Chris@Excal

Have built a machine with XP but instead of installing over the previous copy of NT, I installed a new copy on a partition on drive H: I did not think when doing this, so I know that the easiest thing to do is to format and re-install XP. But my question is can I somehow delete the partition to make one large hard drive without having to rebuild the whole PC?
Original had a C: Drive of 2GB, there is a E drive of 3 GB and the H is 3 GB.
Thanks
Chris

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Chris,

Partition Magic will do what you want.

If you don't have any data you want to keep then a clean wipe, repartition and re-install is a better option though.

Chris@Excal

Will have a look for partition Magic, is on a PC that has been usd for a few weeks, especially with games, so do not want to upset my son by removing his high scores etc!
Cheers,
Chris

Tony_W

Chris,

If you have a spare HDD and a copy of Norton Ghost (prob 2003 for XP I think) then you could ghost the XP "partition to Image" onto the spare HDD, then clear out your normal HDD with Partition Magic or whatever

(some progs. may have trouble with NTFS file system that will be there for NT, but PM8 will be fine)

, remove all partitions

(or re-set the drive to use say 2 partitions -1 for the OS and one for data - I use this set up as then you only have to re-format the OS partition and don't lose all your data on the other)

, re-format the drive, and then reboot with a ghost boot disk and "partition from image" back onto it from the spare hdd...

This way is a bit more convaluted but it will ensure you don't lose anything for the original hdd, but allows you to set the original back up to how you want it and then ghost the image back onto it. It will be completely transparent to any other users, such as your son~!

Tony

Mark Underwood

chris...I'd use Partition Magic and it will keep yuer data safe. Looks like u got a hellish small disk....I'd opt for a larger disk

£60 buys you around 40 to 60GB

Chris@Excal

Mark, Disk is small though 2 years ago it was pretty big!!
Will have a go with Partition Magic, just need to find a 'cheap' copy.
Tony, will try to find Ghost as well, heard lots about it but never had a go, could be very useful for building PC's at work.

Chris

Tony_W

Chris,

I can't recommend Ghost enough. I've just rebuilt all "my" school's PC's and server.

Some have Win98 on and others have XP...all have about 10 users set up on them. Without Ghost it would have been a nightmare, and Ghost is so easy to use.

(With XP I needed to use sysprep, prior to Ghosting). If you do this at work and you use XP, then sysprep allows you to put in each PC's unique key/registration.

Tony