Partition removal question

[TheNiceGuy]

I'm on my wife's PC right now (not the one in my sig). It has XP, and a 120GB HD. I installed a 10 GB partition (D) ages ago, and it is not used now. I want to remove it, partly because there is disk check error at every startup wherein it checks the D partition (and finds no errors).
Will removing the partition be risky?
Thank you!

 

[BlueAcolyte]

No... Does it have anything on it?

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: TheNiceGuy
I want to remove it, partly because there is disk check error at every startup wherein it checks the D partition (and finds no errors).

This should not be happening. You should be able to have as many partitions on each disk as Windows allows, and it still shouldn't be doing that. I have two different systems that each have two large HD's, and all four drives have multiple partitions each (3 or more), and that has never happened. Is this ScanDisk or ChkDsk running, or is it some proprietary software that came with a pre-built?

 

[TheNiceGuy]

It's ChkDsk. This is a Japanese prefab PC with an OS bundle. But it had an English XP installed over the old Japanese XP, and then the original bundle installed over that. The ChkDsk happened after one of those installs (not sure which). I'm not sure if a clean istall was done at those times, or if it was installed over top.
Ideas?

 

[myocardia]

It sounds to me like you need to delete that partition, and start over with a fresh install. Of course, if it's only scanning the empty 10GB partition, you could just delete that partition. It would be easier, and these days, 10GB of HD space is about what, $1.50 worth?

 

[TheNiceGuy]

I did a Google search on deleting HD partition, and there were several warnings about instability. Not the case? My wife would rather live with the problem than reinstall.

 

[myocardia]

I've deleted a few thousand partitions over the last 28 years that I've owned a computer, and not once has deleting one caused any instability whatsoever. What kind of instability were these noobs talking about?

 

[TheNiceGuy]

OK! I'll give it a shot.

 

[spinejam]

as long as your OS is not on that partition you can delete the extra partition w/o incident. if the partition does have files on it then you should back 'em up first and then delete the partition. run ECC after the reboot to isolate any bad sectors.

 

[Jest3r]

I used Gparted (3rd party program) to edit / delete some partitions once. It did not give me any instability, however I did need to run "Repair My Computer" option on OS disk to get the edited hdd working properly again.

I did not lose any data, and in the end it did what I wanted; guess all I am saying is be careful if you use this program.

 

[TheNiceGuy]

cheers folks!