decreasing dual boot partitions from 20 to 5 . . . .

[onlymel]

Some time a go I created a dual boot putting windows 98SE on “C” drive of 20 gig and XP Home on “D” drive of 20 gig.
The reason for this was in case I was going to experience all the mishaps with XP that we read about in this forum then at least I could still have my other operating system running.

Having not experienced anything major with XP (in fact I’m delighted with it) I have come to the decision to revert back to a full hard drive of 40 gig. Example - no partitions.

Okay guys, the question is: - - Can I dump “C” drive? Do I just re-format it and then what do I do? I want to end up with only my 40 gig hard drive and XP Home on it.

Actually thinking about it, perhaps I could have drive “C” at only 5 gig using it for storage of docs etc and Have “D” drive at 35 gig. - - YES, YES, this sounds better. Ignore the first query and let’s go for the 5 gig and 35 gig.

Please someone talk me through it.

 

[bcastner]

Clean install on a re-partitioned and re-formatted disk.

 

[onlymel]

bcastner: - Thanks for the speedy reply but not quite with this. Please treat me like an idiot cos your 9 words meant nothing to me. Pretend I don't know anything about computers. (Actually, you won't be far wrong)!!

Mel in the UK

 

[shaner66]

He's basically saying to partition the drive using a utility called fdisk, so that one partition is 5 GB and one is 35 GB.
However, if you do it that way, you will lose all of your personal files that you now have on your PC.

What you can do is get a program called partition magic, it will do exactly what you want without you losing all of your files.

 

[AP81]

If it was the other way around, and you wanted to resize the D: partition, you would be able to do it, as the partition table will not be shifted, but just resized. However, reducing C: is very hard to do, as it has to shrink the parition and move the partition table- which is highly unlikely to be able to be done successfully.

What bcastner is saying is that you have to start over. You have to use a utility to remove you partitions and recreate them over again. You will lose any information you have on both partitions. This is the only way to do it properly.

Why would you want 35Gb for XP? That's a fair amount of space which would be unussed. I have an 18GB partition for WinXP, and store my important files on another hard drive and/or shared partition.

If I were you, I would format C: and leave it empty, for storing files & mp3s and so on. Or you may want to in the future install Linux in the place of Win98.

 

[bcastner]

onlymel,

I apoligize to you. I was far too brief.

AP81's comments are my feelings. You could try and fiddle with a third-party utility but I can with 96.75% certainty tell you that the adjustments you need to make are simply beyound even an experienced user.

Anytime you want to add non-contiguous (i.e. not right next to each other) partition space you enter into a giant gamble with even the best of the third-party partition management programs.

Having tried that, having been there, and even after on odd occasions even having success, the best thing I could have done was to clean the disk of existing partitions, reformatted, and started from scratch.

In my honest opinion I would not approach the problem that you pose in this thread in any other way, and this is both a technical and an opinion based on experience.

Fortunately, you have a very good friend for free with XP called the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. Be certain to read a bit about how to customize what is set to transfer. The following piece by Sharon Crawford (ignore the serial cable discussion) is a good overview:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/crawford/november12.asp

On a final note, your response to my message was exactly right: hey, not good enough. Tell me more. With that attitude you can learn a tremendous amount from these Forums.

Ask again if you need any other help.

Bill

 

[onlymel]

Hey Bill, AP81 and Shaner66 - - Thank you sooooooo much for the info and advice. Obviously I don’t want to lose my files and progs on “D” drive where XP is running like a dream. I have decided to do this . . . . I am going to reformat “C” and leave it empty and just use it as storage for whatever I want. Yes AP81, I guess 20 gig is a fair amount of space and will just leave this well alone. After all, you don’t mend what isn’t broken do you?
Thanks again guys. . . .

Mel in the UK

 

[apriol]

If you format the c: drive you will not be able to boot to XP. c: drive contains the boot information ( Boot.ini. NTDETECT.COM and the system file ntldr )

Alan.

 

[onlymel]

Apriol: - WOW, thanks for that info. I was going to do this today as well. Pleased I left my notification box ticked. So you suggest that I just leave "C" drive as it is and don't re-format it? - - I will just create a folder on "C" drive and name it personal storage or something like that. Thanks once again for the info.

Mel in the UK