HD removal and repartitioning ...Pliz help...

[ylan]

I have 2 HDs on my system ( WinXP Pro + SP1 ; Celeron 900) :

_HD #1 (20 Gigs Western Digital) , has 3 FAT32 partitions : C, D and E . WinXP was installed in C:\ ; D:\ and E:\ are currently empty.

_HD #2 (80 Gigs Western Digital) has 2 FAT32 & 20 Gig partitions F:\ and G:\ that contain all my programs and documents. The free, unformatted space is 40 Gigs.

I would like to remove HD #1 from the system and keep just HD #2 with F:\ and G:\ intact.



My questions are :

1) Can I do it without using "Partition Magic 8.0 " ? How ?

2) If I have to use "Partition Magic" , what is the most efficient way to do it ?

Thanks,

 

[jyrockck]

Do you have any O/S on the second HD?

If I were you, I would completely format the second HD and form partitions through 'fdisk' and simply start from scratch.

Or you can use 'fdisk' and format the unformatted space to install your O/S onto. You just need to set the O/S partition as primary and set it active.

 

[ylan]

Thanks, FutureProgrammmer, for your tips. There is no other OS on HD #2 . In your suggested scheme, WinXp will not be in the first partition on the HD. I recalled that Windows required this arrangement . Please confirm.

_ Another problem is the names F:\ and G:\ may not be maintained after the migration. If so, I cannot use the old registry and thus I may have to re-install lots of programs. I am thinking of keeping the same names F:\ and G:\ to minimize extra works. I wonder how I can do this ? Please comment.

 

[Jontmke]

If you delete the original windows install you WILL have to reinstall all your apps. Because you will have erased the registry!

Jon

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. (Bertrand Russell)

 

[ylan]

Thanks everyone for the tips. I may use Norton Ghost 2003 and an extra HD to resolve this problem.

 

[MaxLinux2003]

If you will ask me, what I will do is move all my data to G:\. Remove HD #1, transfer HD #2 to Primary Master IDE, do a clean install of Windows XP. This will now create C:\ as your boot drive and D:\ as your previous G:\. Also, it is best if you select to convert the installation partition, C:\ in this case to NTFS.

 

[mike11973]

why remove the extra storage space?...also i prefer to use the NT filing system more when installing xp pro....I would back up all the important files you want to keep...boot off of either the xp pro disk (unless its on a system recovery disk) or a boot disk and delete your partitions and start from scratch....after you format you will have the option of selecting the size and filing system of the partitions you are creating....i constantly keep backups of my programs and have found my computer consistently runs well with a fresh format and reinstall about once every 6-8 mo's

 

[ylan]

Thanks, MaxLinux2003 and mike11973, for your comments and tips . I removed HD#1 ( 20 Gigs) as a preventive measure . I scrapped 3 Western Digital HDs within 2 years on 3 different PCs ! All of these HDs were 20 Gigs and 13.6 Gigs in capacity. From what I read in forums, WD HDs with capacity less than 40 gigs got technical problems and their demises occured on average within 18 months. I used the 80 gigs HD to avoid future headaches and used the 20 gigs HD on another old PC used for testing new programs.

BTW, I used Norton Ghost 2003 to complete the backup job and it was indeed an excellent program for its intended use .