Unable to merge unallocated space on HDD

HatMan

HatMan

HatMan

Associate
Joined
2 Oct 2007
Posts
610
Location
Cardiff
Hi All,

A PC is fitted with a single 320Gb HDD. It has a primary active partition of 30Gb for XPP. The extended partiton of 280Gb is partitioned into four.

In trying to move free space about on an HDD, I have found I am stuck with 3 partitons of unallocated space that I cannot merge. The drive originally had a 30Gb partition (E) which ran out of space, which appeared to cause corruption to data. Having deleted and moved stuff about temporarily I set about using GParted to take space from the 220Gb partition (F). The original operation of moving 100Gb from F to E worked fine, but I now seem to be stuck with a 10Gb partition and starngely a 10Mb partiton. I have deleted them making them unallocated and then tried to make a new single large partition. The option resize/move allowed the original 100Gb move but will not allow anything else. I don't get an errors as the options don't appear. My question is ,why can I not merge the three unallocated spaces into one and format as required. Also the only partition creation option is Logical not primary or extended. I have tried Super FDISK, GParted, and several other DOS based apps to no avail.

Advice much appreciated.

Thanks
 
10Mb partition will hold the partition information from the other partitions, Its not actually a partition or unallocated but used by the OS to sort out the allocation tables.
 
Is Paragon free to use?

The 10Mb partition did not exist before hand.

The single drive was partitoned thus...

1 x 30Gb ((C) OS) [Primary]
1 x 10Gb ((D) Pictures) [Extended]
1 x 30Gb ((E) Documents) [Extended]
1 x 10Gb ((G) Storage) [Extene
1 x 220Gb ((F) Programmes)

I successfully moved 100Gb from F to E. But now have a 10Mb and a 10Gb partition I did not start with. I cannot merge the 10Gb with now E partition. I must also point out that I neglected to point out that one of the HDD test DOS apps on the HIREN CD found several sector errors which it claimed to have repaired.
 
Probably why it won't merge then because those partitions contain bad sectors.

Repaired sectors usually are just marked off by the software and are not used any more. Even still, I would not use that drive any more. Migrate the data to another HDD and bin the drive unless it is under warranty.
 
mrk said:
Probably why it won't merge then because those partitions contain bad sectors.

Repaired sectors usually are just marked off by the software and are not used any more. Even still, I would not use that drive any more. Migrate the data to another HDD and bin the drive unless it is under warranty.
Click to expand...

SOUND advice tbh
 
Noted. Of course HDD are now twice the money :( That's typical. Anyway the cost is not my problem. Thanks all for the advice. A new HDD is being purchased and I have made the backups needed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom