Merging two partitions: Upgraded my wife's laptop

[alkemyst]

My wife doesn't have her original software here...it's all in Japan. I was able to migrate her 30gb laptop drive into 120gb. The original drive was split 9GB/20GB (both pretty full)....the new is now 20GB/100GB. Ghost made this part a piece of cake, but her OS partition is at 50% full and although she has been downloading and installing only to the 'D' partition...C still grows due to the OS existing there. She doesn't really install a lot of stuff, but most of us have been burned on partitioning a drive at some point.

She is running XP Home.

Is there a way that I can just merge these two partitions together for a new 'C' drive and have Windows boot and be happy?

Thanks

Å

 

[orion23]

Having 2 partitions is great.

Small one for the OS and larger one for all her information.

Make an image or backup of the OS.

In case of a virus or OS corruption, you can safely delete or format the smaller partition and if you made an image / backup, you can be running your PC again in 20 minutes or so!

 

[redbeard1]

Instead of merging the partitions, which can supposedly be done with the right software (though past history posts here says it does not always go well), I would look into getting software to resize the existing partitions. Acronis or Paragon are to good programs for this.

 

[bruceb]

I agree ... do not attempt a Merge as you will have problems.
If anything just resize one of the Partitions with Partition Magic
or the other programs listed ... For the OS if it is Windows XP
you should not ever need to exceed 30GB in space at most.
And as mentioned, if a virus gets in and does harm, it will only
affect the OS partition which you can then restore easily. It also
makes it easier to Ghost the Drive, as you need only do the OS
portion when something major has changed ... (like new windows
updates, or program installs that may change drivers / regisitry)

 

[corkyg]

If it works as is, why change it?

 

[alkemyst]

i am not big on partitions...just go multi drives at that point. Most of the advice above would apply better to a single partition anyway (if you make and image it restores the same way).

I have her set up at 20gb for OS and 100GB for new programs and storage.

My concern was that no matter how you try to avoid it, your OS partition gets added too over time.

 

[Pirotech]

Won't say about the advantages of several partitions although I'm a follower of it If you want to merge your partitions, you may easily use Acronis Disk Director for this purpose. The operation will take a few minutes

 

[alkemyst]

Thanks, still debating this...I am probably going to wait until / if ever her OS partition is full.

 

[Gustavus]

From your description of what you have done, the almost full 9 GB partition fills about 50% of the new 20 GB partition and the almost full old 20 GB should have roughly filled 20% of the new 100 GB partition. If I have that right, the easiest and safest thing for you to do is to use Partition Magic to resize the !00 GB partition -- say to 50 GB. It would then be about 40% full and you would have 50 GB unallocated space which Partition Magic will allow you to expand (resize) the other partition into. Just choose resize and it will give a prompt asking if you wish to use all available free space. I have done this sort of thing many times and have never had a problem. You would then have a 70 GB partition only about 13% full and of course the resized 50 GB partition which will be about 40% full. The C partition then will have 60 GB of free space which should accomodate your wife's downloads for a long time.

 

[ChristianV]

Maybe you should delete some old stuff in the Temp Folders.
My OS-Partition is about 9 gigabytes and I still have 2.5 free.

 

[alkemyst]

People are providing solutions that are not relevant.

She doesn't have a problem with space at this point.

My desire was to take the two partitions and make one without losing the data/OS.

I think 20GB on her OS part will last her a long time esp now that she is installing any downloads to D (100GB).

Thanks

Å