# Partition Magic 8



## tomabounader (Apr 24, 2006)

Hi there,

Was wondering if anyone could help me with a problem I have encountered when attempting to merge two NTFS portions of my main (and only) drive. When I bought the computer the drive was already partitioned 40 Gig / 40 Gig and so I bought Partition Magic 8 to merge the split without re-formating. 

However, when I first tried to merge the two it came up with an error screen after about 26% complete. I thought this might be to do with the fact that one of the portions was a Primary section the other a Logical one so I changed the Logical section into a primary one. This made no difference however, still the same error message:

"Error 4 while executing Batch

Error 4 Bad argument / parameter"

Also when windows now loads it comes up with :

"Windows can not find '*/Programs'. Make sure you typed in the name correctly."

Any ideas??

Tom


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I'd suggest that you backup any data that you can still access before doing ANYTHING else. FWIW, I've used PM for years, and the merge function is the only one that has ever ate data for me, so I avoid it.

The proper way to merge partitions IMO is to move all the data to one of them, then delete the other one and resize the first. You can do an initial resize to free up space on the target partition if necessary.


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## tomabounader (Apr 24, 2006)

I can access everything at the moment + have backed up important files.
how did you easily move all your data from one partition to the other - was that with PM?

+ any ideas on the '*/Programs' error?


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I move all the data with Windows Explorer, it's just a move operation.

If PM has aborted in the middle of the merge, it could have done most anything to the disk structure, It's very difficult to guess what is corrupted at this point.

Does it boot and run properly, other than this error popping up? If so, maybe a startup shortcut got corrupted in the process, it could be looking for "Program Files" and it's lost the trailing edge of the path. This is obviously just a guess. 

Perhaps a pass with a registry cleaner might find a bad path name in the startup parameters.


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## tomabounader (Apr 24, 2006)

Sorry, I think i'm being a real novice: can you simply move folders from one partition to the other, I mean that doesn't corrupt intalled programmes etc?


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Well, if you've installed applications on the secondary drive, that is a problem, and merging the partitions wouldn't fix that. Sorry, I was assuming you had installed XP and all the applications on C:, and had data only on the D: drive. If that's not the case, you can't simply merge the partitions.


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## tomabounader (Apr 24, 2006)

Right thats fine, I'll uninstall the programmes and shift everything else, then delete the partition.

By the way, you were right about the bad path name - good call!


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Well, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and again.


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