Large Hard Drives, viewing but want to merge

[Punkrulz]

Hey guys,

It's been awhile since I've had to deal with this issue on my own computer, let alone now I have to help a friend with it. He got a Maxtor 250gb Hard Drive. He fully updated Windows, but still couldn't figure out why he wasn't able to see the rest of his hard drive. Well I then finally had him go into the disk management, and he's able to see the remainder of the hard drive, about 105 unallocated.

Now the problem is this. He wants to be able to use the remainder of that space as C:, so basically he's wanting to use his entire space as one drive letter in Windows... C: should be 250gb. Now, I know that you can merge the unallocated space using Partition Magic... and I know I've used it in the passed, but is there a way to basically tack on that space to the rest of the C: without using any third party programs?

He's using the Asus K8N nForce3 Motherboard, just in case that's any help.

Thanks guys, always know I can count on you. Searching the forums told me about fixing the problem [well, didn't even find that much, it looks like I'm reading a news group for some reason], but didn't say anything about merging that space.

 

[Brad]

this isnt going to help your problem at all, but the actual hard drive size available will be significantly less than 250GB due to formatting and the fact that most hard drive manufacturers use the 1GB=1000MB rule (when in actuality it is 1GB=1024MB)

 

[the_scotsman]

Hi there.

I dont think XP can do this in Disk Management.
Try http://www.ranish.com/part/ this is a free partition manager and can merge partitions.

 

[Punkrulz]

THanks scotsman. Yeah Brad, I was already aware as to why the hard drive only shows a portion of the size missing as to what you buy. My 200gb hard drive shows I had 183, but that's never worried me.

 

[Maveric169]

I don't think you can do what your wanting to do without a thrid party program.