Question about combining two partitions

[TeamMM3]

I have a couple hard drives but the one in question is a terabyte hard drive I split into two partitions after I installed it, a 687 gig partition and 244 gig partition. I know it's possible to combine partitions but I just want to make sure before I do it that I won't lose everything. I am going to move all the things off the 244 partition to a separate drive and then just combine the empty partition with the 687 partition.

My question is, can I combine them without losing everything on the larger partition? Should I just move the files off both partitions to be safe? I just don't want to screw it up, it's pretty much my whole steam library (500+ gigs) and I'd rather not have to redownload it all if I can help it.

 

[Boozad]

No you don't need to move your stuff off your large partition, it will be fine. Back up your files on the smaller partition then delete it in Disk Management.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2668-partition-volume-delete.html

Now Extend the larger drive into the new free space.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2670-partition-volume-extend.html

Job done.

 

[TeamMM3]

It seemed to work fine, only question is now the bar above them in disk management is yellow instead of blue. Does this signify anything?

 

[Boozad]

Do you now have more than four partitions on the drive? Please post a screenshot of disk management.

 

[TeamMM3]

Here is the requested screenshot of my disk management

 

[Boozad]

Somehow you've managed to convert the disk to a Dynamic Disk, and both partitions have the same letter G:. First off assign the second partition on the drive a different letter then follow http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26829-convert-dynamic-disk-basic-disk.html to convert it back to a Basic Disk.

   Warning

Be sure to read all of the linked tutorial to ensure you don't lose any of your data when converting the disk back to a Basic Disk

 

[TeamMM3]

Shouldn't have bothered. Deleted the whole thing...ugh how frustrating

 

[TeamMM3]

This is the absolute most frustrating thing in the world. I've got a gig of things to redownload now. A warning to everything thinking about doing this, don't bother. I assigned the second partition another letter, clicked on that partition, clicked delete partition, and it deleted the entire thing. Should have just kept it the way it was.

 

[Boozad]

I've no idea how you managed to convert it to Dynamic in the first place, it shouldn't have happened if you followed the first two tutorials linked to the letter.

 

[TeamMM3]

No clue, all I did was delete the smaller volume partition then extended the volume and that's what happened. Followed the instructions above step by step but didn't work for me.

 

[Boozad]

I've performed those steps myself a thousand times and never seen that happen, I certainly wouldn't have suggested it if I'd known that would be the outcome. I'm presuming that drive is a single 1TB drive?

 

[TeamMM3]

Oh I don't blame you, something just went wrong and I have no idea what. It is a single TB drive.

 

[AddRAM]

All too late but, Partition Wizard would have let you merge the 2 partitions.