Community Newsletter: Q&A forum: Is it possible to remove a hard drive partition? If yes, how?

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I think John is offering very sound advice, however I have a great deal of experience in repairing these sort of typical mistakes made by the above average computer user. (partitioning hard drives and installing O.S.s is definitely advanced computing!)
I believe a much safer method to get you back up and running would be rather than changing the partition to instead use a backup and restore solution such as acronis true image. It's relatively inexpensive, and would be of much use to you in the future, as a back-up solution (an essential tool for any advanced computer user, and one often overlooked!)
What I would do is use acronis true image to back up your entire c partition to your 250 GB drive, test the back-up, then restore that backup to your 80 GB drive. doing so will automatically reformat the drive and give you the option of using the entire drive as the partition size ( of course, you'll have to take care to move any files that are stored on the other partition or partitions currently on your 80 GB drive, as they will be destoyed when you reformat the drive!)

I'm going to try and answer both issues.

The products I have used over the years are Partition Magic and Drive Copy. I've had very few problems with either but they require some understanding of the hardware and OS (Operating System) to be used properly.

PowerQuest created these products and I guess Norton bought them out. The methods mentioned will likely work if caution is used and a backup is made prior to any changes being made to your hardware. Keep in mind that XP and Vista are sensitive to hardware changes, such as replacement of the original disk drive, and may require that you reactivate your OS. Repartitioning won't invoke this but a copy of the drive to a larger drive may. It's not a big issue but may require chatting with a Microsoft rep on the phone before it's completed.

DriveCopy 4.0 works well for copying an entire drive or any one of its partitions to another and expanding them to occupy the entire drive, if needed. This means you could take a 20/60G drive and copy the 20G partition to an 80G drive, expanding it to the full 80GB.

If the 2nd partition has programs installed, it is best to get a much larger drive and copy both partitions, expanding both and preserving the registry links to the 2nd partition. Otherwise, you'll be uninstalling and reinstalling the programs should you decide to copy D: to C:. The frustration and time involved are not worth it.

So, the long and short of it is to buy a bigger drive, invest in the utilities and make your life easier. Partition Magic can resize or remove just about any partition. DriveCopy can copy almost any OS, as long as the partitions are undamaged. As I said, I've used both products for many years and have been successfully salvaging otherwise wasted hard drives and partitions.

BTW - working at the base level of a hard drive is a very dangerous task, one that should not be taken lightly. It was suggested that removing partitions is impossible (I disagree) and that merging and resizing are do-able when my experience says these actions are troublesome, at best, and many times not possible. Buy the utilities and save the headaches.

What you want to do may be easy or may be just about impossible, depending on how you have used the 2nd partition on your first hard drive.

First, heres a procedure for doing what you want; its not difficult. The question, which I will address separately below, is what the implications of doing this will be. CAUTION: Be sure that you understand this procedure and what each step does and why. Your system may differ from what I assumed based on the information you supplied (which is, in at least some respects, incomplete), and if you just follow the steps blindly, without understanding what they do and why, you MIGHT destroy things that you want to keep. I strongly suggest that before you do any of this, that you back up EVERYTHING in both partitions on your 80GB drive.

For the sake of argument, I will assume the following drive assignments:

Drive C: is a primary partition on your 1st (80GB) drive.

Drive D: is either another primary partition on your 1st drive or a logical drive within an extended partition on the 1st drive (it almost doesnt matter).

Drive E: is your second (250GB) drive.

Before starting, verify that you have enough free space on Drive E: to hold the contents of Drive D: (the partition that you are going to eliminate)

Step 1: Create a folder on Drive E: called Drive_D (e.g. E:\Drive_D\).

Step 2: Copy all of the contents of Drive D into the folder you just created on Drive E: Verify that you have EVERYTHING; the number and sizes of files and folders in the folder on Drive E and Drive D should match.

Step 3: Using either a 3rd party partition utility (see below) or Disk Management (part of the Computer Management utility that comes with Windows), delete partition (or logical drive) D and, if present, the extended partition containing it.

Step 4: Using a 3rd party partition utility, expand Drive C: to include the space freed up when Drive D: was eliminated. The two recommended utilities for doing this would by Partition Magic (Symantec/Norton), or Disk Director Suite (Acronis). There are some other products that may be able to do this, but these are the two that I would recommend. It is not possible to do this with only components of Windows, you will need a 3rd party product of some sort.

Step 5: Copy the entire contents of the folder you created on Drive E: (e.g. the folder E:\Drive_D\) back to (the now larger) drive C:

Some versions of some 3rd party products may be able to combine all of these steps in a single operation of combining partitions. Either way, actually doing this isnt difficult.

Of more concern, and really more complexity, is the implications of doing this.

In doing this procedure, you will have moved the files that were originally on Drive D: to Drive C:.

In general, installed PROGRAMS cant be moved and probably wont work (either at all or correctly) after the move if you do move them. However, most people dont have programs installed on drives other than C: (specifically, in C:\Program Files). If you do have programs installed on D:, the best procedure is probably to remove them before doing any of this, and then reinstall them after the move (you will need your original program disks). However, you may lose settings and customizations that you have made. In some cases, programs installed on D: may have valuable, even irreplaceable data in their program folders on D: also. For this reason, if you are going to do this, make a complete backup of D: before doing ANYTHING.

While data is less problematic than programs, there is a chance that moving data files from D: to C: will cause problems with some programs that think that they know where some data files are located. There is very little guidance that I can give you on this subject because it is so highly program specific. This isnt likely to be a major problem but it does have the potential to be with some (fortunately few) programs.

I hope that this helps you out.

Barry Watzman
Watzman@neo.rr.com

I think you should do a bit more research before doing anything drastic. From the way you describe the situation you can "see" the D: drive but not read it or write to it. I suspect that it may really not be empty. Here's why.... First, there's no specific reason why the manufacturer would have been forced to split up the drive unless they wanted to - so they probably had a reason. Of course it is possible that it was just an error or some limitation of how the machine was initially set up. If the extra space had simply been unpartitioned, you wouldn't have had an opportunity to even try to "use it". Second, many vendors include a feature where, if something goes drastically wrong, you can easily reinstall Windows and the applications that came with the machine from a "recovery image". Most commonly, this recovery image is stored on a separate partition - and sometimes the software somehow protects that partition from being tampered with or damaged. This could be what you have - and could be why you got that strange message when you tried to access it. You could ask the vendor if your machine has a "recovery partition" or check your documentation.

Even if it is a recovery partition, you CAN destroy it and reclaim the space - but you might not want to. If it is being "protected" by some sort of recovery software you may be prevented from removing it by normal methods. If so, attempting to merge it with the C: partition using something like Partition Magic also may produce odd results - such as large files that you cannot delete - or may not work at allk. Unfortunately, if you try to change the partition structure and the process fails, you might end up having to completely wipe the drive and repartition and reformat it to get things running again.......

If there's nothing odd going on, any of the excellent products mentioned should work (Partition Magic, Acronis, etc). Simply deleting the drive will NOT do anything except returning the space it occupies to being "unpartitioned" - it will not be automatically absorbed into the C: drive. Most of the simple "computer management" utilities I've seen would then be able to make a new D: drive using that space, which you would be able to use, but they would not be able to add that space into the C: drive.... The reason why those cool utilities exist is to allow you to do things like combine partitions. The old fashioned way would require you to delete both the C: and D: partitions, then make a new, bigger C: partition - and reinstall or restore everything onto it. The utilities can do it without forcing you to reinstall.

You DEFINITELY want a backup of your entire disk before beginning this project. That way, no matter what happens, you can always do it the old fashioned way.....

I think John has hit the nail on the head in regards to your D drive.
What I would ask you to consider is the fact that you have been using this computer for over three years and probably have a lot of important data and hard work that you don't want to lose.
If you are, in fact, maxing out your c drive (less than 10% free space) I would recomend upgrading to a larger hard drive as the best solution to your dilema. If, as you say, you are not technically inclined ( nothing to be ashamed of, I have great respect for computer users, or "end users" as you are the reason people like myself are needed)a hard drive replacement is a relatively painless process that any reputable computer service can handle. And it would be a permanent fix to your problem, rather than a mere stop-gap.
It's my professional opinion that a hard disk drive ought to be replaced after 3 years anyway in order to safeguard your data, and your computer works much more efficiently, as well as reliably when you have plenty of free space. So, if you're maxing out a 40 GB drive you ought to consider no less than an 80 GB drive.
I hope this advice is useful to you, and I applaud you for seeking help with this BEFORE you are actually having real problems that render your computer unusable. Preventive maintenance is ALWAYS cheaper and more effective than repairing a computer.

You can use D has your start dr some what confusing after using C for so long

You can move My Documents from Drive C to Drive D to create some space on C by simply right clicking on My Documents and tell it to move to Drive D:\
Simple as that.

The easiest way would be to purchase a 2.5" external hard drive enclosure and place your new hard drive in it. You can then run the new HD manufacturer's software to clone your old drive to the new one, so all of your programs, files, etc are just as they were. Upon completion you can swap the old and new hard drives, verifying the new contains everything it should. From then on you can use your old hard drive, in the external enclosure, either for additional storage or a personal backup in case your laptop ever goes south.

Hope this helps,
John

The D: Drive is created for the purpose of Sytem Restore or System Recovery. You can move most of your hard drive space to C: Drive and leave about 10GB on the D: for that purpose. You don't need any 3rd party software to perform this task. You have to do a System Recovery which is the F10 key in most computers running Windows XP. You will have to move or back-up your files to your external hard drive. Turn off your computer. Disconnect all your peripheral devices from the PC except for the monitor, keyboard and mouse. Unplug your external hard drive. You don't want that plug-in when you perform the System Recovery. Turn-on your computer. When the blue screen comes-up, press the F10 key before the normal startup process continues. the PC starts the recovery; wait for the onscreen instructions to display, then follow those instructions. You have to pick the Advance Option to go to the partition to move hard drive space to C:. It is very easy, just follow the instructions from there. When done, turn off the PC, reconnect all the peripheral devices, external hard drive, etc. and turn on your PC. If you want to read more on this, please refer to your PC Troubleshooting Guide.

make sure you save files you want to keep some were other than D:\
if you have older OS like Win98 you will need to find a file called "Fdisk.exe" this is Windows partision program before Windows stoped using Dos you can also find it on the net as a download
go to Dos prompt run Fdisk remove 2
1 is the start dr

My laptop has a sad little 30gb partioned hard drive. 20/10. After a couple of years I decided to use the empty d drive to install a computer game and expansions. I'm a Sim player. I believe that if my C drive gets messed up and needs reformatting my Sims might survive intact on the d drive, so for me I found a use for the thing. I do back up the game to disk though, just in case. So C drive for me is for business and D drive is for leisure pursuits. As I have a set of recovery disks provided with the lap top I don't think my d drive was concealing the all important recovery files.

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...The reason you can't write to the drive is that it's not in a standard format. Normally hard drive partitions are either NTFS or FAT32 (there are also Linux formats but lets not go there!) (NTFS should normally always be used over FAT32, except in very, very special situations, but that's going too techie). However Windows has other "special formats", one being the recovery format, this is similar to FAT32, but Windows knows it's a "recovery" drive and is programmed to not allow you to mess with it (it also hides all the contents so it appears empty). It's designed in this way to keep things simple for the basic user (although it can also baffle the simple user when they see an empty drive with nothing in it that they can't use!). It's similar to the way the protection works when you go into the Windows or Program Files folder on C drive and you get the blue screen that hides all the files to stop the basic user doing any serious damage to the system.

Yes your drive will indeed work a lot better in NTFS format than in FAT32. One of the major differences is the way NTFS stores files, it stores files in such a way that it doesn't need fragmenting as much. It also stores the files in smaller blocks on the HDD meaning you actually end up with much more room on the drive without splitting the partitions and less wasted room. This smaller block thing is kind of technical what happens on a HDD is that you have numerous "blocks" or "pigeon holes" for the data, each "pigeon hole" is a percentage of the HDD size and as it's a percentage the larger the HDD size the larger the pigeon hole, so years ago if you had a 2Gb HDD each block would have probably been about 200kb, however with a 20Gb HDD that has now increased to 2,000Kb (just short of 2Mb (1Mb = 1024Kb) per block), now this is where the severe wastage comes in, say you have a file that is 2mb it will actually take up 4000Kb of your hard drive space - 2 blocks (first block is full the second block has the remaining 48Kb in it so you are wasting a whopping 1952Kb!!!), of course this problem gets worse on an even bigger hard drive (like a 260Gb HDD) as the blocks are massive. However NTFS doesn't store data on the block method (this was one of the main reasons NTFS was created to solve the problem of large hard drives having too large block sizes on some of the new massive hard disks). Also one other advantage over NTFS is the ability to set various permissions on folders to prevent everyone from accessing them. Of course most of these features of NTFS were already available on the Unix/Linux file systems