Hard-drive partitions

  • Thread starter Thread starter SRA
  • Start date Start date
SRA said:
How do I combine or delete partitions on my hard-drive.
Im have WinXP Home Ed.
Click to expand...

You cannot do this natively - you must purchase a third-party partitioning
tool (e.g. PowerQuest's Partition Magic).
 
-----Original Message-----
How do I combine or delete partitions on my hard-drive.
Im have WinXP Home Ed.
.
Click to expand...

You can go right click on my computer -> manage ->disk management and get basic harddisk management controls but there is no merge capability there
An easy way to use a merge function is to get a hold of partition magic. Easy to use GUI application for managing partitions

JordanFox
 
SRA--

To the useful info already provided, I'd like to add to make sure you
understand:

If you don't use a third party program like Partition Commander or Partition
Magic, and use the native disk management program, you will erase the the
entire contents of your hard drive. The inhouse program for disk management
in Windows XP is discussed pretty well in "Help and Support" and is best
suited for creating partitions on new or empty hard drives. You can get to
Disk Management by going to the run box and typing in "dskmgmt.msc" or
Performance and Maintainance>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk
Management. It has a comprehensive Help.

Ditto for FDISK, a dos utility that can also do this. ( An old wive's
fictional tale is that *FDISK* means you can't recover material from a hard
drive, and with the *right tools* not available to most people, you sure
can, and from a lot more erasures of hard drives, but that's another
discussion, and they aren't in the hands of most of us.) MIT has a couple
Computer Science Ph.D. candidates assigned to a very active program doing
extensive research on this recovery.

See for reference:

How to: Use Disk Management to Configure Basic Disks in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309000

How to: Use Disk Management to Configure Dynamic Disks in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308424

I recommend that you try either Partition Magic--you can download and try
it, and experience it but you won't be able to implement any changes with
the trialware. Partition Commander 8 is another very popular 3rd parth
product. There are many people who have them both or have had them both and
like one or the other. DiskPart.exe is a text-mode command interpreter that
is separate from the Windows XP command prompt. It allows you to manage
fixed disks and volumes by using scripts or direct input. It prepares hard
disks and divides them into two or more partitions. It will erase any drive
you attempt to repartition. You can run Diskpart command from the Recovery
console as well. You aren't looking for Diskpart here.

PC World: Step by Step Guide to Partitioning the Hard Drive

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,73826,00.asp

Tech TV: How To Partition Your Hard Drive

http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp/howto/story/0,24330,3465087,00.html

hth,

Chad Harris





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If you don't use a third party program like Partition Commander or Partition
Magic, and use the native disk management program, you will erase the the
entire contents of your hard drive.
Click to expand...

This is not true under all conditions. Much depends on what the current
partitioning is. Example: Windows on C:. All other partitions as logical
drives within an extended partition. Changing the extra partitions would be
handled separately from the partition holding C: and the entire contents of
the hard drive would not be erased.
 
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