Combining two logical drives to one physical drive.

[Nikngill]

My main SATA disk was split into two logical drives, one with 10GB FAT32 for DOS; the remainder NTFS for XP;

OK 'til I needed to reinstall XP; can't seem to do it without 1st installing XP on the 20 GB drive (dotty); then more difficulty installing 2nd on the other drive (booting problems).

Web says it was questionable making a second drive in the 1st place. XP Disk Management offers no way of unpicking that arrangement. I think it may be possible to carry out the combination on a Vista machine. The various Partitioning programs offer no solution that I can find.

Can anyone tell me how to combine two logical drives into one physical drive?

 

[Hawkeye22]

Have you tried this?

http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

It claims: Safely free merge adjacent partitions into one without data loss.

 

[Nikngill]

Thanks Hawkeye222

Have run EaseUS without success. Help speaks of :
* "merging partitions" (but only if adjacent on the same volume) and
* "converting dynamic disk to basic disk" (but my two disks are both logical and right clicking them does not offer the option to make basic).

No other tasks appear relevant.

I note that whereas the larger of the two is named Maxtor STM3160215AS ATA Bus, the smaller (which I think lies at the common physical disk) is called ST310220A ATA Bus, a name I do not recognise.

Any more ideas ?

 

[Hawkeye22]

I don't know of any utilitly that can merge non-adjacent partitions regardless of which formatting it uses. Of course, they must also be of the same format type in order to merge them.