Merging Partitions
You can merge two FAT, FAT32, or NTFS partitions that are adjacent to each other on a disk. You can merge FAT and FAT32 partitions with each other, and you can merge an NTFS partition with another NTFS partition. You cannot merge a FAT/FAT32 partition with an NTFS partition.
It is useful to merge partitions if you have reached the maximum number of partitions on your disk, but you do not want to delete a partition. It is also useful if you want to combine FAT partitions and convert them to one large FAT32 partition or an NTFS partition.
If you have an empty partition and one that contains data, you should delete the empty partition and resize the other one larger instead of merging the two partitions.
IMPORTANT! Merging partitions may take a long time (possibly hours), depending on the partition sizes and amount of data they contain. If you wish to check whether your machine is still operating, you can press the NumLock key and see if the light toggles. It may take a few seconds to register activation of the NumLock key on your keyboard. If you plan to merge partitions, you may wish to schedule it for a time when you will not need to use your system for an extended period of time. If you shut down or turn off your computer while PartitionMagic is still working, it will cause corruption to the file system, which will result in data loss. Do not shut down the system until after the process is complete.
1Run a file check (such as CheckDisk or ScanDisk) on the partitions you intend the merge to ensure they do not contain file system errors or bad sectors.
2Select one of the two partitions you want to merge with another partition.
IMPORTANT! Do not merge partitions that contain operating systems or compressed partitions. See “Disk Compression Utilities” on page 105.
If you plan to merge two adjacent NTFS partitions, they must be the same version type and have the same cluster size. To view the version type and cluster size of an NTFS partition,
If the cluster sizes are different, you will not be able to merge the partitions. See “Converting FAT/FAT32 Partitions to 4K Aligned” on page 73.
If the NTFS versions are different, you will not be able to merge the partitions. See “Merging Partitions with Different NTFS Version Numbers” on page 113.
