Deleting dual boot XP partition

[Anita]

HarryG wrote:
> I want to delete the XP on my company laptop which is dual booting with 
> SimplyMepis.  I have a couple of questions:
> 
> 1.  I guess there is no way to combine the 2 partitions without reinstalling, 
> correct?  I know I could format it and have hda1 and hda2, but I would prefer 
> it to be one partition.
> 
> 2.  When I turn it in, I will have to reinstall XP. Of course, it came in with 
> only a rescue disk.  Will this do it?  Or will I have to waste money on a new 
> license?

If you resize hda2, you may end up with it now being called hda1.  I 
know that happens if you delete hda1.  hda2 moves up to become hda1. 
This is important because /etc/fstab indicates the mounting of / and it 
will indicate the wrong partition.  So watch out for that.

You pretty much have to do this with a rescue disk of some sort.  RIP by 
Kent Robotti http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/ 
has parted on it.  It is a floppy rescue disk.  This will allow you to 
work with the partitioning and then edit /etc/fstab if you need to by 
mounting the partition.

Repartitioning or resizing does not alter where the data is.  So, if you 
use 'fdisk -l /dev/hda' and write down the exact information, you can 
run it again later and replicate your partition table as it was.  That 
will put you back to square one which is not a bad place to be if your 
system got hosed.

On putting Windows back on: You will need to delete those linux 
partitions before you attempt to use the restore disk.  It seems like 
common sense, but it can be bad for those who have deleted linux, but 
not the partitions and don't know what is going on when their attempt to 
install Windows shows insufficient disk space.

I'm just curious why you don't keep hda1, make it ext2 or whatever, and 
mount it as /home or /usr.  You haven't said what the sizes are here, 
but having a separate /home partition is essential for me.  With all the 
system changes I've done over the last 10 years or so, I still have the 
same /home partition even though I've copied it from one computer to 
another.

Anita