Buddha Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 My desktop at home is a 5 1/2 year old Dell that came with Win 95 factory installed and an 8 GB hard drive sectioned off into 4 partitions. All factory installed programs were located in one partition and the other three partitions came empty. Shortly after getting the computer, I upgraded to Win 98 Second Edition and I still use it as my OS. My question is whether or not I can safely remove the partitions without losing files/programs, without having to buy 3rd party software to do it, and without having to reformat my hard drive-- and if so, how would I go about doing it. Any help would be much appreciated! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fansince62 Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 good advice....always have a back-up!!! hint, hint. a program like Partition Magic is relatively cheap. it can be used to move free space on your logical drives. I would do that first. then move critical files into the preferred drive. then remove the old logical drives. norton ghost is a good program for imaging a drive. don't mess with your primary drive! whatever else you do....make copies of your critical files...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrapeApe Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 If you are semi-computer literate and comfortable opening up the case and messing with hardware, read on, otherwise, ignore. If you have critical data on the drive, what I would do is get a new drive. You can get a 20GB, 7200RPM drive from newegg for $61 (free shipping). You can get a 40GB, 5400RPM drive for cheaper. Unplug the old drive. Plug in the new drive. Install windows and applications. Plug in the old drive as the slave. You can then copy your data over to the new drive, remove the old partitions and use the old drive as a backup. But I would keep it intact for a while. There are some issues. You need space in your case. You need an available power, but you can split power plugs. You probably will need another IDE cable. They are cheap $3-5. If you get a 7200RPM drive you will be getting a faster drive and more space. And you will have a drive to do backup's on. It's an easy upgrade that is fairly safe. And if you ever have to reinstall, you can do so easily because you can backup your data on a HD and not CD's or tape. Partition magic is good too. I've used it successfully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jagsbch Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 Hey Ape, Am I catching what your saying, If I have 20 gig's now will I have 40 when I install the new 20 gig drive along with my other 20 as a backup? Oh a link to the sight were I could pick up the Drive would be great. Thanks. this could be just what I have been looking for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrapeApe Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 If you have a 20GB you will have two 20GB's making 40GB's total. Not a 40GB partition, but two separate 20GB partitions. The first two drives are the ones I was refering too. But actually the third drive is a 40GB, 7200 RPM drive and is only $67 with free shipping. We've been using this drive in all of our computers at work and haven't had one fail yet. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=manufactory&catalog=14&manufactory=1306&DEPA=1&sortby=14&order=1 Newegg is where I purchase all of the equipment for our office. I've never had a problem yet, but I've never had to return anything either. I did have a bad monitor, but dealt with ViewSonic instead of newegg since I wanted advanced replacement (they ship the monitor before you ship yours back). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fansince62 Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 ape...nice idea.....provided the controller and bios can manage it......also rec you upgrade to XP/2000 or some such that has actual, no-kidding security capabilities....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrapeApe Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 Yeap, a 5 1/2 year old bios probably won't support anything over 8GB's if even that. You can use the WD data life guards utils to perhaps get around this but I'm not sure it will work on NTFS. A better option may be to spend another $36 and get a promise Ultra133 controller, but then we have gone from a simple upgrade to a $100 upgrade. I probably wouldn't recommend doing this if you have to do that. The WD web site has a bios check that will tell you what drives your machine will support. At some point you may as well just replace the entire thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fansince62 Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 ape....right again.....there some awfully good deals out there right now for well under a $1000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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