Partition Question

arsebandit

Hi i have a dell d600 which i bought for my kids , the hard drive is divided into 2 parts c & e, i wanted to delete the empty partition (E) so i could have more space on the C drive, i have deleted the drive by going into control panel, storage etc and deleted it ... but i was hopeing this space would jump over to the C drive but it didnt,... any idea how i get this space to move onto the C drive?

Thanks
Bandit

horsebox1977

arsebandit wrote: »

Hi i have a dell d600 which i bought for my kids , the hard drive is divided into 2 parts c & e, i wanted to delete the empty partition (E) so i could have more space on the C drive, i have deleted the drive by going into control panel, storage etc and deleted it ... but i was hopeing this space would jump over to the C drive but it didnt,... any idea how i get this space to move onto the C drive?

Thanks
Bandit

You will need to use DistPart.

arsebandit

do you mean Diskpart??? from microsoft???

Dan_Solo

Apologies if you've a good idea what you're doing, but do you think merging these partitions is a good idea? If your Windows install dies for some reason (thankfully becoming a rarer occurrence) then you could lose everything on the drive. Most people value their user data far more than their Windows install!

Fysh

If you want to remove an existing partition and then expand another existing partition to fill the space, you'll need to use partition management utilities more robust than those built into Windows.

My advice would be:

• Back up ANYTHING you want to keep from the existing setup, preferably by taking a snapshot of the disk with something like Acronis True Image.
• Run Checkdisk on the partitions in question, then defragment them.
• Download Gparted and burn a CD.
• Boot from the CD.
• Delete the partition you want to get rid of, then expand the partition you want to keep.
• Reboot and check whether any recovery work is needed.

I've done the above numerous times without problems, but depending on your OS and your luck you may have problems. Vista and 7, for example, will usually require a repair after finishing the steps described above - see here for more information.

Capt'n Midnight

Fysh wrote: »

I've done the above numerous times without problems, but depending on your OS and your luck you may have problems. Vista and 7, for example, will usually require a repair after finishing the steps described above

Gparted and it's ilk tend to set the disk check flag to force a disk check regardless, as a precautionary measure, noting to get too worried about.

If using one of the newer versions of windows a much safer way is to see if windows can incorporate the space for you , in disk manager right click on the free space (or is it the partition ?) and chose the option to add it. This is the recommended way - but the non-windows solution is good too

NB. if E: was in side an extended partition you must delete the extended partition too before resizing C: - regardless of which OS you use.

Fysh

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

If using one of the newer versions of windows a much safer way is to see if windows can incorporate the space for you , in disk manager right click on the free space (or is it the partition ?) and chose the option to add it. This is the recommended way - but the non-windows solution is good too.

Yeah, it's definitely worth trying, but I've had middling results trying to get those tools to make full use of the available space, unfortunately Hopefully they'll improve over time, though, the disk/partition management utils in Windows have been a bit of a joke for quite some time...

joker@

Partition Magic

Fysh

joker@ wrote: »

Partition Magic

Well done for suggesting a product that's in no way current (it was released before Vista and 7 came out, and so shouldn't be assumed to be compatible with them) and is not available from or supported by its manufacturer any more.