Best way to merge these two partitions?

[Shields]

I'd like to consolidate these two under the same bracket. How do I do it?

[narrdarr]

Select m. And extend

[paddy-stone]

As above, you should be able to extend the M drive/partition as the other space is unallocated.

[jj9987]

Copy all your data from the existing partition to another drive, delete the partition, create a new one with the desired size.

 

That's the only way. Partitions can only be extended to the right/to the end, not to the beginning - that's how internal data structures work.

 

EDIT: It is actually possible to do it, but it is a lot more complicated as it requires rewriting all the sectors and modifying the whole data structure. This takes a lot of time, is very prone to errors and therefore corruption and data loss, so just don't do it.

[paddy-stone]

1 minute ago, jj9987 said:

Copy all your data from the existing partition to another drive, delete the partition, create a new one with the desired size.

 

That's the only way. Partitions can only be extended to the right/to the end, not to the beginning - that's how internal data structures work.

Ahh, I didn't think of that... don't think I've ever had that situation as most times the partition I have wanted to delete and extend has been at the end.

[Parideboy]

2 minutes ago, jj9987 said:

Copy all your data from the existing partition to another drive, delete the partition, create a new one with the desired size.

 

That's the only way. Partitions can only be extended to the right/to the end, not to the beginning - that's how internal data structures work.

Sort of. There are programs (such as AOMEI Partition Assistant) that actually automatically align the partitons. In reality they just do what you said.

 

It's way safer to do it your way tho

[Shields]

38 minutes ago, jj9987 said:

Copy all your data from the existing partition to another drive, delete the partition, create a new one with the desired size.

 

That's the only way. Partitions can only be extended to the right/to the end, not to the beginning - that's how internal data structures work.

 

EDIT: It is actually possible to do it, but it is a lot more complicated as it requires rewriting all the sectors and modifying the whole data structure. This takes a lot of time, is very prone to errors and therefore corruption and data loss, so just don't do it.

 

[Shields]

I've managed to solve the problem, thankyou everyone, I appreciate you!

Edited May 27, 2020 by Shields
I've managed to solve the problem, thankyou everyone, I appreciate you

[jj9987]

1 hour ago, Parideboy said:

Sort of. There are programs (such as AOMEI Partition Assistant) that actually automatically align the partitons. In reality they just do what you said.

 

It's way safer to do it your way tho

I think my edit happened while you were writing this. Yes, there are 3rd party tools that can do this, but it's quite resource-consuming and error-prone. This is why it hasn't been implemented on the OS level.