i just bought a new computer which came with a 200gig hard drive but it was partitioned into 2 sections. i thought it would be a good idea to delete the extra partition and have one big C partition... but instead i have deleated the extra partition and been left with 1 100gig partition and 100gigs of unallocated space. does anyone know how i can get one big drive?
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Partitioned hard drive
- Thread starter rigger321
- Start date
BionicJohn
Technical User
- Thread starter
- #3
cmeagan656
Technical User
If the O/S is an OEM version and you didn't get a receovery CD with the unit then be careful. Quite often the manufacturer puts the recovery console on the second partition and have a separate app to access it. Acer does this with its notebooks.
Cheers.
Cheers.
BionicJohn
Technical User
Sounds like rigger321 has already deleted the second partition.cmeagan656 said:
I'm sure you can find a free Parition Manager by using a search engine, but you're on your own here.riggre321 said:
winXP offers DISKPART run from the C:\> prompt, but I've never used it as I believe it does not protect data.
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This site is worth a look around. It is a lot cheaper than most equivalent software and the resizing part is, I think, free to try as long as you don't actually install it to the hard drive but run it from a bootable floppy (which is created during Setup), but I could be wrong about that. I have used their software for partition work for years, and, touch wood, have never had a problem with any of their products.
Are you really sure that you want just one big C: drive? There are many advantages from splitting such a large drive into smaller partitions, not the least is that you have somewhere to back up your data or Windows drive images to.
Are you really sure that you want just one big C: drive? There are many advantages from splitting such a large drive into smaller partitions, not the least is that you have somewhere to back up your data or Windows drive images to.
- Thread starter
- #7
the computer is indeed an ACER. and i have discovered that there are three partitions. the first of which is in FAT format and is around 3 gigs in size. im guessing that this is teh recovery partition that cmeagan was talking about? there are also 2 more partitions that are in the FAT32 format. both of these are labeled as C: and D: and consist of 90 gigs each, its like they have split the harddrive into 2. i have no idea why they did this, and i wanted to make one large C: partition (leaving the recovery partition intact). i managed to get hold of partition magic and i have restored the second partition that i deleted earlia, so once again i have two separate partitions, but they are in FAT32 format... isnt this inferior to NTFS? why would ACER do this? as there are no recovery disks i suppose its impossible to reformat the entire system so that i can have it as NTFS and 1 large partition? so do i just put up with it the way it is? or is there anything i can do?
thanks for all your help so far guys, if you can make head or tail of what ive just wrote, and you could offer anymore advice id greatly appreciate it. thanks again
thanks for all your help so far guys, if you can make head or tail of what ive just wrote, and you could offer anymore advice id greatly appreciate it. thanks again
cmeagan656
Technical User
My notebook (Travlmate 51000) has the recovery partition on D:. Check in Acer's user manual to see where your's is.
I left my partitions as they were (C: and D
and converted them to NTFS.
I have no idea why Acer uses fat32. I never even thought to check before I started installing apps. I discovered it when I went to do a defrag after I finished installing. I converted both partitions to NTFS and then defragged.
There were no issues in the conversion to NTFS but make sure you have a good backup before you begin, just in case.
Cheers.
I left my partitions as they were (C: and D
and converted them to NTFS.I have no idea why Acer uses fat32. I never even thought to check before I started installing apps. I discovered it when I went to do a defrag after I finished installing. I converted both partitions to NTFS and then defragged.
There were no issues in the conversion to NTFS but make sure you have a good backup before you begin, just in case.
Cheers.
If you've got partition magic now (version 8 or later?), you should be able to use it to combine the 2 90GB FAT32 partitions into one 180GB FAT32 partition. Once its one partition, you can use either partition magic or the built in XP utility to convert it to NTFS. I'd use the built in utility personally - from a command prompt type:-
convert C: /FS:NTFS
It will do the conversion when you next restart.
Remember - any partition updating can result in unreadable partitions, so if you've data you don't want to lose, back up before doing anything.
convert C: /FS:NTFS
It will do the conversion when you next restart.
Remember - any partition updating can result in unreadable partitions, so if you've data you don't want to lose, back up before doing anything.
Converting FAT32 to NTFS in Windows
307881 - HOW TO: Convert a FAT16 or FAT32 Volume to NTFS in Windows XP
307881 - HOW TO: Convert a FAT16 or FAT32 Volume to NTFS in Windows XP
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