Hard Drive Partition stuff

[Xtro]

Evening

Right its been AGES since I've done any messing about with partitioning hard drives and stuff but I need help please.

My pc has:

1x 12gb creaky old HD
1x 120GB nice and shiny new HD

Anyways...

The 12gb had a 2gb partition for the OS (the C drive) and I had a logical partition called D (so just under 10gb).

I wanted to get rid of the partition and just have the C drive as a nice 12gb drive.

I've formatted D, deleted the logical partition using Win Xp System Mgt thingy.

So now my PC just thinks I have a 2gb C drive - question is...can't remember for the life of me how to tell the PC about that other 10gb and give it back to C.

Does this make sense?

The reason I did this mainly btw was I kept running out of space on the C drive and it was majorly pissing me off.

TIA!

 

[xane]

how to tell the PC about that other 10gb and give it back to C.

I think you need Partition Manager or something like it for that one.

 

[gunner440]

i'm not sure if FDISK will pick it up after it was (presumably) converted to ntfs as i've never tried

what you'll have to do is delete current partition on C and it should allow you to create a new one using about 85-90% of the 12gb which is normal anyway

the thing is:

are you planning on installing the OS on the 12 gb? it's a low capacity, older model drive so i'm guessing it's not 7200rpm.. if the other drive is 7200 i'd recommend you installing everything there and dumping the small drive

you won't regret it especially running xp

 

[Tom]

Fdisk, delete all partitions, then create a new one. Set it active, and format it.

 

[Doh_boy]

Fdisk, delete all partitions, then create a new one. Set it active, and format it.

Fdisk isn't called fdisk anymore, sorry I can't remember what it is called now.

 

[Doh_boy]

(new post due to shitty 5 mins rule)

It's called diskpart

useful link

 

[Insane]

Within windows, go to computer management (right-click My Computer and select Manage) and select storage -> Disk Management, but that will just re-create the 10gig partition.

but as to your original question, if you can get your hands on a version of Partition Magic you can resize partitions to the full space, but make sure to make a backup of your settings before you start fiddling in case Windows decides its not really an NTFS partition.

 

[Tom]

Fdisk isn't called fdisk anymore, sorry I can't remember what it is called now.

I bet you could download it from a million sites. The easy way is get get an msdos 5.0 boot disc, stick fdisk.com and format.com on it, and blitz that hd.

 

[TdC]

bootdisk.com is your friend

 

[sibanac]

I bet you could download it from a million sites. The easy way is get get an msdos 5.0 boot disc, stick fdisk.com and format.com on it, and blitz that hd.

Well i wouldnt take a dos 5.0 boot disk, becuase it will trow a fit if you try to access a 12GB disk
try a win2k

 

[Clown]

I took his post as he didn't want to format. Yes. I am ze twisted.
I thought he was asking if he could keep his existing install but make the drive bigger. If he wasn't asking that, I am. Can you? I seem to recall the Seagate hard drive manager thing had an option for this. I can't remember, I only skimmed past it.

 

[Vae]

What about booting from an XP cd or whatever and telling it to re-partition the drive?

 

[gunner440]

u can clone the contents of the disk onto the other one before repartitioning it

after that's done you can put the copy of the partition onto the new, larger one

did it when i was swapping main drive once and used partitionmagic

 

[MrBlack]

The only way you can modify an existing partition's size is by using a tool that understands the file system (NTFS, in this case)

Partition magic does that. There are other tools available. I don't know of any free ones, though.

FDISK/DISKPART and other linux equivalents do not understand file systems, they just create and destroy partitions.

I have to agree, though, if your C: was just your system partition, then the best solution is to re-format and start again. You'll end up with a much cleaner OS.

I would also question the wisdom of keeping your boot partition on the old drive. Relegate it to MP3 storage or something and boot from your new drive. It'll be loads quicker and quieter.

 

[Xtro]

Ta *muchly* for all the replies!

Righto - looks like one copy of Partition Magic needs to be ordered and yep I am going to have to bite the bullet and switch the newer drive to being the one I have my OS on.

Oh and Clown mate...you were right, spot on as to what I was after

 

[Clown]

Ta *muchly* for all the replies!

Righto - looks like one copy of Partition Magic needs to be ordered and yep I am going to have to bite the bullet and switch the newer drive to being the one I have my OS on.

Oh and Clown mate...you were right, spot on as to what I was after

No no no. You don't have to have the OS on the newer HD. If you really wanted it on the smaller drive (I have mine on my 6GB and the bigger drives are for 'files' teehee, but then I started from scratch and reinstalled everything ), I think someone up there said you could clone it to the bigger drive temporarily, format and re-partition the old drive for the full 12GB, and then move the clone back. Heh, I have no idea how that cloning bollocks works.