Delete a partition?

[fwebb]

Just acquired a ThinkPad G40 running Win XP Pro. Has a 20gb hard drive partioned like this: IBM Preload C 10.4gb, MyDocs D 5.37 gb.
Where is the other 4.13gb on the hard drive?
C has 2.57gb free.
D has 5.37gb with 99% free. Can find nothing on D partition.
Is there an easy way to delete D and move the 5.37gb to C.
I don't want a partitioned hard drive.

[mgo]

Just acquired a ThinkPad G40 running Win XP Pro. Has a 20gb hard drive partioned like this: IBM Preload C 10.4gb, MyDocs D 5.37 gb.
Where is the other 4.13gb on the hard drive?
C has 2.57gb free.
D has 5.37gb with 99% free. Can find nothing on D partition.
Is there an easy way to delete D and move the 5.37gb to C.
I don't want a partitioned hard drive.

The previous owner likely kept his personal files on the D: partition. Many user do that, because it is easier to manage the operating system for backups, etc.

If you decide to move back, make sure MyDocs is pointed back to Documents and Settings on the C: drive.

You will never see all of the drive because many megs are taken up in the file system journaling.

[RealBlackStuff]

There's probably also a hidden Restore partition, that takes up (unseen) space.
You'd need to copy/move the Documents stuff onto the C-drive first, before you can do anything with the D-partition.
Get Gparted or Partition Magic or similar to combine the 2 partitions. Make sure you have a backup in case anything goes wrong!

[fwebb]

Thanks for the info. Last question. Since the Fat 32 D partition shows 99% free, no files show when I open it, what happens to the 5gb assigned to the D partition if I delete the D partition?
Understand Partition Majic cannot combine NTFS and Fat 32.

[K0LO]

fwebb:

You don't need to combine the two partitions. You want to do the following:

1. Delete the D partition (after you are sure that you have removed all of the files on the partition that you want to save). Deleting a partition will leave unallocated free space on the disk.
2. Expand the size of the C partition so that it includes the unallocated free space.

The result of the above two steps will be an NTFS C partition that is 5 GB larger.

[fwebb]

Thanks, sounds simple enough. After I delete the D partition and right click on the C Partition is there a dropdown menu in WinXP Pro for "expand" ? I believe in Vista there is.

[mgo]

Thanks, sounds simple enough. After I delete the D partition and right click on the C Partition is there a dropdown menu in WinXP Pro for "expand" ? I believe in Vista there is.

XP does not have the ability to expand a partiton. A 3rd party program is required to do this without damaging the data on the partition.

In Vista, yes you can use Computer Management to non destructively expand a partition into the unused space. It works well. The menu includes Delete Volume (an easy way to get rid of the partition you do not want. (Vista calls partitions "volumes" as part of their divine wisdom in renaming things just to be different, I suppose)

Once you have deleted the unwanted volume there will be room to expand, and the "Extend Volume" command will no longer be greyed out.

I usually enter a ridiculusly large number for the expansion, and the operating system will then default to the maximum allowable. ('cause I'm terrible at math) You can also just press down on the increase arrow till it stops on it's own, but that takes a while.

[K0LO]

Thanks, sounds simple enough. After I delete the D partition and right click on the C Partition is there a dropdown menu in WinXP Pro for "expand" ? I believe in Vista there is.

You will need a third-party partition manager to do this; XP cannot do it alone. If you don't have Acronis Disk Director or Partition Magic, or any other partitioning program, download PartedMagic or GParted to do the partitioning.

[NorrisCell]

Another vote for GParted. As people have mention, you only need to delete the unused partition and expand the size of the main one. GParted's interface will let you do it without issues.

Once you expand the partition, GParted will set the new sizes and do an error check. If you're running XP, it will do a second error check after the reboot.