Need to Merge Partitians - Help Please

cltaylor12

I need to merge partitians on my hard-drive to give c: more space.

I recently upgraded to Windows XP, and I only have 691MB left on a 3.99MB partitian only AFTER uninstalling Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop.

I have, not by my doing, the following "logical" partitians (one hard drive sliced into the following):

c:/ 3.99 GB w/only 691MB of free space remaining (16%)
d:/ 3.99 GB w/2.67GB of free space remaining (which contains some miscellanious applications and no "personal" files)
e:/ 3.99 GB w/2.46GB of free space remaining (which contains some miscellanious applications I don't even need and should delete but they don't even appear in the list of applications that can be deleted, and some midi files I'm about to move off of it)
f:/ 3.99 GB w/3.64GB of free space remaining (which contains personal files of my husbands including his website data/projects)
g:/ 7.99 GB w/1.91GB of free space remaining (contains personal data of mine which I plan to move shortly)
h:/ 7.99 GB w/5/18GB of free space remaining (contains my installation of iPOD and iTunes along with Adobe Premiere, and is the space I plan to use for Audio and/or Video projects)
i:/ 2.13 GB w/1/56GB of free space remaining (which contains my XP OS install files)

I'd like to merge c:/ and d:/, but I saw somewhere that partitian magic warnings say to not merge an adjacent partitian with the OS partitian. Is that correct? Can I not merge c: with d: because the OS is on c:/ ? The "goal" is to give the OS more "space", so how do I accomplish that? The are each FAT32, so that shouldn't be an "issue", right?

I would also prefer to merge d:/ with e:/ since e:/ has served no useful purpose. I would similarly like to merge g:/ with h:/.

So, questions:

What application should I use?

In what order should I merge the partitians (I'm thinking d:/ with e:/ first, and then the result of that merge with c:/ for optimal size)? Then g:/ with h:/? Or does one merge the furthest partitian out going backward in the alphabet?

Can someone help me? I would imaging the most effective thing to do would be to back up all application and personal data, and then just wipe the drive clean, but I don't really know how to back up all my DSL/Connectivity drivers, hardware drivers, etc., and would really like to just simply tell the computer to merge the slices without loosing anything.

I have an external USB drive coming which I was going to use for an iPOD library (back up), maybe I should use it to back up my applications, etc.?

I need help, its been forever since I've done this sort of stuff, and I didn't slice this machine's harddrive up originally. I think Partitian Magic 5.0 was used when Windows ME was installed, several years ago.

Windows XP is installed currently; I think I mentioned that - But MS Office was uninstalled in the interest of space on c:/

Help? PMs or email are welcomed,

Christine

Thrax

Powerquest Partition Magic's newest version can help you. It can merge partitions on the fly with no data loss from anywhere on the drive. It will also convert to matching file systems before the merger. People have had problems, but I've merged probably 200 partitions over the last two years without a hiccup. Your mileage may vary, and the software needs to be purchased.

I've also merged adjacent partitions with OS partitions.

cltaylor12

Is "Powerquest Partition Magic's newest version" the same as the PartitionMagic 8.0 version at the Symmantec site? When I put my PartitionMagic 5.0 disc in and went to tech support, it drove me to Symmantec's site.

Thrax

I'm fairly certain that the newest version is indeed v8.0.

Straight_Man

Um, the reason not to merge C and D is becasue C is a primary partition and D is actually a logical drive partition in a not-viewable Extended Partition (PM will show it, but not with a drive letter).

Here is a way to use PM to get C bigger, but you will probably not like this as it is NOT easy and will take PM a while to do.

You can shrink logical drives with PM, free space, then shrink your extended partition. Having doen that, you can then increase the size of C. So, IF you need nothing in E, take and destroy it (after gettign any data you NEED moved elsewhere). THEN, use PM to move D into E's former space. Then shrink the extended partition, freeing up E amount of space between the end of C and the new beginning point of the extended partition. Now, resize C to fill the new empty space.

You do not merge like this in one step, instead you do it this way, you move and resize to get sdpace open right next to partition you want to enlarge, and then you enlarge the partition you want bigger.

With G and H, you have a different and more complex problem. Normally, what I would do is to move all of the data onto G or H, then delete the emptied partition, then enlarge the one with all the data now in it. BUT, niether G nor H have enough room to hold all teh data from both. So, question, is there stuff you do not need in either or both, or stuff you can burn to CD and take off of the HD??? IF you can make enough open space in G or H to hold all you need out of both, then you can do what I described above.

Have you ever seen a shell game??? Thios game has something under one shell, nothing under two or more other shells. The empty ones are useless shells with no meat, teh one with somehting under it might have something valuable under it. So, to be able to destroy the shell with something under it, you need the stuff that is valauble moved FIRST, to under or within another shell. you can't, in the shell game, parcel stuff out amongst multiple shell covers. BUT, if we think of logical drive frameworks as shells, data in them can be parcelled out to other HDs with Windows Explorer. once one "shell" is empty, the framework can be removed. Then, in PM, it can in essence be reassigned by reworking the framework's data so teh logical drive now is bigger. BUT, to resize, all the space including old drive's FORMER space needs to be contiguous, or adjacent, with empty either after or before the partition to be enlarged. If you want the data in both things, neither has enough space to hold all data in both, then you can move some of the data elsewhere so one has enough space for data remaining in other, OR you can if you CAN do this, move ALL the data out of one logical drive and then delete it, and then make the remaining drive in contiguous space bigger, and THEN if you want put the data you moved out of the way back into bigger drive as the last thing in sequence to do.

Begin to see how to do this, sans a true one-pass merge, which structurally is not relaibly doable normally??? I've seen it done, but not with PM and not with NTFS or FAT32 drives in any EASY way. Typically, the data ends up at some point on a different physical HD, or on CDs, for at least a while and many times permanently.

cltaylor12

Ah, I see. Okay. I'd better print this !


But,.... what if there are APPLICATIONS installed on D:\ ?

If I move the contents of D:\ as you instructed, will the applications and or the OS recognize the move of the application data?

Will those apps no longer run properly due to the registry entries being "wrong" (moved the stuff to which the registry keys presumably point)?

c-

BlackHawk

Application Mover

cltaylor12

I did it! Partition Magic and Windows XP actually worked together to update the registry after the merges/resizing of the partitions was finished.

The only thing it didn't totally update were some of the shortcuts, so I just ran through them and fixed them myself.

Then I reinstalled the applications I had to uninstall, and "so far" (knock on wood), everything is PERFECT!


Thank you VERY MUCH for the replies!! I'm so happy now!

Christine

Straight_Man

Happy it worked, as I said in PM also....