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May 5, 2006
Dear CNET members,
Happy Friday, folks! And for those of you celebrating this Friday's occasion, happy Cinco de Mayo! This week we received more than 100 submissions to Barnabas's question in regards to removing his laptop's hard drive partition, and of those answers, 90 percent of you recommended a utility called Symantec's Partition Magic to get the job done. While I have never tried Partition Magic, I can tell by the "tone in your voices" that you folks dig this particular utility and it works for you. However, given that the utility does have a cost factor, it may or may not be in our members' interest. But if time is money and the fastest way to get around this issue is to fork out some dough, I personally would consider it highly. This leads me to this week's winning answer by Darren, who recommends going the Partition Magic route as well as the traditional way of reformatting the drive; the choice is yours, Barnabas. But whichever route you decide to take, whether it's the recommendation by Darren, other methods listed in the honorable mentions, or other advice from our members, please back up your important data first before you do anything; you just never know what might go wrong. Members, if you have any other recommendations on this week's topic, the discussion forum is officially open, so come on in and join us with your knowledge at hand. Take care and thank you all!
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Member Question of the Week
When I purchased my VAIO laptop two-plus years ago, I didn't realize that the 60GB HD had been partitioned into two
drives. A couple of months after having used the laptop, I
discovered the partition: a 10GB partition and a 50GB
partition. Of course, by then the operating system, along
with a number of program hogs, had already been installed on
the smaller partition. I procrastinated taking action until
now, when the C: drive, after cleaning and compression, has
only 25 percent left, while the D: drive has 90 percent
remaining. Is there an easy way to unpartition the drive to
return to one physical drive, or do I have to back everything
up to another computer, blow everything off my laptop, and
then reformat it? And, if the latter, unappetizing option is
my only recourse, do you have a step-by-step checklist
to
follow?
Submitted by:
Barnabas P. of Claremont, California
First, let's look into the possibility of repartitioning without reformatting. Years ago in MS-DOS, there was a utility that could repartition hard drives without all this reformatting nonsense, called Partition Magic. After a quick search on the Internet, I'm surprised to see that Partition Magic does still exist, now as part of Symantec.
This program will let you easily manipulate your hard drive and move your partitions around without the need for formatting. However when using this, it's always a good idea to back up all your important data first, and that's lucky because Partition Magic will also backup your hard drive for you! The only major problem with this solution is that this type of power comes at a price. PM is likely to set you back...
Submitted by:
Darren F. of United Kingdom
For
Darren's
efforts, we're sending him his choice of any
Help.com Learning CD.
Community Buzz
 Each week we take a look at topics discussed in the forums.
Best regards and enjoy!
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Check out next week's question:
My name is Trevor and I'm a subscriber to CNET. I have a question regarding internal hard drives. I recently bought a new PC that came with an internal Serial ATA hard drive. I still have a Parallel ATA hard drive from my old PC that is in fine condition that I would like to use as a second internal hard drive. However, the motherboard on the new PC doesn't have an extra parallel slot to which I can hook up my old hard drive. Are there any products out there that can help me hook up my parallel drive to my new PC (such as an external adapter or some kind of PCI slot card)? If there is, can you please recommend a reliable brand and also let me know if there is anything I should be aware of before proceeding with whatever I need to do? Thanks!
--Submitted by:
Trevor Y.
If you have the answer,
e-mail us at messageboards@cnet.com.
If we choose your response, you'll get a
free Help.com CD.
Have a question?
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| Member Profile of the Week |
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User name: wfairley
Location: Birmingham, Alabama
Member since: September 24, 2002
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About me: My middle name is Encourager (if you asked my friends). I am a true Leo. I strive to unleash the creative energy within. I also strive to uncage...
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