Partition Help

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Long story short, I have recently deleted a partition of my hard drive that I was using to run a second OS from.

Now, I have my main drive, the NTFS, which is 23305.2 MB, and 19641.9 are used. The problem is that I also have "Unallocated space" which is 14849.1 MB, that I desperatly need. WHen I try to format my NTFS (main drive) to merge it with the Unallocated space (I am using EASEUS Partition Manager Demo) I get a locking volume failed error. Basically, I can't merge the Unallocated space with my main drive, because the my main drive is in use; the volume is being accessed.

I need some serious help. How can I merge these two drives so that I can use all of this space I have. Without it, my hard drive is getting full (since I am installing Sims 2 and Sim City 4 tonight). I just don't know how to get around this problem.

Thanks in advance.

 

[vbraun]

You don't have to merge the partitons, just create a new one. I don't know how you would do that with that program and windows.

Also, it may be time for thinking about a bigger hard drive.

 

[Pyrion]

AFAIK you won't be able to merge the partitions from within Windows, only through a utility booting off of something other than the volume you're attempting to modify.

Creating a new partition doesn't sound like what he's trying to accomplish. Yes he could create a new partition there and format it as a second NTFS partition but if he wants them merged as one (why???) he'd either have to delete the primary and then combine as one (necessitating a reformat and reinstall of Windows) or use some sort of partition merging utility booting off, say, a floppy disk, to merge the two (and the last time I tried something like that on one of my systems, it hosed the partitions, necessitating repartitioning and reformatting).

 

[Pentium]

AFAIK you won't be able to merge the partitions from within Windows, only through a utility booting off of something other than the volume you're attempting to modify.

I've resized my only partition with Partition Magic from windows running on that partition, and I didn't have any problems.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Pyrion, I want them merged as one because right now I can only access 60% of my hard drive.

I made a stupid mistake that f*cked up my computer though. When I deleted the secondary partition, I forgot about the GRUB that I used to choose which OS to use. Now my laptop can't load the GRUB, and, since my secondary partition is gone, I can't reinstall my second OS. Basically, I am going to have to wipe my hard drive and reinstall windows.

Say good bye to my 12 page research paper.

And all my ther stuff.

 

[Padma]

Grab a Live-CD version of Linux (Knoppix, or PCLinuxOS, or Mandriva Move, or ...) and save your documents to floppy/CD/USB/whatever before you wipe the drive!

 

[Chairman Meow]

Long story short, I have recently deleted a partition of my hard drive that I was using to run a second OS from.

Now, I have my main drive, the NTFS, which is 23305.2 MB, and 19641.9 are used. The problem is that I also have "Unallocated space" which is 14849.1 MB, that I desperatly need. WHen I try to format my NTFS (main drive) to merge it with the Unallocated space (I am using EASEUS Partition Manager Demo) I get a locking volume failed error. Basically, I can't merge the Unallocated space with my main drive, because the my main drive is in use; the volume is being accessed.

I need some serious help. How can I merge these two drives so that I can use all of this space I have. Without it, my hard drive is getting full (since I am installing Sims 2 and Sim City 4 tonight). I just don't know how to get around this problem.

Thanks in advance.

You'll need a boot disk. Best one to use would be Knoppix, like Padma said. I'm not sure if there's an NTFS resize tool available in Linux (NTFS support has been somewhat weak), so you'll probably need to backup anything you want to keep and then reinstall Windows. If there is an NTFS resize tool available, though, you can use that to resize the partition (from the boot disk - you can't resize a partition while booted from it)

 

[Padma]

ntfresize is the specific tool used in Linux. It can easily handle resizing partions. (It's writing data to ntfs that is the problem.) It is used by QTParted (a Partition-Magic work-alike) GParted (I think), and by Mandriva's "DiskDrake" tool (Knoppix uses QTParted).

 

[Chairman Meow]

ok. I wasn't sure if there was a resize tool... I've never had to resize an NTFS partition (I use FAT32 on the Windows partition of my computer so I can write to it from Linux), and wasn't sure if there was a resize tool available. In that case, just use Knoppix, which has QTParted, to resize the partition. Back up your data anyway, just to be careful, though.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Grab a Live-CD version of Linux (Knoppix, or PCLinuxOS, or Mandriva Move, or ...) and save your documents to floppy/CD/USB/whatever before you wipe the drive!

Thank you for posting that! I completely forgot that I had some old Linux CD's way in the back of my shelf.

Man, I thought I was screwed.

 

[tomsnowman123]

Don't use Window$ in the first place.

 

[Pentium]

Don't use Window$ in the first place.

Surely the best advice