Posted: 3/31/2005 6:02:57 AM EDT
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I have an older laptop that I aquired along the way. It is running WindowsXP Pro. It only has a 4 gig HD and someone along the way partitioned the drive into 2 equal size drives (C and D). C drive is completely maxed out and won't let me install SP2. D drive is empty. Question: Is there any way to delete the D drive and roll the disk space into C drive without buying something like Partition Magic or something similar? I would be willing to do a clean XP install but I don't think XP gives this option. It allows you to delete a partition but not roll the space into the other drive. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks. |
| There is another way also. I have a DOS boot disk and I use fdisk.exe to wipe the partitions. It causes total loss of data and then you have to repartition it to the size you want and then format. I haven't tried this on an XP system, but it always worked before. If you can boot into DOS mode (don't know if it's possible anymore) you can use this command with no boot disk. Good luck. MJD |
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Do you keep all your data on C most keep data(pics and stuff) on D and only OS and programs on C so that if you ever crash and have to reload the OS you don't loose your data. I think the only way to delete a partision when XP is loaded is to reformat and reload the OS. |
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Sounds interesting. I just did a full re-install of XP yesterday and it went perfect. I did at first delete the D drive but it just labeled the space as "non-partitioned" disk space rather than moving it into C so I changed it back. I didn't try to delete C because I was worried that my XP disk is only an upgrade disk rather than a full version. Will I run into problems using an Upgrade disk? Thanks |
Cool, found it. Ok, I deleted the D partition. No problem. Now, how do I move that disk space into C drive? |
DITTO... Works for me every time... Did it on my laptop, and 3 PC's sofar... |
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Are you logged in as Administrator? Not as an acct with admin priveledges, but as Administrator? I know I've done it before, can't do it as I'm at work and the drive I'm working on isn't partitioned. Google "windows xp disk manager" I'm sure you'll get some hits. |
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Yes, logged in as computer administrator. Just read your post to someone on the phone and they said what you are describing sounds like the interface on Partition Magic. Damn! I hope you are right. I am getting close to just going with deleting all the partitions in the xp re-install and establishing one drive. My only concern is that I have an UPGRADE version disk. I just don't want to turn this laptop into a doorstop. |
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As a stopgap, you can search out all your data files and relocate them to D, tweak the swapfile settings to reduce it to ~2x-3x your physical RAM - for that matter, I believe you can even set D: as the drive to use for the swapfile, search for *.tmp files and dump them, and set the defaults for any graphics apps to use D: as their scratch disk instead of C: Then carefully de-install anything you aren't needing. When you are done, do a full defrag. Partition Magic works great, there is no reason not to use it. Another option is to use Norton's Ghost to mirror the drive onto a larger unit and swap it in. |