Need help merging partitions using Paragon HD Manager 8

hello guys i need help with my pc. i have a gateway with 2 partitions one "c" drive and one "d" drive. the "d" drive was nothing but the recovery crap from gateway (i don't need it as i am going to buy an official version of windows xp medica center SP2). i wiped the contents of the "d" drive (now it's just blank) and i want to only have a "c" drive with my windows OS on it and all my programs (cause i want to test returnil and i want to be sure that the crap that was on the "d" drive is dead and gone).

now how the heck do i "merge" the 2 partitions without accidentally destroying my "c" drive? i have paragon hard disk manager 8 special edition and is there a way to merge my blank "d" drive into my "c" drive without messing up my "c" drive and all its content?

 

hello zop zop,
on the left hand panel there is an advanced partitioning options tasks.
expand that section.
click on merge partitions and follow the wizard.
i used this on my test pc to merge two partitions.
if you have any folders on the D: partition it will create a folder on C: with a name you choose during the wizard. if you dont have any folders on the d: partition it will just safely merge the two partitions so you have one big c: partitions like you want.
lodore

 

i found a "merge partitions" wizard function in Paragon HD manager but i looks like i'm doing something wrong :

here's an overview of the system before i do anything

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd84/zopzop/overview.jpg

here's the merge partitions wizard

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd84/zopzop/step1.jpg

here's me selecting which partition i want to expand (is this what i want to do?) :

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd84/zopzop/step2.jpg

here's me selecting the partition i want merged into my c :

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd84/zopzop/step3.jpg

here is paragon showing me my HD before and after the changes :

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd84/zopzop/step4.jpg

here's me crying, what the hell happened (or will happen ) to my c drive? if these changes go through? why is there an "*" where my c drive should be?

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd84/zopzop/whathappened.jpg


does this mean i'd lose my c drive and all my info on it?

 

the fact it says 9gb used i very much doubt it.
and the fact that the first screenshot shows that the c: has used 8.9gb.
in the paragon manual there is quite a few screenshots of partitions with a (*) next to them instead of a drive letter.
in the paragon program click on the help tab.
click on partition management.
adavanced partioning operatings
read the infomation about how to merge partitions.
have you got anything to backup the data on to?
lodore

 

is that good or bad? i try to keep my HD as clutter free as possible. 3 of those gigs are my game City of heroes/city of villains, 1.5 gigs are my programs and stuff and the rest is windows

ok will do.

no that's my biggest problem. i need to purchase norton ghost and backup my stuff to a dvd. i just hoping i could do it without spending 80 or so dollars in backup software just incase anything goes wrong.

 

Hi, folks: You could have been rescued by a recovery DVD/CD made from that d drive partition--the recovery one filled with craps. But... some PC manufacturers have an online recovery link built in your box, why not look for it ?
Good luck.

 

that's the thing, i DON'T want the "d" partition OR any of it's contents. i just want to merge the "c" and "d" partitions into one "c" partition, without messing up my "c" partition which is running windows and has all my stuff on it. the "d" partition is blank (i formatted NTFS and its blank). i want just one partition my "c" partition.

 

Hi, Folks: I think (hope I am wrong) you have just merged partition C into another partition C. what I can see from your attachments, within disk diagrams, there are no traces of partition D at all. In the final attachment, it shows that you may have lost the entire partition C as the result. Luckily that 9GB used space in logical disk "*" may contain so-called hidden recovery media, rather than partition D I referred earlier. You may be able to use it to recover your box back to original state. Next time around, perhaps using "redistribute free spaces" option is more appropriate than using "merge partition" in this case (partition is blank and not shown in diagram). Take care.

 

i haven't done anything yet i was just asking if what i was doing would result in the destruction of my "c" drive (i could careless about my "d" drive). i didn't commit (thankfully ) to any of the changes in the attachments.

hmmm that sounds like a plan i'll try that tonight and before i commit to any changes, i'll run it by some of you here

 

H, folks: My prayers have been answered. You have NOT commit it yet, good news for all who sweat a bit. Take care again.

 

My personal preference would have been to delete the D partition and resize the C
partition.

Al

 

so that's 2 votes for deleting the 'd' and resizing 'c'. i'm gonna attempt it tonight.

 

Merging partitions and for the very first time without any previous experience ?
Too risky. I would only do this, if I can restore my previous situation.
Merging partitions would be more an experiment to me to get experience with this feature.

 

Hi, folks: Since OP does not like manufacturer's hidden recovery partition, and does not have any other imaging/backup app on hand. I would create a new partition to back up current working partition, and burn a recovery media using built-in feature of Paragon Hard Drive Manager. In the event of PC unbootable(except of entire HD failure), one may be able to get into system to restore . I have done this w/ v.8.5, however have not got a chance to do it yet(luckily).

 

i've deleted my d partition and freed up the space :

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd84/zopzop/ddrivedeleted.jpg

now this is what happens when i tried to resize my c partition (i didn't commit to the changes i just wanted to show what happens) :

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd84/zopzop/onlyonepartitionleft.jpg

why does paragon delete my partition letter (c partition) and replace it with an "*"? wouldn't this mess up my boot?

 

zopzop,

It looks like you are working from Windows. Is that correct?

An old adage with partitioning software is to work from the boot CD. Having said that your previous situation is OK but I wouldn't do it from Windows.

 

yes sir.

paragon HD manage does have an option to create a bootCD. i'll create one tomorrow and see what happens. i just can't believe how hard this turned out to be. i mean i used to do stuff like this YEARS ago without it being this much of a headache. how i wish i had the old partition manager back (before symantec purchased it).

so you are saying i should do what i did in my last example : resize my "c" partition and click ok? i'm scared that paragon hard disk manager will rename my "c" partition "*" again and i'm sure that will wreck havoc with my machine.

 

That's the best way to do it. From the boot CD. It looks like you have already deleted D: drive and you now have Unallocated Space. Yes, resize C: drive so there is no unallocated space preceding your OS drive. Be warned that you probably won't have any drive letters present when booting from the CD. (If they are present in someone with multiple partitions, the drive letters will most likely be incorrect). No problem, ignore them and go by the partition labels. You don't have your OS partition labeled but its obvious without a label.

Go ahead, your OS knows that it is C: drive even without a drive letter in this app. It will take a little while to complete as the 10 GB of OS data has to be moved to the start of the HD. Maybe 10 minutes or longer. Just wait for it to finish. You can't hurry it up. Don't start if there are storms in the area and a possibility of power loss. Big problems if you lose power during a partitioning.

 

I'll leave the current partitioning guidance to your help here, but i WOULD highly recommend that in the future before taking on such risks to at least make a FULL IMAGE of your system partition FIRST and store it to another media, that is of course if you have access to one in which i assume right now that answer is no?

I regularly use PARAGON DRIVE BACKUP 8.51 and even run it in windows, HOT PROCESSING on an XP Pro with a meager 512MB of memo, and it restores perfectly each and every time.

That way you can explore as many alternative partitioning methods as you wish without something going amiss which might toast your data/system.

Regards EASTER

PS: In fact i have a back-up task to do right now (procrastinating ATM) on a 109Gb partition since something screwed up my FD-ISR snapshots partition (81Gb) a few days ago, so comes a transfer data, wipe drive, reinstall joy for me as soon as i get up enough energy to do that.

 

Hi, folks: A serious question to OP: Are these image attachments yours or else? I have found on logical disk(*) images, you produce two separate ones with different serial numbers. And another thing, I do not understand why partition(*) does not show up on disk diagram in the beginning until the last one(after merging or resizing). I try to reproduce your work, but to no avail. Good luck.

 

yes they are mine. and good grief i just noticed that now too, since you pointed it out. i have no idea why it's doing that.

i'm using paragon HD manager 8 special edition (the free one they gave away a few months ago).

the whole purpose of me deleting my "d" partition and merging it with my "c" is because i wanted to get rid of something that came with the pc (it's a gateway). it came with "security" software called "pc angel" that damn thing conflicted with my powershadow. i thought i got rid of it by deleting my "d" partition but i have nagging suspicions that bits of it are still around. and yes i've contacted both gateway and the makers of "pc angel" and they gave me the run around. gateway told me to call them, they told me to call gateway. i gave up months ago but now out of spite i want this crap off my machine. so that's why i think i'm in this mess.

 

I have exactly the same scenario. But from previous experience I used Acronis Disc Director & I got lucky. Then later I had to redo the system which brought the recovery partition back. I decided to do nothing about D in the future. PC Angel may confliict with Power Shadow but I them switched to Returnil.. No problems encountered. When I fooled around with this in the past I got the feeling I was playing with fire. Unless I can come up upon a computer crisis. for doing this i will avoid it again. In any case image the system completely before partitioning. That way you should have away back in case of disaster.

 

Brian K it worked! i rebooted using the bootcd paragon made for me and resized my "c" partition like most everyone suggested. and you were right brain, my "c" partition showed up as "*". but i went ahead and resized it anyway. like you said it took about 10mins to complete the whole procedure and then i rebooted. no problems at all! now i only have ONE partition that is 300gigs with 10.7 gigs used up!

thank you everyone on this thread, especially you brian this had been annoying me for months and now i can breathe free! woot! woot! woot!

to anyone who's curious this is what my system looks like now :

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd84/zopzop/final.jpg

 

zopzop,

Good news. It's a relief when it's over.

I learned how to do partitioning on an old computer where it didn't matter if you made a mistake. Just wipe the drive and start again. I was able to pull the power cord out of the wall during a partitioning process just to see what happened. You would never do these tests on a computer that mattered.

Now that you have deleted that partition in front of your OS could I suggest that you make a data partition to the right of your OS so that you can separate your OS files from your data files. You may not be ready for this concept but the theory is outlined here. Backup strategies.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#13

Some people hate this idea. I love it. My first HD is 320 GB and my WinXP partition is only 13 GB. I have a lot of apps installed and the C: drive is 2/3 full.