Night Owl
No I did not purchease the Norton system suite with ghost 9x in there I got the stand alone ghost 9.x
Quote : your post was as follows
a.  shrink E: to 50 GB- -take 50 GB's from the F: side of the E: partition--hit the 'Apply' button,
and so now the E: partition is 50 GB's total  with 30 GB's of free space on the left side
and 50 GB's of free space on right side of the E: partition. 30 gig total free space
b.  move D: partition over to the right up against the E: partition--I hit the 'Apply button
So now the free space is on the left side of the D: partition
30  gig free space is on the left side of the D partition
c.  shrink the Extended Partition from the left side next to the C: partition--and hit the 'Apply button'
I have to shrink the Extended Partition  because the 30 GB's of 'free space' is inside the the Extended Partition initially.
I can not add that 'free space' to the C: partition  until it is outside the Extended Partition and next to the C: partition.
d.  Now the 30 GB's of 'free space' is outside the Extended Partition, and next to the C: partition.
And I now can expand the C: partition to the right to include that 'free space'-
I  now can hit the 'Apply' button.
Now I have added the 30 GB's to the C: partition.
So c primary drive is now 40 gig
And E partition is  now 100 Gig
e.  Back in step a. I  shrank partition E: on the right side by 50 GB's.  
So, I did  not have to 'delete' any partitions--and I do not have to restore any partitions if all has gone well using PartitionMagic.
How would you change the step by step procedure
if I changed the plan to this instead of the above
1- delete the D partition 70 gb
2- leave the F drive intact 24 gig
3- leave the E partition intact at 130 gig as it
4- add the 70 gig of unallocated gig
gained from the deleted D partition to my C drive
making my c drive 80 gig
Its going to be a big C drive now but by the same token
I don't need more then 130 gig on my e partition

chuckychez

Quote:


So, what's the answer to these questions, if you would be so kind:

Quote:


Quote:


1.  Delete D:, (you will have to confirm you want to do this by typing 'ok' in a box as requested by PartitionMagic) press 'Apply'

2.  Shrink Extended Partition from the left until it's against E:, press 'Apply'  (this gets that 70 GB from inside the Extended Partition to the outside of the Extended Partition--now the 'free space' is next to the C: partition)

3.  Expand the C: partition to include that 70 GB's, press 'Apply'

You're done!  But when you boot to WinXP, you will not have a D: drive listed any longer.  You can use 'Disk Management' to re-assign drive letters if you want them as D: and E: instead of E: and F:.

But, if you have installed any programs to E: and/or F: that have Registry entries that reference those drive letters, changing them with Disk Management will not change the Registry entries, and you will get 'program not found' or 'file not found' errors.

Hi again
Night Owl , I was just wondering doesn't PM 8 automatically change the drive letters , so if  D partition Is deleted doesn't E partition automatically change its drive letter to D from E and then F would change to E , and F would go to one of my optical drive and so on down the line with a letter given to the usb 2 hdd as well
I have no idea but I was just wondering if PM 8 does so much maybe it does that also ?

Also so the verdict is If I had installed that Chess game with tons of files (over one gig) and today I unistalled it and now the E partition shows 0 gig that does not mean I am home free . I suppose that still means I would not be able to change the partition/drive letters from E to D , so that means I will have E partition but no D partition at all because I won't be able to do it  with windows disk manager if PM does not do it ?
I suppose even tho I unistalled  the game,  there  still must be plenty files( broken and orphed files ) in the registry
I know in add remove unistalling the game there was user something or other that I could not uninstall from the chess game ..I kept getting a message " are you sure you want to unistall this user something " Well who is sure of anything with computers ....

chuckychez wrote on May 20^th, 2005 at 8:52pm:


I always change my CD drive to Z: in Disk Management. Then it can't be changed by creating new partitions and is always easy to remember.

chuckychez

Quote:


Okay, thanks--so your stand alone Ghost 9.x package has a 2nd Recovery Disk like Norton SystemWorks 2005 Premier.

Quote:


As you stated in your next reply # 20, the drive letters are not assigned by PartitionMagic, but by the OS. 

In WinXP (and Win2000, WinNT--i.e. these are the 'NT-based' OS's), the drive letters are 'remembered' by the OS--so once WinXP has booted for the first time and 'seen' the HDD's and optical drives--it determines their 'unique device ID' and the drive letter assignment is written to the Registry.  These drive letters are then 'reserved' for every future boot, unless you somehow change the registry information.

For instance, I have a USB 2.0 HDD that I hook up only when I use it to store a Ghost image on it.  It's drive letter L: in WinXP.  When I disconnect it, drive letter L: no longer shows if I look in Windows Explorer--but the drive letters M:, N:, O:, and P: are assigned to my memory multi-card reader are still present and still the same drive letter assignments.  When I hook up the USB HDD again later, it's assignment of L: is used again.

But, in DOS (or Win9x orWinME), these OS's do not record the unique ID of devices that get drive letter assigned, and do not record drive letter assignments to the Registry.  So, each time you boot to these OS's, the drive letters are assign again on re-boot.  The drive letter assignment will depend on which device it is, and where it's located on the controllers for the device.

In your reply #21 above, you have listed the order that devices are assigned drive letters--that's in DOS, Win9x, WinME.  And it happens each time you boot.  That means if you start changing which drive is first and which is second--the drive letters will be assigned accordingly.

Now in WinXP--the first time the system boots, the order of drive letters is assigned the same order as outlined above in reply #21--but, after that first boot, the drive letters are retained even if you change the position of the devices.  So for example if you make the first HDD 2nd, and the 2nd is now 1st--the drive letters will not change--they will follow the drive regardless of their position.

So, if you boot to DOS to use PartitionMagic, the drive letters will be assigned dynamically during boot--so if you have deleted the D: partition, yes all the drives will shift down one--that's because you are in DOS.

Re-boot to WinXP--and D: partition will be absent, and your other partitions will be as they were before--because WinXP remembers the assignments between boots!

So, different OS--different drive letter assignment outcomes!

Quote:


If you have uninstalled the program, then even if there are 'remnants' in the Registry, as long as you do not have any program that's loading automatically during boot that's located on that partition--and you do not have the program listed in your program menu--then it's not a problem.

You can go into Disk Management and change the drive letters to whatever you want if you have no 'still installed, active' program files on the partition.  It's only if you want to leave programs on a partition that you are still going to actively use and have their location stored in the Registry that you run into problems.

Quote:


In WinXP, it will stay the same letter it was before you add a partition--because the drive letter assignment will be remembered--so a new HDD partition is going to be after the optical drive's drive letter.

In DOS--you have to load drivers that allow DOS to see the optical drive and to assign a drive letter.  If you do that--the optical drive, in DOS, will always get the last drive letter assigned, because DOS always re-assigns drive letter upon each boot.  When you load those DOS drivers, you can use a 'command line switch' for the optical drivers telling which letter to assign to the optical drive--that's what the quote from Symantec was talking about--

If, in DOS, you do not load the drivers for the optical drive--then DOS simply will not see the optical drive, no drive letter assigned, and you can not access the optical drive.

Quote:




As Brian stated:

Quote: