I'm sorry, but I am still new to all of this, and there is A LOT i just do not get yet, please be patient - i learn quick. I have found a little on this, but not exactly what i was looking for. I currently have my hard drive partitioned to have linux (mandriva) on the second partition and i want to move it to a drive by itself and restore the partition so that my XP partition utilizes the entire drive again. I know that i should back up everything and start over as to not loose data; however, could i use the mandriva cd to just reconfigure the linux partition back to ntfs...will windows see that? i dont have partition magic, and if i need that, is there some other equivalents?

Once you move your data to the new disk, boot it to make sure everything is o.k.
When happy, just delete the old partition(s), and use gparted to resize the NTFS to use the (now) free space.
If Mandy doesn't have gparted, download the liveCD - only about 50-60 Meg.
Might be safer to use anyway, and it's handy to have around.

Easy ...

Removing your Mandrvia install is easy you can use QTparted or Gparted to delete the partition then just stretch your win NTFS one to fill the entire disk.

I don't know whether you have given much thought to how you are going to move your *nix install or if you are just going to start from scratch? But you could migrate them entirely across to your other HDD before you remove their partitions using the dd comand or a backup/restore package like G4L, BootITng, SystemRestoreCD. I am not totally up on using dd commands but I am sure someone could direct you to it's correct syntax for that job.

The only thing you'd have to do is modify your grub/lilo to direct it to the new partition.


edit: Doh! pipped at the post (pun intended) by syg00.

Thank you both...I didnt have much on the mandriva drive anyway, im going to start from scratch. It was used for me to see if i liked mandriva among other distros.