I simply want to
take an 80gig drive that has 3 partitions and make it a single
partition.

Start.
Help and support.
Insert the word "disk" in the search box, and click the arrow.
Select "using disk management"
Select "computer management (local)"
Select "disk managment" in the RH pane.
Select the hard disk you want to partition, remove partitions and so forth
in the lower LH pane.
Select the partition you want to remove with the RH mouse button.
Select remove partition or remove logical drive as appropriate.
Continue the process until all partitions have been removed.
Process is similar for creating a single partition afterwards.

In my opinion, you're doing it backwards. The smaller capacity hard drive
is well capable of holding XP, applications and so forth. The 200 GB should
be used for your personal data, OS image backups, mp3s, video, pictures, and
so forth. Its doubtful the 200GB is any faster than the 80GB if both are
ide.

 

[Paul Johnson]

I recently purchased a 200 gig drive and wish to re-partition one of
my old drives which now has 3 partitions, D, E, F, into one partition.
This is not a boot drive. I'm not sure how to do this as I've never
had to do it before, and I've found windows help to be kind of
confusing. I'm running XP Home. Any help would be appreciated.

Probably the easiest method to partition is using a graphical tool like the
expensive Partition Magic or the free GNU Parted/QTParted available with
Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.net/). From there, it's generally pretty
straightforward. I wouldn't get too picky about drive letters if you can
avoid it, though: Letters may vary slightly depending on your setup.