Deleting XP dual boot and partition and expanding the C:/Drive

A

AlanT

Member
Hi

I have Windows 10 on my C;/Drive and XP as my secondary boot on D:/Drive with both partitions of equal size. This is how it was set up. I no longer have any use for XP and my C:/ drive is filling up. I would like to therefore delete XP, format the D:/Drive and delete the volume. I would then like to expand the C:/Drive partition to utilize the free space from the D:/Drive so I am left with only one partition.
Am I able to do this without affecting Windows 10? I am not concerned about data as this is all on a separate drive but I would rather not have to start from scratch by having to format and reinstall.

Alan
 
Perfectly possible, depending on relative positioning.
Post a screenshot of your Disk Management so I can see the positioning of the important bits and I'll give you a blow by blow account.
 
Thanks for your prompt reply. I attach a disk management screenshot. The D:/ and C:/ drives on on the same internal hard drive, partitioned equally. The H:/ drive is a separate internal hard drive on which I store all my data
 

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OK.
Worst possible scenario.
Disk Management flags have the following meanings

"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first HDD"

So D: (XP) is your controlling boot partition.
When you installed W10, it put the bootmgr and BCD on the "active" "system" partition (XP) which is standard MS Setup architecture to facilitate automatic dual-booting.
In order to remove the XP partition you'll need to migrate the boot files from D: to C:

EasyBCD will do that for you
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Once you've successfully done that and rebooted (W10 will show as "system" "active" and "boot") then Windows will let you format the D partition (It won't allow it with any of the above flags or "page" present on the partition)

That will leave you with the space you need, but unfortunately Windows will only allow resizing itself at the back end, not the front. (The BCD addresses the partition by its offset from the start of the drive).

In order to merge that space into C, you'll need a bootable partition manager with that capability.
I'll leave that part to the accompanying manual of whichever PM you own or acquire for the purpose.
 
Thanks for this. I have successfully migrated the boot files so I should now be able to format the D:/ partition. Will games and apps then run from reformatted D:/ partition? If so, I won't need to delete it and expand the C:/ partition
 
Yes you can use the space in any way you want. You don't need to merge into C if you don't want the bother.
When you install future software, it'll generally ask if you want a "quick" or "custom" install.
Sometimes that gives you options to pick and choose parts you want and don't want, but mostly it's to allow you the choice of where you want it installed and you can just override the default location C:\Windows\Program Files to be any Folder you create on D:\
Back in the days of W95 I used to install Windows into the minimum size possible for C, then install all of my user stuff into a separate partition to keep Windows as lean and clean as possible for backup and recovery reasons, but later versions of Windows developed the annoying habit of installing all kinds of user data into C without asking, till it grew to the ridiculous gigantic clutter it's now become. (At least it manages to keep itself defragged automatically these days unlike back then)
 
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