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General discussion

Can you unpartition a partitioned hard drive?

Nov 24, 2003 11:38AM PST

I've just recently upgraded from Windows Me to XP. When I bought the computer two years ago, it came with a 60GB hard drive, but it was partitioned into C: and D: Is it possible to get rid of the partition so it's no longer split 20GB/40GB?

Discussion is locked

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Re:Can you unpartition a partitioned hard drive?
Nov 25, 2003 2:59AM PST

What you're saying is that you have data on your hard drives that is split into two partitions, and you want to combine these partitions into one?

If this is so: use PartitionMagic (8 is the newest version). It can be purchased for 100-something Canadian Dollars, but you can download it for free if you know where to look Grin. This program intelligently creates, resizes, removes, and otherwise manipulates hard drives and their partitions. Very good prog.

Hope this helped. If you want the program (free), email me at romi.strub@primus.ca, but look elsewhere first. Also, if this ISN'T what you were talking about, email me at the above address as well.

P.S. I'm not sure "un-partitioning" works if you're running two "primary partitions" (partitions that have their own operating system installed on them).

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Re:Can you unpartition a partitioned hard drive?
Nov 26, 2003 8:02AM PST

Partition Magic, as suggested, will do the job of merging the partitions, but it will not change any software or configuration information that refers to the D drive. you may have to manually fix things. if you installed software on the D drive, you may end up having to reinstall it to get the drive letters correct. there are programs that assist with this process, but they can do only the relatively simple things like updating the registry. if an application has private configuration files, they won't get changed.

Herb....