Unallocated partions and merging them with exsisting partitions?
Greetings,
I had XP preisntalled on my lenovo PC and i installed dual boot for Ubuntu (Ubuntu automaticly partions the drive and drive and enables it). I decided I don't need Ubuntu and I used Acronis Disk Director to remove this partition completely.
However the partition where Ubuntu was installed wasn't merged back to the original C: partions where XP is installed, instead it has been put in unallocated space. I switched Acronis to manual mode and found out I can't merge the unallocated space. So i created a NFTS empty partion and tried to merge that. My pc rebooted and when I checked again the NFTS partition was really gone but its space wasn't merged with C: instead it was back to unallocated space.
Any solutions

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Hmm it doesn't seem to be possible. When I click resize it says no unallocated space is available, but I can still see the 18GB that is free...
Here is a screenshot:
http://img1.uploadscreenshot.com/images/main/4/9313094791.jpg
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Neven:
It's unusual that you would have two adjacent blocks of unallocated space marked as individual blocks. This should be one contiguous block.
What happens if you click on each block of unallocated space and choose "Delete"? But before doing this, just to play it safe, can you copy the contents of the logical partition shown as "Lenovo (D:)" to external storage as a backup? When doing partition operations it's better to be safe than sorry.
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Greetings,
The unallocated space blocks cannot be deleted... I can only turn them into new partitions (this works) and there is an option to wipe it out (I tried doing this but it doesn't change anything)
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Neven:
How were the partitions originally created on your disk? Did you use the Windows 7 installer to create them? Or, when you installed Windows 7 did you install to existing partitions? And if you did, what was previously on the partitions?
I'm trying to get at whether the partitions were created by Vista or Windows 7 Disk Management or the Vista or Windows 7 installer.
It might help if you are willing to post a screen shot of the partition table. To do this, start Disk Director and click on "Disk 1" in the list (see your previous screen shot) or else click on the icon of the 149.1 GB disk to select the entire disk. Then choose "Edit" from the Advanced menu on the left side of the screen. When the disk editor opens, you should be viewing Sector 0 (see the lower left corner of the window). Change the view to "As Partition Table" from the View menu. Enlarge the window until you can see all of the entries in the partition table. Then grab a screen shot and attach it to your next post.
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Greetings,
I am not quite sure what were the original partitions. I received a Lenovo netbook with Windows 7 Starter edition installed. When I checked in the Computer menu I noticed two disk... Local Disk C: and Lenovo D:
I didn't like the Windows 7 Starter edition so I installed Windows 7 Professional over it, erasing all previous data on disk C:
I backed up my PC using "OneKey Recovery".
I then waned to try out Ubuntu 9.10 on it and I started the installation process.Ubuntu offered me to select a partition where to install or to resize one of the existing ones. There were about three or four partitions, I can't really remember (one was Windows 7 and one was Vista or XP I can't remember and one was the Lenovo partition). I decided to resize Windows 7 partition (disk C:) and I gave my Ubuntu 18 GB. I later found out I didn't like Ubuntu so I restored my PC from the backup I created with "OneKey Recovery" and Windows was working again. But then I noticed the 18 GB weren't added back to my Local Disk C:, instead they somewhat disappeared. I then installed Acronis which I used long ago when I was fixing my iMac partitions.
Here are the screen shots you asked for:
http://img1.uploadscreenshot.com/images/main/4/9319052654.jpg
http://img1.uploadscreenshot.com/images/main/4/9319060372.jpg
Thank you very much for helping me out,
Neven
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Neven:
Thanks; the screen shots are helpful. Could you also post one from Windows 7 Disk Management? Type "Disk Management" in the Start/Search menu and click on "Create and manage hard disk partitions".
So far it looks like the boot partition, the Windows 7 partition, and the Lenovo Recovery partition were all created with 2048-sector offset by Windows 7 tools, but the extended partition and the end of the Windows 7 partition are in unexpected locations. But I'd like to see how Windows Disk Management interprets the layout.
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Greetings,
Here is the requested screen shot:
http://img1.uploadscreenshot.com/images/main/4/9406143743.jpg
Best Regards,
Neven
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Neaven:
Good. At least Windows 7 Disk Management sees the partition information correctly.
Whenever you use multiple incompatible tools for working on partitions you can get into situations where one or both tools will give unpredictable results. I think that's what is happening here. When you used the Ubuntu installer it modified the partition table using the older partitioning rules (partitions start and end on cylinder boundaries) whereas the rest of your partitions were created by the newer Windows 7 rules (partitions start and end on boundaries that are multiples of 1 MB). Additionally, both the Ubuntu installer and W7 Disk Management create an extended partition container and Acronis Disk Director does not. Disk Director is apparently having problems dealing with the piece of unallocated space that is currently inside the extended partition container (if DD had created the logical partition it would not have needed to create the larger container for it).
So you have a mixed layout on the disk and you need to be careful when modifying it. My best recommendation is that you keep everything consistent with Windows 7 Disk Management and do not work on this disk with Disk Director. Here's how I would proceed:
1. Copy the contents of your D: partition to external storage temporarily. You'll need about 16 GB of storage. Be sure to enable viewing of hidden files so that they are also copied.
2. Do the remaining steps below with Windows 7 Disk Management.
3. Select the D: partition and delete it (Delete Volume). You should now have an empty extended partition container marked as "Free Space" (outlined in a green rectangle).
4. Select the extended partition container (green rectangle) and delete it. You should now have unallocated space (outlined in a black rectangle) between the Windows 7 and Lenovo OEM Recovery partitions.
5. Select the Windows 7 partition and extend it (Extend Volume). Enlarge the partition by 18 GB.
6. Select the Unallocated space and create an extended partition in the space.
7. Select the Extended partition and create a logical volume in the space.
8. Format the logical volume as NTFS and give it drive letter D:
9. Copy your data back to the new D: volume.
Avoid using this version of Disk Director on your disk in the future, keeping the layout consistent with the newer partitioning standard. If and when Disk Director version 11 is released, check to see if it has been updated to be compatible with Vista/Windows 7 partitioning rules.
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It worked. Thank you very much for helping me out with this, you saved me a lot of headache :).
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Neven:
Glad to hear that. Thanks for posting back.
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