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How can I combine my two hard drives?


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#1
joshuagor44

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My computer's memory is separated into two drives (C and D). Is it possible to make them appear as one drive when I go to My Computer?
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#2
cmw2010

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You would need to use a third party partition manager software such as Ranish Partition Manager . What brand of computer do you have? Who partitioned your hard drive or did it come with two partitions? If it is a Dell or HP or other name brand PC then your D: partition holds your Recovery Partition used for reinstalling Windows, so you would not want to repartition or you will lose the ability to reinstall your Operating System.
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#3
joshuagor44

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You would need to use a third party partition manager software such as Ranish Partition Manager . What brand of computer do you have? Who partitioned your hard drive or did it come with two partitions? If it is a Dell or HP or other name brand PC then your D: partition holds your Recovery Partition used for reinstalling Windows, so you would not want to repartition or you will lose the ability to reinstall your Operating System.


It's a Dell, so I guess I'm out of luck?

I don't remember having two hard drives when I got my computer a few years ago. I think someone partitioned my HD when I had it reformatted last year. I could be wrong though and it might have been this way the whole time.
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#4
ClickRight

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What happens when you double click on drive D? Do you see a warning, or a list of random files, or are some of your personal files on there?
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#5
joshuagor44

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Originally there was absolutely nothing, but then I started installing stuff there and using it to store personal files.
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#6
ClickRight

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Sounds like you've already wiped the repair partition, if you had one. You'll be able to follow cmw2010's suggestion with no problems.

Edited by ClickRight, 17 July 2007 - 12:57 AM.

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#7
Silvion

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Umm whack in your windows CD, reboot. Boot CD. pretend that you want to install windows.. and when you go to select drive.. find that partition and hit delete. That will delete and your drive will be one.. Though you might need to backup everything and like install windows again... depense how you go about it..
Same thing happened to me,... but i got it worse... a COMPAQ :whistling:



Correct me if im wrong..
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#8
cmw2010

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silvion, that will just delete the partition and joshua will lose the hard drive space unless he reformats the partition. Then he is back to having a C: and D: drive. Windows will not resize a partition unless you delete and reformat all of the partitions into one partition and reinstall Windows. Besides that, there is no need to boot to the cd to do what you are saying, you can do the same thing in the Computer Management module in the Control panel.
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#9
joshuagor44

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Thank you, cmw. I'll keep that in mind if I ever have to reformat my PC.
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#10
dsenette

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you could use GPARTED to remove the "d" partition and expand the "c" partition to take the full drive space...assuming that there aren't two physical drives of course

what you would do is get the GParted live cd ISO (all instructions are on that site), burn it to disk as a bootable disk (we can give instructions if you need them) tehn backup all the data you have in the D partition...either by moving it to C or putting it on CDs or whatever you have available...then you would boot to the GParted disk and delete the D partition...then resize the C partition to fill the drive...then you'd reboot. let chkdsk run..and voila....one partition
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#11
joshuagor44

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That's exactly what I'm looking to do. How can I check if I only have one drive without having to open up my computer? And can I run the ISO with a program like PowerISO or Alcohol120% instead of burning it to a CD?
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#12
dsenette

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no you have to boot to the ISO on a disk you can't run it from within windows

right click on my computer, choose manage, then disk management..in the bottom part of the window...how many items start with "Disk"?
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#13
joshuagor44

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Just one and D is listed as an "expanded partition."
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#14
dsenette

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then you've only got one disk
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