Win2K and Partition expert needed.

[de8212]

I have win2k pro installed with two physical drives.
80GB maxtor partitioned into three drives. C,D,E.
40GB ibm partitioned into three drives H, I, J.

within windows disk management can I combine H, I, and J to make one drive?
I know I can get partition magic to do it but I was hoping to get windows to do this.

If not, can I just boot off a win98 floppy and fdisk H, I, and J? If so, can someone give me some detailed steps on this?

Thanks.

de

 

[Nothinman]

You could use Dynamic drives (MS fancy name for Software RAID) but I think you'd have to format them. You pretty much have to buy Partition Magic.

 

[de8212]

Formatting them is no problem. They are empty anyway. Can you tell me how I can do this?

thanks


de

 

[WarpSpeed]

In Disk Management, right click on each partition in turn and delete it. When they are all deleted, right click on your second drive and format.

 

[Nothinman]

I personally would steer very clear of Dynamic disks for several reasons. Mainly if one fails the whole array is gone, second you can't get to the data from anything but Win2K so if Win2K stops booting you could lose all your data.

 

[de8212]

OK, so would I be better off booting form a win98 floppy and running fdisk on this drive? If so, please give me some detailed instructions of how to ONLY make my 40GB ibm back into one drive.

de

 

[stevewm]

This can be done in windows. No 98 boot disk needed.


You need to get into Disk Management, the easiest way to do this is by right clicking on any My Computer icon and picking "Manage".

The Computer Management window will now popup. In the left hand pane click on Disk Management. Give it a few seconds to load and a map showing all the partitions on all your drives will show up. Right click on the partition you want to delete and pick "Delete Partition". Do this for all 3 partitions. Now, in the list of drives above the partition map, right click on the 40GB drive that you just deleted the partitions off of and pick Format.

 

[mrzed]

When you boot from you boot disk:

follow these steps in order

run fdisk
change current fixed disk (probably to #2) Make damn sure this is the correct drive.
delete partition or logical dos drive
delete logical dos drive in extended partition(do this until they are all gone)
delete extended dos partition
delete primary dos partition

now you have no partitions at all

create primary dos partition
the default size will be 100% of you disk

exit fdisk, format drive from dos prompt

 

[dbwillis]

You can do it right from Computer Management / Disk Management..its very easy.
Delete the drives you dont want and then right click and select create partition and then format it the same way..