I tried to find the answer in other postings but unable so here goes.

My HDD (about 9GB total space) apparently was shipped with 2 partitions, C: and D: I recently noticed that I had only 249MB of free disk space left on C: and that D: was much larger but had absolutely nothing in it. I decided to delete D: with FDISK. I deleted logical drive D: and a secondary partition. I then had only C: with a single primary partition. Just what I wanted! The trouble is that although I now have about 2GB free space, multiple gigabytes of space are out there assigned to nothing and I don't know how to reclaim it.

How can I gain the use of that space in my primary partition on C: without reformatting and starting over? Can I do it without buying Partition Magic or some other? Many thanks in advance.

gramps

Unfortunately, formatting parts of a partition isn't possible - it's all or nothing.
You've rightly seen that you now have a single partition, but as part of that used to belong to another logical drive, it is inaccessible.
It may be possible to recover using scandisk, although this is a guess. If you run scandisk and it finds the missing space, but reports it as unusuable, it may be possible to have scandisk 'fix' it. Bear in mind that this suggestion is off the top of my head - I don't know if scandisk would even recognise the missing space.
Another possibility is that a utility such as Norton disk doctor may be able to help, or the Partition Magic you already suggested. This is strange territory -I'm trying not to think that a full re-format is your only option! Perhaps someone else may come up with some better ideas for you.

Get Partition Magic Warez? Maybe not. Because I can assure that is the only way. Disk Doctor only fixes partictions, it can't modify the boot record.

Why man, Why! What is wrong with multiple partitions? Chances are, your drive has come prepartitioned like that because it gives you the most space! Don't complain! Embrace multiplicity! Put that Extended Partition back and LIVE WITH IT. Use it. Install stuff on it.

My hard drive, for example, is divided up into three parts - and it is only 4Gb! The first part holds OS and programs. The second part holds data and games. The third part is for temps and swaps. Setting up the #temp! drive is a real pain. Windows is painful to use.

If you want (and can) you may be able to put your swap file on D. WIndows does not recommend you do it (with good reason - tinking can cause your system to slow down to a continetial crawl). A rule of thum is to set the minimum size at 0 and the maximum size at 1½ times your ram capacity.

I’m having difficulty following your story.

You have a 9 GB physical drive that had two partitions on it.
The c: active primary partition [you didn’t say how big it was] was smaller than:
The d: logical partition in an extended partition [you didn’t say how big].

You deleted the extended partition.
You seem to imply that you increased the size of the active primary partition c:
If you used fdisk to do that you’d have lost the contents of c:
What size did you make it?
Didn’t you make it the full 9 GB and if not, why not?
Do you have an old BIOS that is only capable of giving addresses to 8 GB of space?
If so you need to overcome that limitation. I did it using “Drive Overlay Software” supplied by the manufacturers of my HDD’s [Samsung & Western Digital Corp].

AteKnog is correct. You should use separate partitions and you should keep the C: partition as small as you can.

I have a 10 GB drive and it was in two 5 GB partitions. I decided that I should make the c: drive lean and mean so I wanted a 2 GB C: and the other part of that physical drive [E: in my case because D: is my second physical HDD] to be 8 GB. What I did was this:

1. I backed up the C: and E: partitions onto CD-RW disks.
2. I used “Ontrack Disk Manager” supplied by my HDD manufacturer [Samsung] to re-partition to 2 GB C: and 8 GB E:
3. I restored the backups to the drives they came from.
Have you spotted the potential cause of a problem? I had to make certain that there was no more than 2 GB worth of files on the C: drive before I made the backup because it would start out on a 5 GB C: drive but was going to need to go back onto a 2 GB C: drive. That meant I needed to cut & paste all those big data files like wave and mp3 files over to the E: drive before I did the backup.
The good part about this is that because the C: drive is small, I can defragment more quickly and also backup more quickly.

WOW! I am amazed at the response I've gotten in such a short time. The fact is the subject computer is not mine and is located in another city so I'm going to wait until all the replies are in, collect them and forward them to the owner. You folks have come up with some interesting possibilities but my gut feel is a re-do.

I've gotten an education about the value of partitions. I guess the mfr. knew what they were doing. Many thanks. This is the best forum I've seen!

gramps

There is one problem that has not been discussed yet...

If this machine is a Compaq removing that additional partition may have destroyed setup or restore info/programs.

Before redoing the the drive, I would try to restore the old partition structure...do a google search for data recovery, most of the programs are expensive but there are a couple that offer trials or are freeware.

There are a number of free and/or trial partition programs out there that you can use to try to fix the situation without having to redo the whole install. They are a little more difficult to use that Partition Magic, but you can't beat the price. I would search for programs at www.pcworld.com using Partition as a search term in the downloads category.