How can I defragment a partitioned hard disk?

Q My laptop computer is a five-year-old Windows XP Acer Aspire 3633WLMi with a 60GB hard disk. This drive is partitioned (as supplied originally) so the C drive has 25.7GB and D has 26.2GB. Drive C has just 2.75GB of free space, while D has 13.4GB. I have moved my various personal folders to the D drive and uninstalled unnecessary programs and cannot find any other action to take to increase the free space on drive C. As such, I cannot complete defragmentation of hard disk C drive, because Windows demands 15 per cent free space. Furthermore, I cannot install the latest update to my Garmin satellite-navigation device because this requires 8GB of free space.

Do you have any suggestions? Can I make further use of the extra free space on the D drive, or use capacity on my external hard disk to enable me to complete these two processes? I have tried installing the Garmin update on the D drive but without success. Can the partition be removed to provide capacity equal to the sum of both drives?
George Buckham

A There is a way to achieve this using only the tools available in Windows XP. Essentially, it involves moving the contents of drive D on to your external hard disk and then calling on an archaic Dos-based tool called Diskpart to reorganise the drive partitions.

But frankly it’s far too much hassle for a job than can be completed more easily using a free tool such as Easeus Partition Master Home Edition.

By installing this program you will be able to use its Merge function to join drives C and D in a matter of moments, resulting in a single drive (C) with the combined remaining free space available to use (so, just over 16GB according to your figures). Of course, we recommend backing up your important data before you do so. Once Easeus Partition Master is installed, launch the program, right-click drive C and choose Merge partition from the pop-up menu. In the Merge partition dialogue box, click to tick both drives, ensure that the ‘Merge selected partitions to’ dropdown menu is set to ‘C:’ and click OK. If you are prompted to restart your computer, do so – and then your newly enlarged C drive should be ready to use.