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I'm running Windows XP and I have two disk partitions, C and D. C contains Windows and installed programs, and D has my own files, documents, etc.

I'm wondering if its possible to combine C and D into one partition?

4 Answers 4

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You can combine the partitions into one. However, if you combine them, you will lose the contents of the D: drive. If you can backup the contents of D:, then you can use a program like the Gnome Partition Editor to remove the D: partition and then resize the C: partition to add the free space that is left.

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  • Data loss is not necessary at all; see my answer.
    – Karan
    Jan 23, 2013 at 2:30
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It is very much possible to merge adjacent partitions on the same physical drive and using the same file system (FAT32, NTFS etc.) without any data loss (although of course you should always have an up-to-date backup before messing with partitions). GParted can't do it (although people have been requesting the feature for years now), but other programs can.

Partition Magic 8.x from Symantec could do it easily (although they killed a great product after buying it, the final version was fully compatible with XP). The source partition ended up as a folder inside the destination partition.

Now I recommend EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition which is free and can accomplish the same thing:

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  • Beware!!! I tried merging two 1.5 TB volumes and this application is taking forever (ETA >100 hours).
    – MIWMIB
    Oct 22, 2017 at 13:51
  • I no longer recommend EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition. Try GParted first and see if it has been updated to include this ability, or else try AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition instead.
    – Karan
    Nov 8, 2017 at 13:54
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    Why do you no longer recommend EaseUS Partition Master? I used it to extend a partition in front. I didn't want to use a merge function after I read this, I had no backup, and I expected a lot of copy action. Instead I was impressed how well EaseUS Partition Master extended the partition IN FRONT: all files are still there and it took no more than 2 minutes. (Again: I copied the files from the smaller partition over to the larger one before... and deleted the smaller partition that was in front of the larger one...)
    – luttztfz
    May 6, 2018 at 6:38
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Another option would be to mount the D drive as a folder.

A partition can be mounted as an empty NTFS folder either by adding a new hard disk to your computer or if your existing disk has an unused partition available, and following the steps below:

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  1. Click on Start » Run and type diskmgmt.msc (opens Disk Administrator)
  2. Right click on the new partition and select New Partition
  3. Follow the instructions until you reach Assign Drive Letter or Path section
  4. Select Mount in the following empty NTFS folder radio button and select Browse
  5. Highlight the C: drive and click on New Folder and name the new folder
  6. Complete the wizard

Read the full instructions or this Microsoft KB article

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I needed this task too and tried Microsoft Disk Management of Windows 10 first. It has a function called "merge", but it didn't work. I think it has something to do with dynamic disks.

I decided to copy all files from the smaller partition over to the larger partition, then delete the smaller partition and then extend the size of the remaining (larger) partition to be the only partition spanning over the whole disk. But Disk Management wasn't able to do it without converting the layout to dynamic disks. The reason was that the remaining partition was the second one and the free space was in front of this partition.

I did not try DISKPART, but from what I read here both tools, Disk Management and DISKPART, are not designed to extend in front (I quote from the source, description of value "extend"):

  1. Extends the volume with focus into next contiguous unallocated space. For basic volumes, the unallocated space must be on the same disk as, and must follow (be of higher sector offset than) the partition with focus. A dynamic simple or spanned volume can be extended to any empty space on any dynamic disk. Using this command, you can extend an existing volume into newly-created space.
  2. If the partition was previously formatted with the NTFS file system, the file system is automatically extended to occupy the larger partition. No data loss occurs.

So I ended up using EaseUS Partition Master, free edition (for private use), and it did the job successfully and quite fast too: it took only 2 minutes on a PC with a 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB RAM and a SATA-II HDD. (The copy operation from the smaller partition, 60 GB with about 40 GB of data, to the larger partition, the rest of a 320 GB SATA hard disk drive, took about 4½ hours.)

The partition is now extended in front to span over the whole disk. It seems like the NTFS filesystem structures where modified to NOT move any actual data, which is why it only took 2 minutes, and is exactly what I wanted. Naturally there is now free space at the start of the partition and it is likely that additional fragmentation will occur. Eventually that is, because new files will be placed in front of the remaining data and at one point it will fill up that free space in front, fragment, and continue behind the already existing (old) data the end. But that's just my paranoia talking...

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