How To Combine Two Hard Drive Partitions With No Deleting?

[Mort]

Hi,

I'm running an older PC with Windows XP and SP3, and SeaMonkey browser.
My main hard drive partition is almost full, while my secondary
partition has a moderate amount of free space. The problem is that the
secondary also has some programs on it. Any method that I know of
combining the 2 partitions into my main partition = C, will delete the
contents of the lesser partition.

Is there any way that I can combine the two, with no deletions taking place?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Mort Linder

 

[Paul]

Hi,

I'm running an older PC with Windows XP and SP3, and SeaMonkey browser.
My main hard drive partition is almost full, while my secondary
partition has a moderate amount of free space. The problem is that the
secondary also has some programs on it. Any method that I know of
combining the 2 partitions into my main partition = C, will delete the
contents of the lesser partition.

Is there any way that I can combine the two, with no deletions taking
place?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Mort Linder

If the partitions are adjacent to one another, you can:

1) Shrink one partition and expand the other.
A good third-party partition manager tool, can do
resizing and movement of partitions. You may need to
shrink the right-most partition, and move it to the right,
to free up a "chunk" in the middle. Then expand the left-most
partition, to fill the space.

2) The more evil option, is called "Merge", where the
two partitions are poured together. I wouldn't touch
that with a barge pole That is high risk.

There are some free third-party partition management programs.
This list isn't completely accurate, as some of the commercial
ones, have free versions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_partitioning_software

Check to see if there is a direct download link. Some sites like
this, if you take the "easy" looking download button, they'll
start you off with a "downloader application". And it will
want to install tool bars you don't want. If you look around,
there may be a direct download button there somewhere. Or,
go to the software manufacturer's site, and see if they have
an alternate download link.

http://download.cnet.com/EaseUS-Partition-Master-Free-Edition/3000-2248_4-10863346.html

*******

It takes careful planning, to reduce the runtime of
this kind of work. So don't be in a rush to press any
buttons, until you're sure you've got the shortest route
to the objective.

No tool, can really combine the steps you want to do,
into one "giant step". Partition management takes "baby steps",
and you need to see how the tool does them, to plan the best
order of execution. Many times, I see things being done,
where I say to myself "why couldn't they have just combined
these two steps, how hard is that to do?". So baby steps
are common to all of them.

I recommend a backup, before doing this. Mainly because,
it takes time to build trust in a new software you've
downloaded. For example, I've heard of one of the freebie
partition managers, corrupting a FAT32 while resizing it.
Using Macrium Reflect Free, can take minimal time to store
the partitions to an external disk - that program only stores
the sectors that have data in them (like many others do).
It can even back up C: "hot", without rebooting like Ghost
used to.

The partition tool you use, will probably run CHKDSK before
beginning. And that's for safety. It doesn't pay to move
around stuff that is damaged.

Similarly, I occasionally use the free version of HDTune (2.55),
to check the SMART statistics on the hard drive. If there
are a lot of Reallocated Sectors, then don't start moving
stuff. I had a disk, where as soon as you did "big" data
operations, the reallocated sectors would just grow and grow.
So be aware of how healthy the disk is. No partition
manager I know of, is clever enough to look at SMART
and say "you really should not do this on a flaky disk".

The Merge type operation, is really hard to get right.
Whereas, if a software developer can't do a Move/Resize
task, they shouldn't really be in the business of
developing partition managers.

You can do this from Linux, but most people don't care
about such a statement...

Paul

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi,

I'm running an older PC with Windows XP and SP3, and SeaMonkey browser.
My main hard drive partition is almost full, while my secondary
partition has a moderate amount of free space. The problem is that the
secondary also has some programs on it. Any method that I know of
combining the 2 partitions into my main partition = C, will delete the
contents of the lesser partition.

Is there any way that I can combine the two, with no deletions taking place?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

See Paul's reply, but note that if you do that, some programs will end
up in a different location from where they were installed, and will
stop working as a result. That's because most programs have many
entries pointing to their location within \Windows, in the registry
and elsewhere. Those entries will be wrong of you move the program.

 

[Paul]

See Paul's reply, but note that if you do that, some programs will end
up in a different location from where they were installed, and will
stop working as a result. That's because most programs have many
entries pointing to their location within \Windows, in the registry
and elsewhere. Those entries will be wrong of you move the program.

The Merge would screw things up. References to "D:\Program Files"
would be invalid. I didn't discuss the other specifics of Merge,
but stopped at pointing out, in my opinion, it isn't very safe.
I've never attempted Merge, ever. Just a bad idea.

The shrink/expand should be OK, as most things don't use
absolute sector addresses. In a world filled with defragmentation
programs, an absolute sector address wouldn't be too useful.
With shrink/expand, you still have C: and D:, and all the files
are still in their respective partitions.

Paul

 

[Mort]

Bill in Co wrote:


Hi,

Thanks to all for the helpful information. I will try to resize the
partitions without merging or combining them.

Mort

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Ken Blake, MVP wrote: []

See Paul's reply, but note that if you do that, some programs will end
up in a different location from where they were installed, and will
stop working as a result. That's because most programs have many
entries pointing to their location within \Windows, in the registry
and elsewhere. Those entries will be wrong of you move the program.

You beat me to that (-:.

Is there *anything* that uses absolute sector addresses? (except for the
boot sector, I presume)?

I have seen - though not recently, but I think it _was_ in the XP era -
softwares which _I think_ used absolute addresses as an antipiracy
measure, i. e. they set themselves up at install to expect to find
certain things at certain absolute sector addresses. At least I _think_
that's what they did: since it was part of their protection method, they
weren't forthcoming about how it worked! It was easy to unintentionally
break them (I don't mean to break - "crack" - the antipiracy method, I
mean break as in prevent from working) by things like defragmenting. (I
_think_ they had a way of preventing the built-in defragmenter from
breaking them.) IIRR this was the same piece of software that came with
a number (3 I think, to allow for disasters) of "licences" on a floppy,
and you could "transfer" the "licence" back and forth to/from the
floppy: once you'd taken it off, the installed software reverted to the
evaluation version (which only gave you half an hour at a time). That
_might_ not have been the same software as used the absolute sector
address though.

Like you, I wouldn't attempt combining partitions.
And even if it succeeded, as Ken said, some program references could be off,
due to the partition merge. He simply needs to resize the partitions.

And then, in time, reinstall those few prog.s that are installed on D:.
(Personally I keep a small - 30G, though I've only used 18.8 of it after
several years) - C:, for the OS and software, with the rest - D: - for
data, but that suits how I work; YMM (and probably does) V.

 

[Andy]

Paul wrote:

Ken Blake, MVP wrote:

[]

See Paul's reply, but note that if you do that, some programs will end
up in a different location from where they were installed, and will
stop working as a result. That's because most programs have many
entries pointing to their location within \Windows, in the registry
and elsewhere. Those entries will be wrong of you move the program.

You beat me to that (-:.

Is there *anything* that uses absolute sector addresses? (except for the

boot sector, I presume)?

I have seen - though not recently, but I think it _was_ in the XP era -

softwares which _I think_ used absolute addresses as an antipiracy

measure, i. e. they set themselves up at install to expect to find

certain things at certain absolute sector addresses. At least I _think_

that's what they did: since it was part of their protection method, they

weren't forthcoming about how it worked! It was easy to unintentionally

break them (I don't mean to break - "crack" - the antipiracy method, I

mean break as in prevent from working) by things like defragmenting. (I

_think_ they had a way of preventing the built-in defragmenter from

breaking them.) IIRR this was the same piece of software that came with

a number (3 I think, to allow for disasters) of "licences" on a floppy,

and you could "transfer" the "licence" back and forth to/from the

floppy: once you'd taken it off, the installed software reverted to the

evaluation version (which only gave you half an hour at a time). That

_might_ not have been the same software as used the absolute sector

address though.

Like you, I wouldn't attempt combining partitions.

And even if it succeeded, as Ken said, some program references could be off,

due to the partition merge. He simply needs to resize the partitions.

And then, in time, reinstall those few prog.s that are installed on D:.

(Personally I keep a small - 30G, though I've only used 18.8 of it after

several years) - C:, for the OS and software, with the rest - D: - for

data, but that suits how I work; YMM (and probably does) V.

--

J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf



"Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion." - Harlan Ellison

I highly recommend Easus Partition Manager.

I have used merge without problems, but prefer to change the partition sizes.

Everyone should be backing at least every few days.

Andy

 

[Paul]

I guess I still wonder which specific programs actually use absolute sector
addresses. Maybe Paul has some ideas. Some programs may use the Disk ID
(disk signature), however.

I haven't seen any. The only cases I know of, have to do with
file system layouts and boot-ability. Like maybe Win98. I don't
really have enough expensive software, to have seen any fancy
protection schemes.

My mileage is as follows:

C: has all programs and their associated data, keeping everything together,
except for my music and video file archives, which are each installed in
their own separate partitions. So when I reimage the drive (which is pretty
often), everything is saved together, and ditto on the restore operation.
But I don't have a huge amount of personal data in terms of their actual
filesize (most documents are pretty small). I also have an additional
partition where I store old program versions, or some additional programs
not yet installed in case I ever want them at some other time).

In retrospect, it probably wouldn't have been a bad idea to split the
personal data off into its own separate partition, but this is working out
for me.

For me there would be some potential confusion of whether or not to store
the entire "Documents and Settings" (which also includes program application
data!) directory on another partition (doesn't sound like a good idea to me,
since the closely related "Program Files" directory is on C and you would
be splitting them up, or just the personal documents (usually stored in My
Documents) on the other partition, or whatever.

What I did with mine, is split off a 25GB "Downloads" folder only,
to a second partition. The structure of WinXP is unchanged. It means,
when I do a search of the "OS-proper", I can do that against C:,
while if I'm looking for something previously downloaded, I can
search against D: for that. The My Documents stays on C: for
the moment. I didn't bother "tearing C: in half", like putting
My Documents and Program Files on D:, as that would be too
disruptive. The downloads folder was beginning to slow down
searches, which is why I moved it. It makes backup management
a bit easier.

Paul

 

[Mort]

Uninstall and reinstall
if you do not have the Software to reinstall
run your program go to the help
clack the website and re-download the Software

Thanks to all for the helpful and friendly posts. I really do appreciate
it, and now have a basis for trying to solve the problem.

Mort Linder