Removing a logical drive

Auburn

I have a second hard drive in my computer (Windows 2000) that's partitioned into two. When I go into disk management, there's a primary partition and then there's an extended partition (also labelled a logical drive) and I basically want to merge them into one partition. Could anyone give me a few pointers on how to do this? Thanks

Xterminator

Create and boot off a boot disk. At the prompt type 'fdisk'. Use the menu to select the hdd you want to change. (Shoud be fixed disk 2) (Beware if you choose the first one you will wipe your operating system).

Delete the logical drives, delete the extended partition. Delete the primary partition, in that order.

Create a primary partition, and use all the space available.

Thats it.

X

qwertz

Partition Magic or similar software will do the trick. Data will be retained.

[waiver] Data will be retained. to be taken as the personal opinon of the poster and in no way, shape or form reflects the views of this mod. [/waiver] Ninety X percent of users think partition magic is the best thing since sliced bread, the others have lost data.
CM.

Ruu_Old

Backup your data before doing or whatever you want to keep. You can merge them with Partition Magic (Tragic) but it can be picky at times imo.

ob

Since it's a second disk you can do it from disk management. Just delete both partitions, then create a new partition using all of the disk.

Obviously, this will destroy all data that exists on both of those partitions, so back it up or move your data beforehand.

Capt'n Midnight

right click on my computer and manage to see the disk manager

How big are the partitions and how much free space do you have on the first drive and how much data is there ?

Ideally you would delete junk from all drives to give yourself some elbow room ( spacemonger is great for seeing what is taking up all that space ) move all the data from the second partition to the first drive or first partion.
If the first partition is NTFS you can enable compression to fit another 50% or so on. - don't forget you can't go back to FAT afterwards.

when all data is off the second partition you can delete it, and expand the first NTFS partition into it.

So far (touch wood) I've have good experiances with ntfsrezize / qtparted on linux boot disks. Defrag the drive in windows first so linux don't have to move files around.

Auburn

Thanks for all the replies. I'm not with the computer now but as far as I remember the first partition is about 8 gigs and the second is about 4 gigs. There's nothing of any consequence on it at the moment so it won't be the end of the world if I end up deleting everything, although the waiver is appreciated

I haven't had great experience with Partition Magic in the past so I don't think I will go that route!

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

If the first partition is NTFS you can enable compression to fit another 50% or so on. - don't forget you can't go back to FAT afterwards.

when all data is off the second partition you can delete it, and expand the first NTFS partition into it.

I hadn't thought about enabling compression, might do that! Thanks for the tip. Is it possible to expand the first partition using disk management or do I need a Linux boot disk to do that? Sorry for the newb type questions, i'm not too familiar with creating partitions!

Capt'n Midnight

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308424

To extend a simple volume or a spanned volume:
1. In Disk Management, right-click the simple or spanned volume to be extended, and then click Extend Volume.
2. In the Extend Volume Wizard, click Next.
3. On the Select Disks page, do the following:
• Click to select the disk (or disks) onto which the volume will be extended, and then click Add.

Verify that the disk or disks onto which you want to extend the volume are listed in the Selected dynamic disks box.

-and-
• In the Size box, specify the amount of unallocated disk space that you want to add, and then Next.
4. Confirm that the options that you selected are correct, and then click Finish.

In general it's best when playing around with an OS's partitions to use it's tools. NTFS is still closed source.