partition deleting help

I've got an 80 gig western digital that came with a backup/recovery partition on it, now what I want to do is delete the partition so that I'll have a hdd with one partition equaling about 80 gigs, any help would be great, thanks and later.

ps the recovery/backup partition is fat32 and the other is ntfs.

are you trying to keep what's on the other partition, or can you wipe it and start over making one large partition? i'm assuming xp will be on it?

GPart 0.1h the Windows friendly Gnome Partition Editor, XP installer, fdisk on an older 98-ME boot floppy are all tools that can delete partitions off of a drive. GPart would be the one for removing hidden partitions since it is a Linux not MS partitioning utility, If you have a cd writer you can burn the iso image onto a cd-r after download from http://tucows.com/preview/8292

sorry for the late reply but, if possible to keep one part of the drive untouched and without wiping it out, I'd rather do that, second, I am only using it as a backup drive, so no os will be installed onto it.

When gpimg to delete partitions you have to choose the one you intend to remove. First you want to know which one is the one you intend to keep. You don't want to remove that one. Once the other is removed you have a choice of temporarily copying all files you intend to keep onto the primary and wiping the second drive totally. There you can create a fresh single partition to utilize the entire drive for storage. Or you can simply delete the now obsolete partition and later use that space for creating one or more partitions even dual OSing the system.

The long route while already having the XP installation disk onhand is to boot from that to get the installer running. Instead of installing Windows again you simply choose the "L" for delete and later "D" to then select the partition to remove. Afterwards you cancel the installation and restart the system.

With GPart you boot directly to a different type of desktop were you look to the upper right corner to see "HDa" on the dropdown menu there. That is the current primary drive installed. When dropping that down to the next drive it detects it will then show "HDb". Note that on both drives the partitions seen will be in the center of the screen. The primary will see NTFS and 8mb as the two partitions there. The secondary 80gb drive will see NTFS, FAt32, 8mb.

The "8mb" is the item to be ignored on both drives. You simply highlight the "Fat32" partition shown and go upto the explorer bar to choose the delete button. The next step is to click on the "apply" button where GPart then goes through the motions and removes that partition. The red button on the lower right hand corner is the exit button giving the two choices of immediately booting the system with the eject disk and boot option above that as default.

Use Partition Magic. It wont hurt any of your data... Just MERGE the two partitions together... You can get this AMAZING software for about $50... Or...

GParted doesn't cost more then a blank cd-r. Once one partition is removed you can use that to "sssstretchhhhh" the remaining one. Why pay $50 for something you don't need?

Delete the extended partition in XP and then use this free program to resize the original partition to fit the whole drive. No fuss, no muss. Done deal:

http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html

You don't need Linux installed to use it because there are several ways to run it, for example by booting one of the many Linux Live CD, DVD or USB Pendrive. They load and run straight from the boot media thus no need for installation at all.

Gee the GParted version there is already outdated with the 0.3.1-1 release a few days ago. If you are going to have to boot from a Linux live cd to run the NTFSresize utility you might as well save the trouble and burn GParted to cd and not have to download an iso for a live distro to burn on cd. You simply boot with a GParted cd and you can choose from the tools menu.

You know, there is a certain someone who is the most irritating wants-to-know-it-all-but-doesn't-really that I've ever met. Got to have that last word in there to show how smart and superior someone thinks they are because they are under the illusion that age matters. A one trick pony. I won't mention any names.

Here is one that does exactly what you want, is designed to do what you want (and not a bunch of other useless stuff, that is not actually designed to do the function you want), is stand alone, free and boots off a CD. It is a freeware version of Partition Magic.

http://partitionlogic.org.uk/

The other utility you made the rec required a Linux installation in order to use. But as usual you didn't bother to read about that little fact. Another little program can not delete, create, and resize partitions but also format NTFS type partitions is found at http://www.1000apps.com/software/software_YIWO+Tech+Ltd_EASEUS+Partition+Manager-24998.html