Ok, a seemingly simple task has become a major headache. I want to copy a HD to a larger HD… Being the brilliant computer expert that I am… when I built my computer, I took a 60G HD and partitioned it into 5G and 55G partitions… w/ the 5G partition be the the primary C: drive. The theory being that if Windows crashed and wrecked the C: partition, I would (hopefully) not lose my entire HD (and all the irreplacible info contained therein)…
Now that I’ve upgraded to Windows XP, it has steadily ate up all 5 Gigs… However, now I am running into the problem that I can’t copy JUST the C: portion to a larger HD. I have a spare 15G HD that I am trying to use… so obviously I can’t copy the entire HD to it… but I only want to enlarge the C: portion so I don’t have to go out and buy another 60G+ HD. Besides that… with the partitioning… I don’t know how it would carry over… I’ve very confused on that part too…
So… fellow computer nerds… how the heck do I copy just the C: to the larger drive?
And a follow up Q… is there a way to unpartition the 60G drive w/o losing everything on it and/or copying it to yet another drive?
Thanx for any help given.
Here is a link to a free trial download of Partition Magic. I’m not sure if the trial version is fully functional, but you might want to give it a try.
No, it should mean that if you have two operating systems on two different partitions on the same hard drive, you shouldn’t unpartition them as the computer will then not be able to boot either operating system. For example, I have an OS-only hard drive with a Windows XP partition and a Windows ME partition. The dual-boot works just fine as long as each has its own partition. However, if I were to unpartition that hard drive, I’d be screwed and have to do a complete reformat and reinstall.
This is saying if you have a dual boot system with one OS on the first partition and a second OS on the other partition you will be SOL after combining the partitions. If the first partition is your OS and the second is data and other files you should be OK.
Another option would be to shrink the size of your second partition and move it to the end of your drive, then expand the size of your primary partition to take up the slack.
Check the utilities provided by the Hard drive manufacturer. Sometimes they have a utility that will copy the contents of an “old” drive to a “new” drive, and will also expand the “old” partition to whatever size you like on the “new” drive.
This does not need to be done on a “New” drive (as in never formated, etc) though you will lose ALL data on the drive you are copying the data TO.
