Updating desktop - continued

donny-gal

Hi again folks
Back in the same location as the desktop again, and last night opened the box, an found there was a spare adapter for the second drive, but need a cable to connect it to the motherboard, so have ordered one.
Meantime I have connected the 120 gb SSD to the original cable, thus leaving the SATA HDD in place not connected at the moment.
Problem 1
I had previously tried to load this for my laptop, but didn't have time to re-build it before leaving, as the image as bigger than the SSD, the laptop CD set it up with 2 partitions, which is not what I really want, so want to clear all the partitions. Can I merge these, it will let me do a delete of the partition, but then just leaves it there without a Drive Letter. Do I need to remove it and re-format it in its entirety in a usb caddy? and again how would I get the partitions off doing that?
I have the CD's so do not have any set up issues starting from scratch again, and no other data on it at the moment.

Hoping you can help. DG

emptybox

If I'm understanding you correctly, you have the SSD in your computer with two partitions on it, but no operating system on the computer?
And you want reformat the SSD to just one large partition to accomodate your previously made system image?

What you could do is burn a GParted live CD/DVD and boot the computer with that, and edit the partitions on the SSD.
Simplest thing would be to delete both partitions and make one new one. Unless there's something on there you want to keep.

With it being an SSD you have to make sure the partition is not misaligned when using GParted, so be sure to follow this guide as well.
http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-sure-your-partitions-are-correctly-aligned-for-optimal-solid-state-drive-performance

Alternatively, as you say, you could take it out and put it in a caddy, and partition it on another computer.

donny-gal

Hi emptybox
There is an operating system on one of the partitions of the SSD, but it has just been put on via the CD. There is also an operating system on the SATA HDD, but at the moment it is not connected, but it could be by me taking the cables from the SSD.

emptybox

donny-gal wrote: »

Hi emptybox
There is an operating system on one of the partitions of the SSD, but it has just been put on via the CD. There is also an operating system on the SATA HDD, but at the moment it is not connected, but it could be by me taking the cables from the SSD.

Oh right.
Well can you not just boot into the OS on the SSD (change boot order in BIOS if necessary), then go into Disk Management and delete the unwanted partition, and then 'extend' the other one into the empty space?
Or is the arrangement of the partitions wrong for that?

donny-gal

The problem seems to be that the unwanted one is the first one, and the OS one the second, nothing seems to make it agree, looks like take it out, put it in a caddy maybe, and then start again/
DG

emptybox

donny-gal wrote: »

The problem seems to be that the unwanted one is the first one, and the OS one the second, nothing seems to make it agree, looks like take it out, put it in a caddy maybe, and then start again/
DG

Yeah, or do the GParted thing, or wait till your cable comes and boot up with the OS on the HDD.

donny-gal

Fixed now thanks, just reloading windows DG