Very Computer

TIA,  Pete

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If you haven't installed Linux, you should get hold of a Linux boot
disk (the sort that distributions provide as a way to kick-start the
installation process). Boot with that, and, in the case of most
distributions, you should be able to press Alt-F2 or Alt-F3 or similar
to get to a shell prompt.

'/sbin/fdisk /dev/hda' (assuming you use IDE disks - if they're SCSI,
try sda instead of hda) will get you into fdisk on the appropriate
drive. Type 'p' to print your partition table, *write down all the
information*, and then, using 'm' for help, delete the partitions on
your disk and recreate them with the two partitions joined together
(so, if you've partitions from cylinder 1 to cylinder 432 and from
cylinder 433 to cylinder 1022, create a new partition running from
cylinder 1 to cylinder 1022). I suggest deleting all your partitions
and recreating them from scratch because this will keep the ordering
of partitions in your partition table correct; Windows is likely to
have severe problems if they get switched around.

fdisk will not write any data to your disk until you use the 'w'
command (write table to disk and exit). Use 'p' liberally to see
what's happening, and, if something goes wrong, don't panic, use 'q'
(quit without saving changes) and start again.

BIG DISCLAIMER: You may already have lost some data, depending on
exactly how fips operates. fdisk operates completely in "raw" mode on
the partition table, and will itself not erase any data; I don't know
about DOS fdisk. However, Windows' reaction on trying to boot with the
rejoined partition may well be to run Scandisk, and what that will
choose to do is up for grabs.

I strongly suggest you wait for a day or two before doing anything, to
see if anyone else on these newgroups has any more elegant
suggestions. You can use this as a last resort, though.

Good luck,

--

Trinity College, Cambridge, and Computer Science       [riva.ucam.org]
"It's the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give,
 And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live."

thanks again!

:: I used fips to partition my disc, and mistakenly split the partition
:: used for my Win98 FAT32 C:\ drive.  So now I have 2 contiguous
:: partitions that I want to join into 1 partition.  Can I add the space
:: from the second partition back to the first partition without destroying
:: the data in the first partition ?  If so, how ?

: I don't know if you've installed Linux yet, but using Linux fdisk is
: probably the safest (ha!) way to do this sort of thing. At least, if
: it doesn't work the data is probably destroyed already (I'm not sure
: *exactly* what fips does in this situation).

What you suggest: delete 2 partitions, create one new,
is useful only if the partitions do not contain any data.
Just enlarging a partition is useless if you cannot also
enlarge the filesystem on the partition.

: BIG DISCLAIMER: You may already have lost some data, depending on
: exactly how fips operates. fdisk operates completely in "raw" mode on
: the partition table, and will itself not erase any data

Roughly speaking this is true, but it is not precisely true:
fdisk only writes the partition table, but if one has logical partitions
then the corresponding parts of the partition table live at the start
of these logical partitions. If you divide a logical partition into
two parts, and then join them again, you will have lost at least one
sector of data.