Delete partition on external hard drive

Norman_Castle

Removed the hard drive from my neices failed laptop, put it in a caddy to reformat it to use for storage. Drive is partitioned into two partitions. Formated both and now need to delete second partition. In windows xp, computer management I can see the partitions. How can I make this drive a single partition or unpartitioned?
Partitions are 68gb, Healthy (active) and 6gb unallocated.

molerat

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/dm_create_partitions.mspx?mfr=true
or here http://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/ for a pretty idiot proof tool which can resize partitions that are in use.

m5rcc

You should be able to delete the partition using Disk Management, otherwise use Partition Wizard

Norman_Castle

Using disk management delete empties the partition but it still takes space as unallocated. Partition wizard delete is the same. Partition wizard buisiness merge partitions only works on paid versions.

Norman_Castle

So why ask here when you could have simply searched and easily found the answer for yourself? e.g. here

Because I am unsure what I am doing and chose to ask for help and advice.

Norman_Castle

Tried all the above suggestions. On all of them the unallocated 6gb partition is unselectable so cannot be merged.

Norman_Castle

Obviously because you need to allocate the 6GB partition before merging!

Is that easy?

prowla

If the 68 GB partition is first and the 6 GB unallocated is after it, then you should be able to just grow the 68 to 74 GB using disk management.

Failing that, delete both partitions and create a new one. (NB. deleting obviously loses all of the data.)

Norman_Castle

^^ I am grateful for any help and I am not arguing with anyone. All of your responses to me have been bizzarely rude. Looking through your other posts its something you make a habit of.
If anyone else can offer further advice it would be appreciated.

prowla

(I assume that wasn't aimed at me... :-))

Norman_Castle

(I assume that wasn't aimed at me... :-))

No.
Growing the partition does not appear to be an option. Deleting the 6gb partition leaves an empty, unallocated partition. This partition was used as the HP recovery for the laptop. Not sure if it is protected in some way. It is visible in computer management but not through, my computer-open.

The external hard drive has now dissapeared from my computer and attempts to format the 6gb result in an error message being sent to microsoft.