New laptop has 2 separate drives..

[tim_tank]

I got a laptop for Christmas .. not really good, but my bro got the exact some one, his has 40gb HD space while mine only has 20gb. my uncle told me that there is 2 hd's in one but i just need to put them together and ill get the other 20gb . I am running low on HD space so i need to get the other 20gb asap..thanks HOW CAN I UN-PARTITION THEM! and if i can would i have to delete everything off the one drive just to get them both together>????

 

[kimsland]

Partitioning and merging.
Have a look at Gparted boot CD

By the way, a lot of these hidden partitions carry the re-installation of Windows.

 

[DelJo63]

.. his has 40gb HD space while mine only has 20gb. my uncle told me that there is 2 hd's in one but i just need to put them together and ill get the other 20gb . I am running low on HD space so i need to get the other 20gb asap..thanks HOW CAN I UN-PARTITION THEM! and if i can would i have to delete everything off the one drive just to get them both together>????

(2) hd's is different than two partitions Usually, a laptop only has space for one HD
so it's likely that you (may have) multiple partitions.

yes 20gb is smallish. First chore is to learn how to manage the crud inflicted by Windows
during day-to-day operations.

find the Disk Cleanup utility and use it.
reduce the space for Restore Points to 3-4% of the HD, NOT 10%
clear private data when you quit the browser, ie (cookies, tempfiles)

want to get discussed with MS? search \documents & settings\ for .tmp

Now that you've pruned the crud from your system, what's free space like?