Merging Partitions

[Rick Bull]

I had a startup problem with Linux Madrake, so I decided to delete both it's partition and Windows 98's. I then reinstalled Win98 (and formatted the HDD in the process) and I thought it would merge the partitions back into one, but it didn't. So does anyone know how I can merge them back together, either using a third party utility or Fdisk?

[JungleMan]

Partition Magic

[chrisjk]

partitions can be compared to physically seperate disks; formatting one will have no effect on the other and won't merge them in the least.

PM is good for the task; nice interface, easy to use; about £45

[JungleMan]

My copy was around $0

(Oops...)

[chrisjk]

I would love the feds to turn up at your house, you'd **** your pants

[Rick Bull]

Thanks for the help guys. I was thinking about Partition Magic, but I didn't know whether it will do what I needed. So I'll try that (I think my copy will probably cost £0 too )

[JungleMan]

You've been at the same store I'm at are ya?

[Rick Bull]

Must be, I went to KaZaA

[Gandalf_Grey_]

Originally posted by jpbtennisman
My copy was around $0

(Oops...)

You know, me too! we musta went to the same store!

[Rick Bull]

It didn't work! It tells me that I only have on partition taking up the whole 30GB. But Windows states that it can only "see" 20GB. Should I go into DOS and create a Primary or Extended partition or something, and then use PM to merge them? Or will that just partition my 20GB down even further?

[markman]

I had trouble formatting a linux partition. If you have a hard drive setup disk, use that; it should delete the partitions it cant read, then you can format as usual

[Rick Bull]

Oh OK thanks. I don't think I have one, but I'm sure my HDD manufacter has one on their site. I'll let you know how I get on

[Rick Bull]

Whoops! I opened my case while the PC was still on to find out which HDD I have, and it beeped and shut down I forgot I updated the BIOS a while ago and forgot to turn that option off

[Rick Bull]

Well I took your advice markman and Western Digital gave me a link to their software and told me it should fix the problem. So thanks for your advice and I'm going to try it once I've backed up. Thanks once again.

[markman]

Just run the fully automatic install and it will say something like "unknown partition on drive X." then will delete it. Mine freezes after there (or maybe im not letting it go long enough) but when I manually reboot DOS can see and format it

[Rick Bull]

It worked, it worked! Now I have my 30GB back and I can keep all my porn, err I mean, work stuff on my disk It took long enough to format though, 3 hours Anyway, thanks again.