Okay, so I was building up this very old machine of mine (Celeron 600 Mhz :P) and found that the 40 GB hdd had two partitions. I decided to merge them, went into disk management and realized Oops!! this is Windows XP and not Windows 7. So I cannot just do it from disk management. While looking for other options, Acronis flashed into my mind (having worked for them before). So I decided to use Acronis Disk Director 11 Home to accomplish the task. Below are the screenshots for benefit of people.
(NOTE: You may want to backup important files before doing this)
I installed ADD 11 Home and launched the application.
It showed the two partitions, I clicked on “merge volume” on left.
The next window prompted me to select the partitions I wanted to merge, I checked both c: and d: and selected c: as the main volume for merging.
Clicking Ok, took me back to the main screen showing how it will look post the process is complete. I clicked on “Commit pending operations”.
The next screen shows the pending operations and is more of a way to provide your confirmation that you want to continue with this.
Click Continue and then “Ok” again for the system to restart and start the partition merger process
After restart, you will see Acronis Disk Director on the screen performing the task with a progress meter. After the process is complete, system may restart again to load windows. Check my computer and the partitions would be merged. A folder with all the data from the merged partition will be present.
