hard drive partitions

[Bill]

I have an XP Pro system on a 80G hard drive, it is
partitioned in half, op-system on one and work files on
the other, both are NTFS. I can easily copy the work
files to the C: drive partition. Can I take that back to
a 80G one partition drive without destroying my op-system
and starting over? I want to add a second physical 80G
hard drive for video so I thought I would take the first
back to a 1 partition drive.

Thanks

[Bob Willard]

Bill wrote:
> I have an XP Pro system on a 80G hard drive, it is
> partitioned in half, op-system on one and work files on
> the other, both are NTFS. I can easily copy the work
> files to the C: drive partition. Can I take that back to
> a 80G one partition drive without destroying my op-system
> and starting over? I want to add a second physical 80G
> hard drive for video so I thought I would take the first
> back to a 1 partition drive.
>
> Thanks

XP does not contain a tool to do that. You can either buy a
third-party app (e.g., Partition Manager), or -- for free --
you can back up your files, boot from the XP CD, and reformat
the HD, then reinstall XP and all apps 'n' data.

Of course, there is a catch with PM: before running PM to merge
parts, it is wise to backup everything as a precaution. PM does
not, AFAIK, recover from some problems while it is munging parts.
--
Cheers, Bob