Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!
Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!
-
Congratulations TouchToneTommy on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!
Merging Partitions 1
- Thread starter Hayley78
- Start date
![[ponder]](/data/assets/smilies/ponder.gif "[ponder] [ponder]")
- Thread starter
- #3
Did I understand you to say that you have already DELEATED the partition and now you want to go back, recover the data from the deleted partition and merge that data with the data on another partition?
If you have deleted the partition you are pretty much screwed unless you send the hard drive of to one of the "data recovery" outfits.
If someone out there knows of another way, I would be very interested.
If you have deleted the partition you are pretty much screwed unless you send the hard drive of to one of the "data recovery" outfits.
If someone out there knows of another way, I would be very interested.
Jocsta - does any of the Linux stuff work with Fat32 and Ntfs?
Hayley - the only free partitioning tool I know of is Ranish - - i've not tried it for years, as I last time I found it too complicated for my small brain - though I notice there's a link to another free partition manager on the site now (
Good luck
Hayley - the only free partitioning tool I know of is Ranish - - i've not tried it for years, as I last time I found it too complicated for my small brain - though I notice there's a link to another free partition manager on the site now (
Good luck
-
1
- #7
this is going a bit off topic as hayley wanted to know if she could add the unformatted to her live partition, which has been stated she needs 3rd party software, i have used partition magic and is very good.
but as for lifto's Q.
when you delete a partition it only removes file table's and directories but all the data is still there and again there is 3rd party software that can recover this data...
i think you only need to send off your drive if it has completely failed and cant be detected due to defective parts........
hmmm uneraser will cater for formatted and deleted partitions for data recovery, but no dopnt think there are any freeware data recovery software out there....
bRED
but as for lifto's Q.
when you delete a partition it only removes file table's and directories but all the data is still there and again there is 3rd party software that can recover this data...
i think you only need to send off your drive if it has completely failed and cant be detected due to defective parts........
hmmm uneraser will cater for formatted and deleted partitions for data recovery, but no dopnt think there are any freeware data recovery software out there....
bRED
- Thread starter
- #8
I have a PC that has 2000 o/s on it, the hard drive was already partitioned. But the Primary Partition is really small, and only has a few MB left of space. The second partition has loads of room left. But when running programmes it, doesn't look at the 2nd partition for space, as the PC is running really really slow and very unstable!
So I wanted to merge the 2 partition's.
But the copy of partition Magic I have dosen't work with Windows 2000. And hoped there would be another way I could do it?!
So I wanted to merge the 2 partition's.
But the copy of partition Magic I have dosen't work with Windows 2000. And hoped there would be another way I could do it?!
Hayley,
All the ways I can think of (unless you can use those free partition managers I mentioned) need third party non-free software or access to another win2k machine, with enough space to copy your installation onto. This would involve making you drive slave in other machine. Log on too other machine with Adminstator priviledges. Copy all your C: drive to a folder on this machine's drive, apart from pagefile.sys (you can just do this using explorer - making sure hidden & system files are set to be visible in folder options, view). If any permissions problems copying from your drive, just take ownership of the problematic item and give access to current user. Once all copied, delete partitions on your drive and create one new one. Copy saved c: drive back to new partition. Put drive back in your machine - see if it boots. If it doesn't, boot from 2k install CD and select repair using recovery console (you'll need administrator password). When you get to a command prompt, type fixboot. Then type exit and boot with hard drive again. Should be ok now.
Other than that - have you a backup device (eg, cd writer), so you can backup, format & reinstall.
All the ways I can think of (unless you can use those free partition managers I mentioned) need third party non-free software or access to another win2k machine, with enough space to copy your installation onto. This would involve making you drive slave in other machine. Log on too other machine with Adminstator priviledges. Copy all your C: drive to a folder on this machine's drive, apart from pagefile.sys (you can just do this using explorer - making sure hidden & system files are set to be visible in folder options, view). If any permissions problems copying from your drive, just take ownership of the problematic item and give access to current user. Once all copied, delete partitions on your drive and create one new one. Copy saved c: drive back to new partition. Put drive back in your machine - see if it boots. If it doesn't, boot from 2k install CD and select repair using recovery console (you'll need administrator password). When you get to a command prompt, type fixboot. Then type exit and boot with hard drive again. Should be ok now.
Other than that - have you a backup device (eg, cd writer), so you can backup, format & reinstall.
one work around i can think of requires a norton ghost boot disk and a cd-r drive, ghost your partition u use onto cd, format your drive to one big partition and then reload the image of your partition on to the big partition , hey presto !!!
but you need a ghost boot disk that has been created to use cd-rw drives.....
but you need a ghost boot disk that has been created to use cd-rw drives.....
Try Bootit NG. The 1st month is free and the fee after that is just $30.00 if you decide to keep it. I have found it to be a great tool. Get it at It can do a great deal of work for $30.00.
Regarding your version of partition magic which doesn't work with W2K, it may be that you can't run it inside of W2K, but if you boot to dos it may work fine. (Use a W9X boot diskette or CD). It seems to me I have used older versions this way. There may be a patch for the older version. Bit late for this suggestion, but how about just moving the swap file to the other partition? How about de-installing some apps and moving them to the other partition. Personally I always use lots of partitions, if you goof and have to start over you might like to use separate partitions for O/S, apps, swap file, data, etc.
Just a little insight that I hope isnt to off topic. This is regarding older versions of Partition Magic and Win2K & WinXP. This is from MS Knowledge Base.
Perhaps another solution if you have enuough space on the drive and you are using a FAT32 format is to install win98 on a new partiton, copy your files and folders to the 98 partion, then reinstall Win2K. You will have the opportunity to size the partition when you install. Hope this helps SMac "Never Argue with an Idiot. They will Lower You to Their Level, Then Beat YOU with Experience"
Perhaps another solution if you have enuough space on the drive and you are using a FAT32 format is to install win98 on a new partiton, copy your files and folders to the 98 partion, then reinstall Win2K. You will have the opportunity to size the partition when you install. Hope this helps SMac "Never Argue with an Idiot. They will Lower You to Their Level, Then Beat YOU with Experience"
One more small addition. Win2K and WinXP both take a serious performance hit if you move the swap file to another partition if it is the same drive that that the operating system resides on. However performance gains can be significant if it is moved to a faster hard drive that the operating system doesnt. "Never Argue with an Idiot. They will Lower You to Their Level, Then Beat YOU with Experience"
Hayley,
If you do end up using partition magic, you will want to defrag all partitions after, as it seems to fragment things pretty good.
Smactek,
I've never seen any performance hit moving the swap file, but then it is usually on another drive. Have you seen any benchmarks or articles on the performance hit.
If you do end up using partition magic, you will want to defrag all partitions after, as it seems to fragment things pretty good.
Smactek,
I've never seen any performance hit moving the swap file, but then it is usually on another drive. Have you seen any benchmarks or articles on the performance hit.
To add to what INBred said about using Ghost, I used DriveImage Pro to do this very thing just today. I slaved in a spare hard drive, used Drive Image to create an image of the C drive on the slave, re-partitioned the primary hard drive, and then used DriveImage to restore to image to the now larger C drive partition. It worked like a charm!
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
- Question