Partitions

[IanB]

I have a hard disk partitioned (by the manufacturer) into 2,2,and 1 Gb drives. Without a program like Partition Magic, can I acquire, say a Gb from "D" and add it to "C"? I have looked at FDisk on the W98 boot disk, and it SEEMS to allow me to do that, but I am not sure. Any help or advice very gratefully received.


Ian Breach
Sunderland, GB

[jayzad]

Sorry I'm not much help. But I think if you fdisk the drive you can get it all back to c:. I think it goes something like fdisk delete secondry and primary dos partician. Then create a primary dos part. and use the whole drive and then you format the drive. But this Is as long as you don't won't to save anything on the drive, because you will lose everything on the drive. This is just a guess, don't do anything till other get up to help us. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[SterlingA]

jayzad is correct on this one.

FDISK will allow you to have up to 32 gig of hard drive (the entire drive) as a single drive letter (C http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif.

You do LOSE EVERYTHING on the drive when doing an FDISK, and you need to format the drive after doing FDISK, so be SURE you know exactly what to do before starting FDISK.

Win98 and ALL of your programs and data will need to be reloaded, so this will take you quite a few hours to restore the drive to full operation, but the convience of a single drive is usually worth the effort, not to mention the experience of learning how to use FDISK.

[Nathan]

Personally I think the only way to go is to use multiple partitions. And that's for many GOOD reasons. But that's my preference.

[AuraEdge]

I have a C: 2.1gb (fat16), D: 8.4gb (fat32). E: 2.1gb (fat32), and f: 1.2gb (fat32)
My physical drives are a 5.4 (C,E,F) and 8.4 (d). I left my C as fat16 just incase I ever need to reinstall windows, and also I can defrag faster, since C is the most painful to defrag cuz u cant do anything during it as opposed to D, E, or F (dont worry im not running outta space anytime soon so thats not an issue).
Anyways...My F Drive is hanging empty and my E drive is fulla nuthin usful. Can i format these 2 partitions and make em into one 3.3g fat 32 E drive? If not anyone got anything useful (such as cache storage) to do with my 1.2gb F drive?

[AuraEdge]

One more thing....If you have a W95 install disc w/ w98 upgrade, it wont install into fat32 (ive tryed it and someone shoot me if i coulda cuz its caused me enuf trouble), and the w98 upg only installs inside windows.
I dont know if w98 will install directly to fat32 tho... but if your going w95->w98upg dont fat32 the whole thing
If u have no idea what a FAT is than Ill tell u this much...
FAT16 = MAX 2.1gb per partition
FAT32 = MAX 8.4gb per partition (im sure they did sumthin else to surpass this tho but im not real good in this partition field

[Ed_S]

IanB - You said HD was partitioned "by manufacturer" - Is this a "brand name" system with software restoration disks instead of real software package? A friend had an HP Pavilion w. this setup, and no matter what we did in Fdisk, the restoration process re-did it back to fact. setup. There was also no good way to reinstall Windows other than full restoration. Probably possible. This stank. If you've got this setup, your choices are 1: Live with it, or 2: Reinstall using other disks (maybe)
Personally, I prefer my drives partitioned to separate types of programs or data.

AuraEdge - Win 98 upgrade disk can be installed on fat 32 to freshly formatted disk. The only difference between upgrade & full version is that the upgrade requires proof of ownership of previous version. At one point during installation you'll be prompted to insert prior version. W95 CD will work, or W 3.x disk set. Previous version need not be installed to HD.

[socalgal]

swipe that.

[This message has been edited by socalgal (edited 05-30-99).]