Recovering deleted partition and unallocated disk space

[Royal]

Was using Windows ME, attempted to upgrede to XP
Professional. This computer has two physical disk drives
C and D. Additioanally, the C drive was partitioned in
logical drives E, F, G, and H. Unable to recover enoufg
space on C: to install XP, I uninstalled ME and reverted
back to 98. When installing XP, there is no opportunity
to delete partitions. I did move all files out of E onto
the other logical drives and, after XP was installed,
deleted the contiguious E drive in order to free up badly
needed space. Additioanlly, at the end of this physical
drive, the is a reasonable amount of unallocated space.
I would like to recover all the "freed" up and
unallocated space so it may be used as part of C: I do
not want to lose any of the data or have to reinstall all
the programs in the remaining partitions. Will I be able
to recover and use this unused space? Thanks, Royal

 

[Donald McDaniel]

Was using Windows ME, attempted to upgrede to XP
Professional. This computer has two physical disk drives
C and D. Additioanally, the C drive was partitioned in
logical drives E, F, G, and H. Unable to recover enoufg
space on C: to install XP, I uninstalled ME and reverted
back to 98. When installing XP, there is no opportunity
to delete partitions. I did move all files out of E onto
the other logical drives and, after XP was installed,
deleted the contiguious E drive in order to free up badly
needed space. Additioanlly, at the end of this physical
drive, the is a reasonable amount of unallocated space.
I would like to recover all the "freed" up and
unallocated space so it may be used as part of C: I do
not want to lose any of the data or have to reinstall all
the programs in the remaining partitions. Will I be able
to recover and use this unused space? Thanks, Royal

Of course. But you will have to use a third-party utility to do it, such as
PartitionMagic 8.0 or BootItNG.

PartitionMagic 8.x is around $69 and has a Windows front-end, while BootItNG
is around $35 and has a DOS front-end. They do provide trial software, but
PartitionMagic will not allow you to save any changes you make using the
trial software. I don't know about BootItNG.

By the way, the XP installation CD does provide the ability to create/delete
partitions and format them. Why you were unable to do so when you installed
XP I have no idea. Perhaps you chose "Upgrade" instead of "Clean install"
when you installed. I guess all the blue background and white text of the
"DOS" portion of the install is hard to read and understand.

Get PartitionMagic here:
http://www.powerquest.com/solutions/personal.cfm#organize
Get BootItNG here: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/purchase.html