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I have a Win 95 machine with a 5G HD. The drive is formatted into 3 partitions: roughly 2G, 2G, 1G.
I want to upgrade to Win 98SE which can easily handle a 5G HD.
Is there any way to get back to a single partition without backing up the machine and doing an FDisk/format?
Thanks - Tony D
by thechas
Yes, with 3rd party software.
The most popular utility to change drive partitioning is Partition Magic
Considering the drive size, and the fact that the system has W95 on it, I will warn you of a couple of issues that you should think about before upgrading.
1. RAM, Windows 98 will be VERY slow if you have less than 128MB of RAM. If possible, increase RAM to 196MB, as this is the amount of RAM that has the fastest benchmark scores with W98.
2. CPU speed, I upgraded a Pentium 233MMX system from W95 to W98SE, and performance dropped by about 10%. I try not to install any OS on a system that does not have at least 2X the minimum CPU speed.
Chas
by tonydee
Chas,
1) Thanks - I'm looking at the Partition Magic manual. So far I haven't seen where I can put a partitioned drive back together. Have you done this?
2) I've seen Win 98SE run on a 233 MHz/AMD-K6/32M RAM. You're right, it's a bit slugish, but it does get the job done. I wonder what differences I'll see because this machine is a Pentium as compared to the K-6 I've worked with.
This answer helped me, but I don't want to close it just yet.
-td
by thechas
Tony,
No, I have never used Partition Magic.
I have not had the need to spend the money for the utility, as I always have spare HDDs on hand.
Of course, the fact that they warn you to back everything up first is a concern.
I suspect that youwill need to perform what you want to do in stages.
Start by clearing as many files as possible off of the D: drive.
Shrink the D: drive down in size, and allocate the free space to the C: drive.
Continue until the D: drive is gone.
Now, the E: drive will be the D: drive, and you will need to follow the same sequence to move the drive over to C:.
I setup all systems with at least 1 logical drive.
I copy the Windows CD, and ALL downloaded drivers onto this drive to ease recovery from crashes.
I then move virtual memory over to the extra drive to reduce file fragmentation, and scandisk / defrag restarts.
There is a good article on partition stratagy posted at www.aumha.org
When I upgrade, I usually include a new hard drive. I just mount the old drive as a slave, and copy over what files I need, or I use my hot swap bay, and back things up on CDs.
I am a firm believer that a fresh clean install is ALWAYS better than an upgrade install.
Yes, you need to re-install applications, but you start out with a much smaller registry file than you get when you upgrade, and that does boost system performance quite a bit.
Another side thought.
If you have any application software loaded onto the logical drives, you will need to either update ALL the pointers for the software (including the registry) or, re-install the software anyhow.
Chas
by tonydee
Chas,
Sounds like a well thought out plan. Thank you very much. I'm closing this out and going to try what you said.
Thanks again,
- Tony D
by tonydee
This discussion is closed to new replies.
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