Laptop factory spec partitions ARGH!

xavsheriffxavsheriff London, England
edited May 2006 in Hardware
Hey everyone, new day new prob, hope you are all well.

My girlfriend purchased a reasonably priced laptop about 6 months ago
Its great and excellent value...
specs:
Acer Aspire 3614WLMi
Intel Celeron M 1.7ghz
60GB HDD
DVD RW
1GB DDR2 (2x512)

The hardrive is split into two partitions C: and D: of 30 GB each
This really isnt a problem, however it is rather irritating, as she has about 20-30gb of music and uses itunes, also a lot of image files etc, so one of them is constantly getting over full

What would be the best solution to this, ? can i merge these partitions? They are on the FAT32 system. How would i go about doing this?

Cheers for any help.

Xav

Comments

  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited May 2006
    The best way around it is to get a bigger hard drive or reformat and not include a 2nd partition. I think there is ways around partitions and merging them but it is a tricky job... and requires software. If anyone else wants to chime in please do so.

    But my main suggestion is bigger HD or external HD :)

    But no matter how you look at it about 30Gigs of data will have to be off loaded to do anything.
  • V-PV-P State College, PA Member
    edited May 2006
    I'm not too sure if it merges partitions, but I use Paragon Disk Manager to increase my partition size from 137 GB to 250 GB, because SP1 couldn't do more than 137. Try it out and see if it merges, I'm pretty sure it does.
  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    edited May 2006
    I would recommend against merging... I'd go with backing up all the data on the second partition, deleting the partition, then resizing the primary partition to the maximum.

    Partition Magic is good but Acronis Disk Director is MUCH better. Both, however, may not have enough functionality as freeware. You may need to buy a full version to get everything done. As for free software that can do it... not sure.

    As for starting with a new and larger hard drive... Unless Acer has improved its driver support, I would advise against starting fresh unless you're an above average PC user or an IT person.

    New 80 GB hard drive = $80 + shipping + hours of re-installing WinXP
    Acronis = $50 + shipping + 5 minutes of re-partitioning.
  • xavsheriffxavsheriff London, England
    edited May 2006
    cheers guys,

    have a 250 gb external, its more that they dont work specifically for her,
    Thanks for all the great advice
  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    edited May 2006
    No problem... we here if you need more info, advise, or whatever. :thumbsup:
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