Time to start over

[Sunshine]

I have two hard drives and dual boot, XP and 2000. Both drives are set up
the same, one primary partition and two logical partitions. I am running out
of space on the primary partition on both drives. I would like to delete
the logical drives on both hard drives and have only one partition on each
drive. I also have a large capacity external USB/fire wire hard drive
w/backup a program. Would it be possible to backup 2000 to the large
capacity drive, remove the logical partitions, have one partition, format;
then put the backup drive back on the hard drive and repeat the steps for
XP? I don't have a copy of several programs on XP, so I am trying to get
around wiping out everything and starting from scratch. This would not be a
problem for the 2000 drive. This will be my first time trying this and I
don't know everything I should consider.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Do you still need Windows 2000?

With XP what is the size of each partition and how much
free space is on each?

Do you have a separate page file for each system?

Where are your data files?

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Sunshine]

Yes, I need 2000; some of the older photo applications are not compatible
with XP. XP has an 80 GB hard drive; the primary partition is 40 GB (37.2
GB) with 9.86 GB of free space and the logical drives are 20 GB (18.6 GB)
each all free space. 2000 has a 40 GB hard drive; the primary partition is
20 GB (18.6) with 285 MB of free space; the logical drives are equally
divided with all free space. I have transferred all photos and videos from
the logical drives to the external hard drive. Yes, each drive has a
separate page file;I have 1GB of memory. The data files are mostly on XP.

 

[Anna]

Yes, I need 2000; some of the older photo applications are not compatible
with XP. XP has an 80 GB hard drive; the primary partition is 40 GB (37.2
GB) with 9.86 GB of free space and the logical drives are 20 GB (18.6 GB)
each all free space. 2000 has a 40 GB hard drive; the primary partition
is 20 GB (18.6) with 285 MB of free space; the logical drives are equally
divided with all free space. I have transferred all photos and videos
from the logical drives to the external hard drive. Yes, each drive has a
separate page file;I have 1GB of memory. The data files are mostly on XP.

Sunshine:
Assuming I correctly understand your objectives here, there are a number of
ways you can accomplish your goal but I think the most straightforward &
reasonably simple way would be to use a partition management utility such as
Partition Magic to merge the partitions on both of your HDDs so that each
HDD would have a single partition encompassing the entire disk capacity. In
the final analysis that's your ultimate objective, is it not?

Generally speaking the merging process goes without a hitch but like
everything else in this business things can go wrong. So it's important (if
not vital in your case) that before undertaking this merging process you
back up all the folders/files that are important to you. Since you have a
USB external HDD you can easily do this. Better yet would be to use a disk
imaging program such as Acronis True Image to create a disk image of each
HDD and store such on the USBEHD.

The obvious advantage of using a partition management program in this case
is that this would avoid the necessity of transferring HDDs from one device
to another.
Anna

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Do you need to use these older photo applications? There are freeware
applications , which may suit.

XnView
http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.html

IrfanView
http://www.irfanview.com/

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~