Combine harddrives

[lizdunn]

I have a dell latitude laptop. The harddrive is split into c, d and e drives. How can I make them just c drive. I am upgrading laptop from 98 to xp. Any help?

Thanks.

 

[dkdude]

lizdunn,

Try having a look at partition magic. It allows you to merge partitions. At your own risk of course -nothing is 101 % sure, but I've used it often w/o any problems!

http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/

Good Luck §;O)


Jakob

 

[oldcomptrguy]

You need to be sure of what each drive is. Some comptr mfgrs use a D drive for the backup or restore functions. In that case, E Drive would be the CD Rom drive.

 

[dkdude]

lizdunn,

The best solution is to do a backup of all you need, then delete all partitions and install XP. If it's an upgrade, I've read that you only need to insert your original Win98 CD during the XP installation -rather than doing a "upgrade". Upgrades like that can cause unforseen problems...

Good Luck §;O)


Jakob

 

[XofCDe3rd]

dkdude has the right idea....Try picking up a copy of partition magic 8 it has an option to merge partitions on a single hard drive..

Though be sure to backup your data although I have not had any problems with data when merging partitions...

p.s I have not tried merging partitions of different file systems. I expect we can not do so to some extent....

 

[SYAR2003]

Sometime it can go really bad merging with PM8 .
Iv'e also experienced it myself .
Make backups of all your important data first.

Check this thread: (as bad as i gets)
thread779-703298

 

[CitrixEngineer]

If you're upgrading from 98 to XP, I'd suggest doing a complete re-install. I've done this upgrade, but the end results don't seem to be as satisfying as a rebuild; The system I tried this on was slower than a freshly built machine, and suffered lockups and mysterious errors in explorer.exe.

My suggestion; Back up the hard disk, insert the XP CD-Rom and reboot, then do a fresh install, wiping all current partitions. You'll need to re-install your applications, of course, and restore your data from that backup you made earlier... you did make a backup, didn't you...?

Even if you don't rebuild, it's so important to backup your data that I'll say it again.

Hope this helps

 

[lizdunn]

Okay. I decided to reinstall XP. When i get to screen that asks about partitions, do I delete the D & E partitions, then re-partition C?

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Sorry I missed your response;

The answer is yes - repartition from scratch, provided you have made your backup, of course.