I have an old netbook. The HDD is partitioned into two almost equal parts. Is there any to remove the partition without losing everything on HDD?
Joe
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Home » Forums » AskWoody support » Windows » Windows Vista, XP and earlier » Questions: Vista, XP back to 3.1 » Removing partition
Joe,
That depends on if you have data in both partitions. If you can fit everything onto the bootable partition then any reputable partition software ( EaseUS Partition Master or Partition Mini-Tool ) will merge the partitions nicely w/o killing the boot partition (I’m assuming here that the boot partition is the first partition on the drive. The other method would be to create a backup of the 2nd partition on an external drive and then restore it to the merged partition afterwards. I’m not personally aware of any software that will merge two partitions and keep all the data though maybe some out there. HTH :cheers:
I’m not personally aware of any software that will merge two partitions and keep all the data though maybe some out there. HTH
I’m not aware of any either, but without a backup plan in place, you’re only as good as the experience you have.
1. You will need an external drive large enough to store the data from the partition you whish to remove.
2. You will need some form of backup regimen in place, like a drive image, or an OS reinstall disk with hard copies of all your important data.
There will ALWAYS be some risk of loosing data involved when it comes to manipulating a partition(s).
2. For best result, disable associations that the OS might have with the partition; indexing, search, and system restore.
If you have programs installed on the partition you whish to remove you WILL loose them.
I’ve used the Mini Tool to create a bootable USB stick to accomplish the task of removing the extra partition,
and then widening the primary partition that the OS resides on. It’s best done from a boot disk.
One other possibility is if one partition is fairly empty and the other nearly full, some apps allow non-destructive shrinking of a mostly empty partition followed by non-destructive expanding the other.
But I don’t particularly like two or more partitions on a drive. If you can clean up the drive and then move the files off of the secondary partition over to the boot one and then kill the now empty partition and then non-destructively expand the boot partition is the way to go on IMHO.
37550-DiskMgmt2
Win7’s Disk Management [in Computer Management] has the ability to first Shrink a partition then when there’s free space can Extend a partition into that space. Haven’t had any problems with it on HDDs other that the one the OS is installed on as Windows puts some files on the OS/boot partition/drive that normally can’t be moved.
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