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General discussion

how to unpartion a hard drive on a laptop

by seadog24 Jul 28, 2004 10:32PM PDT

I would like to unpartion my hard drive. I have my recovery disks and was wondering how to do it. I cna not afford to send it to a computer pro to have it done. Any ideas?
thanks

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Re: how to unpartion a hard drive on a laptop

by Kees Bakker Jul 28, 2004 10:51PM PDT

Seadog,

1. To do it while conserving your data: go and buy Partition Magic (or comparable shareware). It makes sense to have a good backup before starting.

2. To do it with data loss in Windows up to ME: boot from a boot diskette, delete the old partitions, make a new one and use your recovery CD to bring it to what it was. However, note that some recovery CD's rely on data in hidden partitions to get additional data from. So better be sure it works. See www.fdisk.com for an introduction to fdisk, if necessary.

3. To do it with data loss in Windows XP: see http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=309000 for an introduction to Disk Management. Use Google or post on this forum for more info, if necessary.

Hope this helps.

Kees

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