hi

my hard drive is currently partitioned 3 ways & i want to merge into one. I have removed all data on 2 which leaves the operating system etc on 1st partition. if i delete other 2 using partition amgic am i 100% safe that i wont lose data on drive C ?

Cheers

"am i 100% safe that i wont lose data on drive C ?"

You are never 100% safe. Especially with Partition Magic. (Personal opinion.) I've read a number of horror stories about it on the various help forums I contribute to.

Don't let this scare you off however. You should be OK. I'm just saying never consider yourself 100% safe, that's all.

An axiom; if you don't want to loose it, back it up on media before you work with it.

if i delete other 2 using partition magic, am i 100% safe that i wont lose data on drive C ?

Partition Magic has been very good for me in the past. I doubt that you will find anyone who will say you are 100% safe. I will do some research in a minute and see if I can find another option.

Take a look at this link:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/produ...CFUWoGgod5H_JWA

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/82408/acron...r-suite-10.html

I've always had great results with Partition Magic, as long as I ran the DOS version from the two floppies.

It seems that the Windows GUI version has most of it's problems when you string too many operations together. Make a change, execute it, then make the next change, etc. and it seems to work a lot better.

Ok I have merged 3 partitions into 1 using Partition Magic & then rebooted PC.......the HD is 160gb - in disc management, I now only see 50gb allocated (NTSC) & 110 unallocated

How do i allocate this 110gb & merge back with 50gb ?

From your description, it sounds as though you've only deleted the other two partitions and not merged.

Check your settings again. If you merged all into one partition you should have one 160 GB partition, not 50 GB and 110 GB unallocated. Unallocated means not partitioned or formatted.

Try merging the unallocated 110 GB into the 50 GB.

cheers guys for your help BUT it's getting worse

I decided to keep one partition so now the hard drive is partitioned in 2...1st partition containing operating system © & 2nd (D) docs etc. How i want to reformat D drive but if i go into COMPUTER MANAGEMENT & select DISC MANAGEMENT i get following error

Logical disc manager - The dependency service or group failed to start

Any ideas on how to resolve without reforamtting the whole drive

Cheers
Saint

OK, a couple of questions before you do anything else.

Do you ever power down your machine?,,,

OR, is it always on?

Is any aspect of Partition Magic automatically running while the machine is on?

Did you do as jimholly suggested? ie; Either run the DOS level of partition Magic to make the changes, or do one operation at a time running PM within the Windows environment?

Hi

To confirm, I power down & reboot after each operation...there are NO instances of Partition magic running when i try to access DISC MANAGEMENT.

Since my last message I have managed to reformat 'D' drive with partitionmagic BUT am still get an error when accessing DISC MANAGEMENT.

Any ideas on how to resolve ?

"...if i go into COMPUTER MANAGEMENT & select DISC MANAGEMENT i get following error..."

Logical disc manager - The dependency service or group failed to start

The above error means that a Service (upon which Disk Manager depends on to operate) has been either Disabled, or, is set to Manual Start.

Windows (XP) is extremely vague when it comes to identifying which Services ~support~ other Services.

It may be that PM has disabled the Service(s), I don't know. I haven't used PM since version 5.0? (Win98SE days). I no longer have my CD. Once it failed me, I either gave or threw it away because I bought Paragon Disk Manager.

You could open Services (Start, Run, type in services.msc, hit Enter) and browse through to see what is set to Disabled or Manual and try to associate one (or more) of these to Disk Management.

If you have the PM CD for installation, you could try uninstalling PM and see if the Services are reset with this action. You can always reinstall PM if you choose later.

I personally would leave the O/S partition at 50 GB and use the secondary (D:) partition for data anyway. But thats me.

Top advise Danpenny

Disc Amanagement was disabled in 'servcies'...have now set to automatic & I can now access fine.

As always this site has provided the answer to my question.

Thanks everyone for their help this time & over the years.

Saint

Your welcome. Glad to hear you got things right once again.