Combining partitions

[lanux128]

just wondering if is it safe to combine two partitions back into one? only one of the partitions have data and i was thinking maybe the other data-less partition can be added to 1st partition. has anyone here attempted this before?

so, if it is possible, what would be the best tool? i have paragon partition manager in mind but i'm open to choices.

[Carol Haynes]

Most of the partition managers will do it safely - but it is probably best to have a backup of the main partition in case you have a problem.

If one of the partitions is empty why not delete it and simply increase the size of the one with data?

[Darwin]

I've done this a number of times. I normally use Partition Magic but note that most recently I wound up using Paragon Partition Manager 2005 (a freebie from VuNet) instead because Partition Magic adamantly refused to partition my drive. Alternatively, this freeware alternative looks promising: Partition Logic.

Now, one caveat - think carefully about the new drive letter assignment. Earlier this year/late last year I decided to ditch my dedicated Paging File partition (it was on the same physical disc as Windows) and rolled it into my My Documents partition (so I originally had C: = Windows and Program Files, E: = PF, F: = My Documents (I also have my Outlook pst files on this partition along with my IE settings). Anyway, I blithely let this new, bigger partition be assigned to drive E. Partition Magic went through the registry to update everything to point to E: instead of F: BUT it missed a number of things - Outlook for a start. It's a bit of pain to manually change all of this after the fact... Just a word to the wise...

[nite_monkey]

if only one partition has data on it then you can remove the partition and increase the main one with no problems at all, I have done that. I had a vista duel boot, but it messed up, so I deleted the vista partition and increased my xp partition with partition magic, and had no problems.

[lanux128]

thanks for the pointers.. i think i'll do just that - delete the 2nd partition and resize.. thanks all!

[howiem]

Just out of curiosity, what happens to the shortcuts when the srive letters all change?

[nosh]

Just out of curiosity, what happens to the shortcuts when the srive letters all change?

They go to shortcut heaven (or hell, if they're Norton/Symantec shortcuts).

They become invalid unless the partition manager is smart enough & modifies them...

[Hirudin]

They go to shortcut heaven (or hell, if they're Norton/Symantec shortcuts).

[Darwin]

Even if the partition manager is smart enought to modify them, you still wind up with artifacts, which is really, REALLY annoying! I had this problem a few months ago and it took a few weeks/month or so to sort out. It was little things - I had moved a bunch of data files that are normally located in the programs' folder under program files under the root directory to a different partition (makes backups and re-installs of windows easier to recover from) and these links were not changed. So, my Outlook pst file wouldn't open because Outlook was still looking on drive F:, which no longer existed (I combined E: and F: and wound up with a bigger E: partition).