manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 4, 2011 on my Windows XP SP3 pc i have 3 partitionsC:\ system (Primary - 40GB)D:\ data1 (Logical - 60GB)E:\ data2 (Primary - 8GB)anyone recommend me a tool (FREE ofcourse) that will allow me to merge partition D and E? i've tried easeus home edition and with it's merging option it only allows a merge between C and D or C and E i'm after a solution that will allow me not to shift/copy data around... i know on D:\ and E:\ i have nothing... but currently if i can't find a way i will reside to copying data from C into another PC before i reformat the whole Hard Disk Drivecheers Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted October 4, 2011 I know you don't want to shift-copy but...Your E: disk is rather small, so I would simply copy it's content to your D: disk.Then boot on the gparted CD (or off a Linux distro including gpartted) and simply delete your E: partition, and then enlarge the D: disk, expanding it on the whole free space.gparted is free, so it meets your specs Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 4, 2011 thanks yordan, does gparted support USB boot? i have nothing in E or D that i need... i shifted data in both drives to C... i'm just curious because E is primary and D is logical... i'll give it a go and see ta Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted October 4, 2011 The gparted people explain how to boot it from USB here : http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 4, 2011 shot yordan have got unetbootin and just downloading Gparted... i'm gonna have to do some reading to reflash my memory on primary and logical partitions Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted October 4, 2011 i'm gonna have to do some reading to reflash my memory on primary and logical partitionsDon't worry with that. Create primary partitions as loong as you don't need more than four ones. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 4, 2011 cheers yordan... is there an advantage or difference between the two tho? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted October 5, 2011 It's ms-dos historical.If you need to make rather small partitions (typically 2 gigs) and if you have small disks (typically 9 gigs) you need to have several disks, so you first exhaust the maximum 4 primary partitions (one per physical disk) and then you add logical partitions in order to have several small partitions until each disk is full.Why small partitions ? Because FAT16 was only able to manage small partitions. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 5, 2011 thanks yordan... the man! anyways Gparted is a pretty handy tool... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted October 5, 2011 You are right, gparted is a pretty handy tool.It's one of the tools you always need to carry with you.Clonezilla is the second one. Do you have a working backup of your system disk? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 5, 2011 You are right, gparted is a pretty handy tool.It's one of the tools you always need to carry with you.Clonezilla is the second one. Do you have a working backup of your system disk? um no i don't Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
yordan 10 Report post Posted October 5, 2011 um no i don'tSo you have to test cloneZilla.You backup your C: disk to a file of your USB disk.In case of crash, you restore the disk from the backup. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manuleka 0 Report post Posted October 5, 2011 thanks yordan for the headsup... kept Gparted iso on my valuable archives Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
