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Unpartition a drive in Win7 64-bit


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I have a 400gb WD drive I split in 2 using FDISK some 4 or 5 years ago. C: (180gb) was my boot drive, and D: (180gb) became my program files.

I now have an SSD boot disk, so I want to turn the 400gb drive back into 1 logical partition.

What FREE (if possible) tool should I use to do this? I tried MiniTool, but it wants to "recover" a lost partition. Aomei Partition Assistant is no use as you have to pay to use the 64bit version.

Suggestions please :)

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And just delete the partition using the built in disk manager in windows -- you will then have 400GB or so unallocated which you can create any partitions you want, again with the built in FREE disk manager that comes with your OS.

There is not need to use any 3rd party anything for something as basic as deleting a partition.

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Yes it's Windows7.

I have programs installed onto D: now, and then music and pictures on E: (both of which are on the same disk).

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this product used to be partition magic. partition magic was purchased by symantec and tossed in the circular file. it look s like a chinese company picked it up and has tweaked it calling it partition master. this will do the job and in the home version free too. i have it on my laptop. do not do this without making an image via backup and restore built into win 7. you know just in case. i have used it and it does work.

http://www.partition...om/personal.htm

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Well then what you want to do is delete the OLD C partition, and then resize your D partition to fill up the unallocated space left over by deletion of your OLD C part.

Problem is the built in resize does not allow to expand to the left, ie you can not expand to space before the partition, only unallocated to the right or after the partition.

Your going to need to use a 3rd party for that - easeus

free version works on 32 and 64bit

http://www.partition...om/personal.htm

So what is your OS installed to now as far as drive letters? Post up a screen shot of your disk manager showing your disks and current partitions.

You could make use of the whole drive using dynamic disks, which will allow you to expand a volume even across disks to show as one mount point or drive letter. But I would not really suggest that method unless your comfortable with dynamic disks, etc.

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There is no way that I know of to merge two existing partitions into one, even if they have the same file system. As others have already mentioned, you basically have three options:

1) If you have enough free space on one of the partitions, copy the data from the other partition to that one, delete the now useless partition, and expand the remaining on into the available free space.

2) If there is not enough space on either partition to hold all of your data, you could copy some (or all) of it from one partition to another hard disk, delete the now useless partition, expand the remaining partition into the available free space, and move your data back over from the other hard drive.

3) Backup all of your data from both partitions to another hard drive, reinitialize the disk, create a single new partition, and move your data back over to the new partition.

As BudMan noted, the disk manager built into Windows will only let you expand partitions right, so keep that in mind.

If possible, it is probably best to do these operations offline (not booted into the Windows installation that has programs installed onto your "D" partition). Once you get the new partition setup, you probably want to make sure that it is mounted as drive "D", since Windows has numerous registry entries indicating which programs are installed on your "D" drive. I don't think that Windows checks the UUID of partitions with programs installed on them (in addition to the drive letter, which matters in either case), but if it does that could pose a slight problem for option # 3 (or # 1 or # 2 if you don't expand the "D" partition).

Although you could use the built-in Windows disk manager (depending on the route you take) or Partition Master, I prefer GParted for my partition and disk management. If you use GParted Live, it has the additional advantage of ensuring that you're not trying to operate on an active file system.

Finally, it is always best to backup your data before performing any potentially risky operations (such as deleting/resizing partitions). Although it will probably be fine, assuming that you do everything correctly, its best to be "better safe than sorry" when dealing with personal files. No need to lose data when you don't have to.

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Ok so I converted it to a dynamic disk and it looks like below:

drives.jpg

Disk 1 is the one I want to unpartition, but I don't want to lose anything.

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Well your going to loose data on the partition you remove.. That is given.

So which one is which here.. You want to get rid of E? or D?

You called them C and D in your OP.

You kind of jumped the gun there on Dynamic disk didn't you?? Didn't I clearly state I would not suggest that unless your comfortable with dynamic disks -- if you were I would think you would of had no reason to even post your question in the first place ;)

So Which partition do you want to make fill the disk now, D or E? And you have data you need on both D and E? or just one of them? Any data you want to keep your going to have to copy off! It can be done in steps if you need to -- just need to know the details of free space you have on the disks you want to keep. And how much data if any on the partition you no longer want. You could just mount say E to a folder on D so it looks like 1 drive, etc.

Once you give the details I can walk you through with screenshots - I can duplicate you setup in a VM and walk you through it.

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They used to be C: and D:, and are now D: and E: as the SSD is C:

I want D: and E: to become 1 drive (D:) and back to ~400gb.

Free space is an issue atm. I have a 1tb external HDD which I could move stuff off to whilst I sort these partitions out.

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Free space is an issue atm. I have a 1tb external HDD which I could move stuff off to whilst I sort these partitions out.

Uhh, do that. Move the data, format the 400gb disk and make 1 partition.... and I mainly suggest that so you can go back to a non dynamic disk.
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As I mentioned already, the drive letter/UUID thing worries me a little bit with the "copy everything to another drive and then reformat" strategy, but I just thought of something else. If I copy something from an EXT4 partition to another EXT4 partition, my file permissions and ownership (even SELinux flags) will be preserved. Does it work the same way with NTFS? For example, if I were to copy my entire user profile from one NTFS partition to another, delete the profile from the original, then copy it back, would my file ownership and ACL flags still be preserved? I know that permissions are, but I'm not sure about the other things I mentioned. If it were just normal files or user data, it wouldn't be a problem. But the fact that program files are involved worries me a little.

Edit: Never mind, I answered my own question.

source: http://www.techrepub...issions/1056063

The Problem

Why can't I copy the old-fashioned way?

There are several ways you can copy files from one location to another. You can use the Windows Explorer to copy files to target folders. You can also open up a command prompt and use the Copy or XCopy commands. Unfortunately, these methods only copy the files along with any standard DOS attributes. They don?t copy the NTFS permissions that control which users have rights to what files.

This is what causes the problems when you copy files: If you?ve created special permissions for files, when you copy them using any of the methods listed above, any custom permissions you?ve configured disappear. Instead, all permissions revert to Everyone with Full Control.

As if that?s not enough of a problem, ownership also disappears. If a user was previously the owner of a file, when you copy it, your user ID becomes the owner of the file. That alone can prevent a user from being able to access the file.

The Solution

The standard syntax for the XCopy command is xcopy filename targetlocation. To copy files and retain their permissions, you?ll use two switches you may not be aware of: /O and /X. These switches are both new with the version of XCopy that comes with Windows 2000. To use the command with the switches, open a command prompt window and change directories to the directory from which you want to copy files. Type xcopy filename targetlocation /o /x and press [Enter]. You can use wildcards and other XCopy switches just as you normally would.

The /O switch is the one that actually copies the ownership and ACL information for the file. The /X switch copies audit information. So you can omit the /X switch if you?re not using auditing, but it?s a good idea to include this switch anyway and to get in the habit of doing so, because if you enable auditing later, you?ll want to copy this information as well as the ownership and ACL information.

Edit 2: I just noticed that this information is a little bit old. (Hence the mention of Windows 2000 as the latest version of Windows.) However, I can't seem to find anything better. I'm sure that it will still work, especially since Microsoft is usually very good about maintaining backwards compatibility, but I'm not sure if this feature has been incorporated into Windows Explorer yet. It seems like something that Microsoft would want to implement (for simplicity), but I'm not sure.

Edit 3: The official Microsoft KB article on the topic seems to back up the fact that the article I found still outlines the best way to copy ownership/ACL properties. I also found a PowerShell blog post that has a script which may let you do this more easily, if PowerShell is your thing. Personally, I think it looks like more hassle than just using XCopy, especially since that's built into Windows already.

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"I want D: and E: to become 1 drive (D:) and back to ~400gb."

Ok how much data is on E currently that you NEED?? How much free space is on D currently, is there anything you can get rid to clear up space?

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Ok workaround implemented. I moved the files on E: to F:, and then shrunk E: to a few MB and bought D: back up to fill the space.

Muchos grassyass for your assistance all (especially BudMan, as always)

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"and then shrunk E: to a few MB and bought D: back up to fill the space."

So then did you move files from E to D and expand to fill the whole disk.

Can you post a screen shot of your current disk manager layout.

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