partitioning hard drives

[SchmiteGoBust]

Help!!!!
I recently partitioned my hard drive and installed LINUX to see how it was coming on. However I now want to put it back to one partition. The LINUX file system is EXT whereas windows is FAT32. How do I get rid of the EXT partition and expand the windows one back up?????Any ideas anyone?

[Agent86]

Had that problem when I was playing around with Linux and found that I couldn't get back to a single partition thru fdisk. Had to use a utility called aefdisk (from download.com). This will kill ANY partition and you can then start over again. there may be other ways but this worked for me.

[SchmiteGoBust]

Thanks agent,I'll try it later.

[Tinstaafl]

Fdisk, supplied with DOS/Windows will delete the unwanted partions. It won't resize a partition without destroying your data.

As long as you are prepared to wipe the data on the disk, the basic steps are to:

You will need a bootable floppy with Fdisk & Format on it.

With 'Fdisk'
1. At the DOS prompt type "Fdisk" & follow the instructions to delete all partions
2. Create the desired partition.

Now with 'Format'
3. At a DOS prompt type "Format C:" & follow the instructions...

If you want to try to resize the partition without losing data then you will need a 3rd party tool eg 'Partition Magic' or 'Ranish Partition Manager', 'Diskdrake' from Linux etc.

Partition Magic (PM) will cost you but has a reasonably friendly graphical interface.

Ranish Partition Manager is free but doesn't have the graphical interface. In my experience it is more capable than PM but more difficult to use.

It was able to get me out of trouble that was caused by a PM caused problem. PM wasn't able to fix it itself.

Alternatively, you could use one of the Linux based partition tools. These are also free & can set the partition structure to a range of types, including DOS.

Diskdrake (comes with Linux Mandrake) is graphical, easy to use & I think more capable than PM.

I can email you a copy of Ranish if you like. It's only 30 or 50 Kb in size.

[johntrav69]

If messing with partitions you need partition magic from www.powerquest.com. (http://www.powerquest.com.) Costs money but boy what a program. Comes wih a boot loader as well so multiple booting partitions are poss. I have a 45Gb hard disk with six booting operating systems and can resize the partitions on the fly if I want. Couldn't live without it. Fairly cheap from computer fairs I think (approx £25?) Good Luck
John

[Tinstaafl]

Partition magic is simple to use but is also limited. Once it encounters a problem it refuses to carry out any work on the drive.

I understand that there is a 'pro' version of it available that will allow you to attempt to fix partition problems. A lot more expensive though!

'Diskdrake' from Mandrake is free (!) & nearly as simple to use as Powerquest's product. As long as you have a bootable Linux disk eg the Mandrake Linux install disk then you have ready access to Diskdrake.

[SchmiteGoBust]

Thanks for the advice folks. I've managed to sort it all out using aefdisk. Pretty nifty programme! Had to delete all partitions though and reload windows.