re-partition without destroying data ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Barrett Bonden
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Barrett Bonden

Have a friend with 3 partitions, one with data he'd like to keep, running
winXP home ; can he delete the other two and then re-create a larger one
without (more than likely) destroying data on the third ?
 
Have a friend with 3 partitions, one with data he'd like to keep,
running winXP home ; can he delete the other two and then re-create
a larger one without (more than likely) destroying data on the third ?
Click to expand...

Yes, but not with just XP.

You need to use something like Ghost to do that.

Its dirt cheap if you buy it as part of SystemWorks Pro 2003.

Has to be Pro, it isnt in SystemWorks 2003.

You should have the drive fully backed up before you do it tho,
any repartitioning software can lose all the data on the drive.
 
Rod said:
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Yes, but not with just XP.

You need to use something like Ghost to do that.

Its dirt cheap if you buy it as part of SystemWorks Pro 2003.

Has to be Pro, it isnt in SystemWorks 2003.

You should have the drive fully backed up before you do it tho,
any repartitioning software can lose all the data on the drive.
Click to expand...
.... and it'll be a lot easier if the two he wants to combine are contiguous.
 
Barrett said:
Have a friend with 3 partitions, one with data he'd like to keep, running
winXP home ; can he delete the other two and then re-create a larger one
without (more than likely) destroying data on the third ?
Click to expand...

Make a good backup first.

While this is something that _can_ be done, meaning no offense, the fact
that neither of you knows this would indicate that your position on the
learning curve is one that makes it likely that when you try it you'll
screw something up and lose it all. Make a good backup first.
 
Previously J. Clarke said:
Barrett Bonden wrote:
Click to expand...
Make a good backup first.
Click to expand...
While this is something that _can_ be done, meaning no offense, the fact
that neither of you knows this would indicate that your position on the
learning curve is one that makes it likely that when you try it you'll
screw something up and lose it all. Make a good backup first.
Click to expand...

I second that. It might even be easier to do a complete backup of
all three partitions, delete all three and recreate as you want it.
Then restore that data from backup.

And whatever you do, make sure your backup is readable and correct
(i.e. do a compare against the original files) before you start
messing with the partitions. After you have such a backup, you can
freely experiment with very little risk.

As a side benefit, you can experiment with backup creation, something
needed for reliable operation of a computer anyways.

Arno
 
I may be wrong. But surely you can do all that with fdisk, which is on
a win98 boot disk.
Run fdisk, delete the partitions you want to delete, and create a
partition in the remaining space. If you wanted an NTFS partition I
don't know if you would use fdisk or how you would format it. But if
you want FAT32 partitions then definitely, just use fdisk and format
them with the format command on a win98 boot disk.

If you wanted to resize a partition without losing data, then you would
need a 3rd party program. I use Partition Magic.

You may want to back first incase you make a silly mistake. But I think
the backup up procedure may turn out to be far more hassle and far more
difficult than the partitioning!
Unless yopu're just copying some data onto a Cd-r or HDD using normal
procedures.
 
Previously said:
I may be wrong. But surely you can do all that with fdisk, which is on
a win98 boot disk.
Run fdisk, delete the partitions you want to delete, and create a
partition in the remaining space. If you wanted an NTFS partition I
don't know if you would use fdisk or how you would format it. But if
you want FAT32 partitions then definitely, just use fdisk and format
them with the format command on a win98 boot disk.
Click to expand...
If you wanted to resize a partition without losing data, then you would
need a 3rd party program. I use Partition Magic.
Click to expand...

Caveat emptor. At least without backup. And with backup you can use the
free GNU parted as well.
You may want to back first incase you make a silly mistake. But I think
the backup up procedure may turn out to be far more hassle and far more
difficult than the partitioning!
Click to expand...

That is standard. However if you don't do it and something goes wrong,
you will be kicking yourself for some time. And in addition everybody
should have a tested end regularly executed backup process anyways.
If you don't have that, your data is obviously not worth much to
you, so maybe just throw it all away and just repartition with
fdisk ;-)

The point in having the backup is as a safety net. If PM/parted
do their job right, then you just keep that backup as a normal backup.
If not, you have more work but no data loss.

Arno
 
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