# HELP! how do I unpartition?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-how-do-i-unpartition/125851>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 28, 2002, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-how-do-i-unpartition/125851 "2002-08-28T00:36:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![the\_duke\_69](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/48db29/32.png) [@the\_duke\_69](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_duke_69)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-how-do-i-unpartition/125851/1 "2002-08-28T00:36:58Z")

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How do I unpartition a hard drive? I need the extra space. It is a used drive and I want it all one drive.

thanks for any help! 🙂

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**Author:** ![Horseflesh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horseflesh/32/7502_2.png) [@Horseflesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horseflesh)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-how-do-i-unpartition/125851/2 "2002-08-28T00:42:59Z")

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Do you want the drive contents to remain untouched? You’ll need Partition Magic then. First, copy the contents of the partition you’ll destroy onto the partition you’ll keep. Then use Partition Magic to delete the unwanted partition and resize the remaining one to use the entire HD space.

If you don’t want to keep the contents of the HD, well, we’ll need to know what OS you’re using to tell you the easiest way to delete partitions and reuse it. At least you won’t need any additional software this way.

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**Author:** ![Melon\_Farmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@Melon\_Farmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melon_Farmer)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-how-do-i-unpartition/125851/3 "2002-08-28T00:43:40Z")

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Partition Magic

[http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/](http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/)

Warning, contrary to the name, Partition Magic is not in fact _magic_ and I’ve seen a couple hard drives hoerked by it. But it’s probably the best thing out there.

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**Author:** ![the\_duke\_69](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/48db29/32.png) [@the\_duke\_69](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_duke_69)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-how-do-i-unpartition/125851/4 "2002-08-28T00:58:37Z")

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I am using windows 98 version 4.10.2222 the hard drive is empty and it has been formated.

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**Author:** ![GopherGod72](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f0a364/32.png) [@GopherGod72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GopherGod72)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-how-do-i-unpartition/125851/5 "2002-08-28T01:42:47Z")

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Use your win98 boot disk to boot to a command prompt and type C:/FDISK, yes you want to enable large disk support, go to menu item number 4 and check out your partitions, write them down, esc and choose menu item number 3, delete said partitions, esc back to main menu use menue item number 1 and create 1 partition using all disk space.

you can find walk throughs on the web if you search for FDISK

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**Author:** ![dylan\_73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecccb3/32.png) [@dylan\_73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dylan_73)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-how-do-i-unpartition/125851/6 "2002-08-28T11:52:17Z")

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This is of course assuming that the drive you want to repartition is your main system drive. If it’s actually a _second_ drive you don’t want to fdisk and remove anything on C:

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**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-how-do-i-unpartition/125851/7 "2002-08-28T15:52:01Z")

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There are usually some free programs/shareware programs on [download.com](http://download.com) to do that.

just search for ‘partitition’

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**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2002, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-how-do-i-unpartition/125851/8 "2002-08-28T15:56:35Z")

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Ahem, that should be ‘partition’