hard drive

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Guest

please excuse my ignorance
since my pc crashed my hard drive has separated from "c" drive to "c" and
"d" drive, can i restore it back to just "c"drive

would appriciate any help
 
ivanb said:
please excuse my ignorance
since my pc crashed my hard drive has separated from "c" drive to "c"
and "d" drive, can i restore it back to just "c"drive
Click to expand...


Hard drives don't separate themselves.

What did you do when your PC crashed? Did you reinstall Windows? Did someone
else do it for you?

can i restore it back to just "c"drive
Click to expand...


Unfortunately, no version of Windows provides any way of changing the
existing partition structure of the drive nondestructively. The only way to
do what you want is with third-party software. Partition Magic is the
best-known such program, but there are freeware/shareware alternatives. One
such program is BootIt Next Generation. It's shareware, but comes with a
free 30-day trial, so you should be able to do what you want within that 30
days. I haven't used it myself (because I've never needed to use *any* such
program), but it comes highly recommended by several other MVPs here.

Whatever software you use, make sure you have a good backup before
beginning. Although there's no reason to expect a problem, things *can* go
wrong.
 
Why not just reformat the Hard Drive and then Reinstall Windows?

Simpler...

Make sure you have a Good Backup of any data first.

DSH
 
Simpler... if you don't have many peripherals that take their own
drivers, applications that require several updates to bring them back to
where they were, pre-reinstall. Yeah simpler. It took me 3 days to get
everything back the way it was before reinstall. Thank God for
Partition Magic and several disk / partition recovery utilities. I may
never format and reinstall again if I can avoid it.

--
________
To email me, Edit "blog" from my email address.
Brian M. Kochera
"Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once!"
View My Web Page: http://home.earthlink.net/~brian1951



Why not just reformat the Hard Drive and then Reinstall Windows?

Simpler...

Make sure you have a Good Backup of any data first.

DSH
Click to expand...
 
Nope.

You back up the entire Hard Drive first -- to an external Hard Drive.

DSH
 
Brian said:
Simpler... if you don't have many peripherals that take their own
drivers, applications that require several updates to bring them back
to where they were, pre-reinstall. Yeah simpler. It took me 3 days
to get everything back the way it was before reinstall. Thank God for
Partition Magic and several disk / partition recovery utilities. I may
never format and reinstall again if I can avoid it.
Click to expand...


I'm with you. Except for the very rare person who has almost nothing on the
drive, reformatting and reinstalling is a major pain, and should be a last
resort.
 
D. Spencer Hines said:
Nope.

You back up the entire Hard Drive first -- to an external Hard Drive.
Click to expand...


No, that doesn't help at all with any of the issues he mentions. Backup lets
you keep your data, but all your apps, updates, and customizations still
have to be reinstalled, as well as the drivers for peripherlas.
 
Nope.

You're not reading what I said.

You back up the ENTIRE Hard Drive, applications, drivers, updates and
customizations ALL to an EXTERNAL Hard Drive.

Duck Soup.

I do the ENTIRE Backup weekly as well as backing up new data daily to DVD's.

The entire process of Backup of the ENTIRE Hard Disk to an EXTERNAL Hard
Drive, once per week, takes me no more than 30 minutes.

DSH
 
D. Spencer Hines said:
Nope.

You're not reading what I said.
Click to expand...


I certainly am.

You back up the ENTIRE Hard Drive, applications, drivers, updates and
customizations ALL to an EXTERNAL Hard Drive.
Click to expand...



That is fine. Nevertheless, if you reinstall Windows cleanly, all of those
applications, drivers, updates and customizations are useless to you. You
have to reinstall all of them.
 
and even in the case of performing a "repair" vs complete reinstallation
there may be applicable hotfixes that must be re-installed.
 
Nope.

Not if you keep your hotfixes and backups up to date -- as I do -- every
day.

DSH
 
sigh<

I forgot -- but some people aren't perfect

If perchance you need to use the "repair" and some items must be pulled from
the original OS CD due to corruption.

Yes...you just might have to reload patches
 
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