merging primary partition with a logical one

Hi

Can Windows xp disk management merge 2 partitions, one of them is the primary partition where windows resides?

A friend's computer is having Windows installed in a very small primary partition (2.5gb) and its making everything crawl like a turtle, too slow.
I thought I try increasing the windows partition by adding another partition to it (merging) but i did not see that option available. Is that so? or is there a way to do it?

if not, is there a freeware tool available anywhere to do this?

 

XP can't do that. There are some excellent programs that can but they all cost around $40. I use Partition Magic by Power Quest. It's safe and effective.

There are some freeware ones that also do that but they require a fairly high level of understanding or else the data will be lost. They're not for the faint of heart.

Among them are Ranish Partition Manager that can be found with any search engine. It works well but requires lots of reading. It makes the $40 stuff look like a bargain.

 

Hi sallam.

If I had to do that I would use an image program to make a backup image of the first partition and a separate backup image of the second partition ( to another hard disk ). Fdisk and format the drive ( assuming nothing else is on it. If so make a backup image of those also ). Restore the first backup image. Mount the second backup image as a virtual drive ( the image software, ie Acronis True Image, should have this capability ) and copy that data to the first partition wherever you want, folder, etc. If you had other data in other partitions, restore those. If you did then be sure to set up the partitions with care when you run Fdisk. That should do it.

Most of the image software has the capability to read a set of backup files and mount them as a virtual drive. A drive letter will be assigned and the set of backup files will be seen as just another hard disk ( although simulated ). Then you can look at the data and copy it using Windows Explore. It will be just a tad slow because it has to breakout the files from the backup set.

I don't know of any other software that will do that. There might be I just haven't had the need to search any out.

giles

 

Hi sallam,

If this is a new installation, just get hold of a win98 startup floppy and run fdisk at boot and delete the partitions and then make one large partition the size of the disk. Then install windows.