How can i merge two partitions during reformatting?

Hi, my friend just asked me to fix up his notebook and he has two partitions, C (OS) and D. I will be reformatting every last bit on these drives so i don't care one bit about losing data, I just want to merge the two partitions into one big C. Right now I've loaded up the XP Setup CD and I see the two partitions, so how so I go about doing this? Will deleting the D partition simply do the trick or is it a little more involved?

Thanks,
Mike.

 

Nevermind, i will just keep it in two partitions. Thanks anyway.

 

a little late, but delete the two partitions, then create a new partion with the open space

There is an option in setup to remove the partitions

 

Two partitons is a better configuration anyway. Just move the My Documents folder to the second partiton. Then if you use something like Ghost to image the C: drive, you can latter recover that image and not have to worry about loosing any data!

Gary

 

Having 2 Partitions is a much better idea.

If anything goes wrong, you can just format your C:, without having to risk losing any data, because everything of yours is on the D:.

I know you've already resolved your issue, but for future reference, simply deleting BOTH partitions and then creating 1 large one will do the trick.

Nothing more than that.

 

I am going to disagree slightly with my two colleagues above in that two partitions is better

It CAN be, but it is not necessarily. The key (as it is in much of computers) is still, do you know what you are doing?

Let's take a look at what ScuderiaConchiglia said taken literally (and I think that ScuderiaConchiglia knows what he is doing, but was just speaking in broad terms)

USer moves his MY DOCUMENTS folder to second partition, and happily computes for a year when he gets hammered by the trojan from Hades. Well, I will just wipe out C: 'cuz MY DOCUMENTS is saved, he thinks, and does.

Upon reboot, user is flummoxed to find that all of his outlook email is gone! And his favorites! and darn, I have 62 hours invested in the ultimate RPG game and all of the saves are gone!

Not everything is saved in the MY DOCUMENTS folder on drive d:--moving your entire user profile is a better idea, but trickier.

Example 2
User 2 does as user 1 did above, moving his MY DOCUMENTS to the second partition (drive d and is happily computing safely assuming his data is safe when suddenly he hears his hard drive clicking as the drive heads smashes again and again into the platter, skipping along at 7200 rpms before dying a horrible death, taking both partitions and his data with it

Again, nothing wrong with the two partition thing--from an organizational standpoint, it is quite useful. Some will even argue that putting your main swap on the second partition where it will be less fragmented is a good call too (though this is of limited value since your drive head must now jump between two partitions when swapping--the truly better solution is a second drive).

In either case, don't rely on the second partiton as your prime means of backup

 

Spot on!!!! I never meant to imply that the second partiton provides ANY sort of backup. Only that it allowed one to backup the C: partition and restore it without data loss. And, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, I totally FORGOT to mention moving the Outlook files and favorites to your My Documents folder as part of the process. I don't mess with trying to move the entire profile. It has never been worth it to me. I know other folks do this, but nothing else in MY profile is worth saving. I do even extend this "all data on the D: drive" concept to SQL server as well, I have the express edition on my laptop and during the install told it the data files are to be on the D: drive.

(Your example 2, is a nightmare REGARDLESS of the number of partitions.)

My optimal configuration on every machine I own (4 workstations and 3 servers) is three partitions.
1) The C: drive with system and applications and NOTHING else.
2) D: with MyDocuments with redirected Outlook, Favorites and any other data that must be maintained in a system restore.
3) a FAT32 partiton just large enough to hold a Ghost image of the C: drive.

The C: partition gets Ghosted periodically to the third partiton, usually right before any major software or OS change or installation. This provides a nice quick fall back position should anything go awry. The D: partition gets synchronized daily to a directory on the server (and in turn backed up to tape nightly).

Thanks for pointing out the details, because yes I was talking in broad terms.

Gary

 

Yes, I can tell you were...I just like to be clear for people who are less saavy who may come later.

 

Good catch! Again thanks for doing so.

Gary

 

In my old Win98se system I have four disks with a total of 20+ partitions.
I have the os on the first partition of the first disk, the OSdata (meaning the myDocuments, desktop, startup menu, mail, news and web files) on the first logical partition of the second HD, and copies of it on the third and fourth HD. The documents I produce are on the third disk and backed up daily on the fourth (and periodically on DVD). Every disk has the first three primary partitions occupied with operating systems: a clone of my windows OS and two Linux distros.

Only a fire could send me offline .

I recently had a corruption on my OS: only thing I had to do was booting in one of my spare OSes and simply copy the last backup of that partition (it was four months old). All my data was still there, all the programs I had installed since the last imaging were perfectly functional. I only had to reinstall the two applications I installed since I last imaged the OS - but I did not lose the customization I had done since before reinstalling I simply hid their folders, and then swapped them with the freshly installed ones.

Partitioning is a helluva helpful. Too bad on my laptop I only have one disk.

 

I can't decide if I should fall on my knees and worship you or call a psychiatrist....I think that is a compliment

 

How can you move a user profile to say.. D drive in XP? Seeing from what the people do here, it would be a smart idea to have only the Windows folder on C while having the Program Files and Documents and Settings folders on D. So how can you move the entire Documents and Settings folder? Also can you move the default path of the Program Files folder?
Thanks.

 

In the ancient times of Win98SE that was a job for tweakUI.
I moved everything I could on other drives, also sharing mail and web archives among the OS clones.
I do not know what facilities are available to do that in XP.

Is there such a thing as TweakUI for XP?
(I've always used XP on PC that weren't mine, so I had no way to tweak it at my discretion).

EDIT: I see that you have Vista. That maybe tougher. I'd rather go back to XP :-/

 

Umm I don't have the laptop yet, I'm going to get it in about 3 days. I'd like to know how to move all those things in XP as I'll use it more often. If anyone knows how to do it in Vista it would be a bonus, but not that important. XP is more important for me.
Thanks.
Also there is TweakUI in XP and it tells me under special folders that if I want to move a special folder, i'd have to right-click drag the folder to its new destination and select 'move here'. Would this world with Program Files and Documents and Settings? Or is there another/safer way?

 

According to this http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_shell_folders.htm
that would work for the Documents folder.
The others can be moved via TweakUI and/or by editing registry keys.