Delete system partition from USB HD?

[PDSF]

I have a 100GB HD which was originally installed in my Lenovo laptop but is now in a USB enclosure and used as a backup drive. It has a system recovery partition which I would like to delete and merge the space into a single partition. Windows XP Disk Management won't allow this. Are there any freeware tools which will? TIA.

 

[saikee]

Any Linux Live CD will sort this out.

Best go with Slax because it mount all your partitions, give you the root privilege (admin right in Windows term) and you can do drag and drop between ntfs partitions.

Linux is a huge utility even if you do not run it as a proper operating system.

 

[PDSF]

Thanks for the suggestion. I know nothing about Linux though, and have a feeling it would take a long time to get familiar enough with it to do this one (hopefully simple) operation.

 

[PRPhx]

You can also try doing a google search for something like: free ntfs patition tools. There's lots of stuff out there to look at.

 

[PDSF]

I did that already, but it isn't clear with any of them whether they can do this particular function. They all seem to be focused on the internal boot drive. The most promising is this one:

http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm

but I wanted to see if anyone knew a tool which would do it for sure. There's also XP's Diskpart Clean function, but I can't find any documentation that confirms that it will delete this partition either.

 

[ArizonaGeek]

Darik's Boot and Nuke will get rid of everything on the drive including all partitions.

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[PDSF]

Doesn't it say it wipes out all info on ALL drives???

 

[ArizonaGeek]

No, DBaN allows you to pick which drive you want to wipe.

The other software I use is Active @KillDisk which is a similar program and it also allows you to pick which drive you want to wipe. It will destroy everything on the drive you choose (make sure you get the right one) but not ALL drives. Although you can select all drives if you want.

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[PDSF]

I'll look into it. Thanks.

 

[PDSF]

One other question, sorry...If these work from a bootable CDROM, how do they detect USB drives? I thought USB was only active after full boot but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[PDSF]

I figured it out and with no 3rd party programs. XP's Diskpart Clean All did it. It was kind of scary for a non-IT person like me but it worked exactly as the online documentation said. It took a long time so I wasn't sure it was working, but the light on the drive kept flashing and after about 1.5 hours it finished. Then a simple matter to reformat with Disk Management. Thanks for all your replies, much appreciated.