Help with merging FAT32 partitions for my external HDD

[hitman989]

I was wondering if someone can help me with a difficult situation I am experiencing.

I have a 1TB external HDD. Initially the HDD had one partition and it was in NTFS format when purchased. Using my Vista laptop's built-in disk management program and subsequent use of FAT32FORMAT program, I made two partitions :

Partition #1 --> 640GB, FAT32 format, Active partition, using for PS3 backups
Partition #2 --> 360GB, NTFS format, using for other media backups

Recently I almost ran out of space on Partition #1 and need the 360GB, so I formatted Partition #2 to FAT32 using FAT32FORMAT and attempted to delete this partition and try to extend the other partition. After I deleted Partition #2 (which currently was in unallocated status), I tried to extend Partition #1 to merge with Partition #2. BUT HERE COMES THE PROBLEM: Vista's disk management does not allow me to extend Partition #1 (the extend option is greyed out)....

I need help . I do not know any other method to merge partitions. If someone has a solution please give me a hand.

[No0bZiLLa]

download easeus partition manager. it works wonders for me, and its the only partitioning tool i use.
EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

if you have data on the first partition, it will take a while to extend it. you could move the data to desktop, and then format everything and then move it back

[hitman989]

Thanks man... I think I did it! and it was quick too.
EDIT: the process wasn't quick as I expected... it's been stuck at 8% for the last 2 hours. I hope the merge will be done by the end of the week...

[No0bZiLLa]

Thanks man... I think I did it! and it was quick too.
EDIT: the process wasn't quick as I expected... it's been stuck at 8% for the last 2 hours. I hope the merge will be done by the end of the week...

thats why i told you to move everythiong to the desktop, then format and move back. but w.e floats your boat...

[hitman989]

Unfortunately I don't have space to move 600GB of data...

[BahumatLord]

I've got a warning about using EaseUs to do the partitioning. If you plan on using Multiman's NTFS access for the 2nd partition, it won't read it correctly if you use EaseUs to create the partitions. Use something from Paragon or PowerQuest to get it done properly. If you do that then you can use the 1st partition for your games, etc and the 2nd for large media files for showtime, transferring games that aren't FAT32 compatible, etc

Edit: felt I should explain better. If you point the ntfs drive in multiman's usb.cfg to the 2nd partition if you used EaseUs, you won't get any results, but if you change the multiman usb.cfg to the 3rd partition even though there are only 2 partitions on the drive, It will connect to the NTFS drive, but will show 2 ntfs drives in the file manager and will give you a lot of file transfer errors

[No0bZiLLa]

lol bahumatlord, where did you get this idea? i use easeus all the time. i also have multiman's NTFS support running fine, you do know multiman just has problems reading certain hdd's right? easeus is a great tool. i use it all the time. never had any problems with it what so ever. maybe you just got one of those drives that multiman has a time reading NTFS partitons from. also another thing to remember, just because you have certain problems with certain things, doesnt mean everyone will have the exact same problem. ive wrote a guide and linked easeus as the format tool. no complaints about what you mentioned above and almost 12,000 people have accessed the page. i wont link you to it because its another ps3 jailbreaking community. but if you look hard enough you will find it. the only problem i have had people contact me is ones with certain hdd's and most of them are usb 3.0 hdd's.

EDIT: just went back and read the whole topic, it seems like 3 or 4 people had issues with it freezing, but 3 or 4 out of 11,455 people doesnt confirm easeus as the suspect. like i said, i use it, i partitioned and formatted my hdd to NTFS from FAT32. setup NTFS support through multiman, and can copy whatever i want from the NTFS partition to ps3 internal

[BahumatLord]

lol bahumatlord, where did you get this idea? i use easeus all the time. i also have multiman's NTFS support running fine, you do know multiman just has problems reading certain hdd's right? easeus is a great tool. i use it all the time. never had any problems with it what so ever. maybe you just got one of those drives that multiman has a time reading NTFS partitons from. also another thing to remember, just because you have certain problems with certain things, doesnt mean everyone will have the exact same problem. ive wrote a guide and linked easeus as the format tool. no complaints about what you mentioned above and almost 12,000 people have accessed the page. i wont link you to it because its another ps3 jailbreaking community. but if you look hard enough you will find it. the only problem i have had people contact me is ones with certain hdd's and most of them are usb 3.0 hdd's.

EDIT: just went back and read the whole topic, it seems like 3 or 4 people had issues with it freezing, but 3 or 4 out of 11,455 people doesnt confirm easeus as the suspect. like i said, i use it, i partitioned and formatted my hdd to NTFS from FAT32. setup NTFS support through multiman, and can copy whatever i want from the NTFS partition to ps3 internal

I'm speaking from personal experience. I'm aware of problems with multiman ntfs and some drives. Everything I'm about to say is about the stock 120 gig drive from my PS3 after I replaced the internal with a 1 Terabyte with the same usb housing. I wanted to use the stock one as an easy solution for installing games and pkg files since I didn't want to use my 1TB external that has a bunch of games on it for transferring files in case I wanted to play a game at the time while copying files. EaseUs worked fine with multiman and this drive as long as NTFS was the only partition. I decided to change it to half reserved for FAT32 for installing pkg files and the second half as NTFS for transferring non fat32 compatible games from my pc to my ps3 instead of going through the ftp hassle. I used Easeus to delete the partition that was already there, create the fat32 as the first partition, and ntfs as the second partition. As I said earlier multiman had issues with it (read above). I then used paragon hard disk manager 2010 to format it exactly as I did with EaseUs and it worked like it should with multiman as a fat32 drive in the first partition and ntfs as the second. This is the same drive using the same usb housing. I think it has to do with the spacer that EaseUs puts in between the partitions because the first time I used EaseUS for 2 partitions, I left the spacer in there and multiman didn't recognize the 2nd partition at all. After I repartitioned without the spacer I ran into the problem with the ghost partition in multiman. When I used Easeus and set it for 3 partitions in multiman, it recognized the second ntfs partition, but also recognized a 3rd ghost ntfs partition. But like I said, it worked fine when NTFS was the only partition on the drive. He might not run into this problem, and I'm sure a lot of people won't, I just thought it should be known if someone decides to use their stock hard drive for the same purpose that there is a fix for it

[No0bZiLLa]

what kind of hdd was it? i know it was 1 1tb and a 120gb, but who was the manufactuer?

[BahumatLord]

what kind of hdd was it? i know it was 1 1tb and a 120gb, but who was the manufactuer?

The only problem I ever had with 2 partitions and multiman (1 fat, 1 ntfs) is with the 120gig stock hard drive that came with the PS3 slim Uncharted bundle. I've done this with a Western Digital 1 Terabyte WD10PVT (I think) and a couple other 1 Terabyte drives for friends with different drives and different housings. it worked fine with 2 partitions but as I filled up the drive with games, I removed the ntfs partitiion and extended the FAT32 partition so I could load more games on it. That's why I wanted to use the stock drive as just a transfer drive and also 120 gigs is 120 gigs no matter how you look at it and it seemed a shame not to put the space to use. But like I said, I was able to correct the problem with the 120gig stock drive by using Paragon Hard Disk Manger 2010. I formatted the drive the same way as I did with EaseUs and had no problem with multiman recognizing the Paragon partitions. Not really sure what the problem is, but it should be known that if you have an error with multiman not reading your ntfs drive like I did, it is not always the fault of the drive like has been posted over and over on various threads. It is possible to attempt a recovery with a different partitioning software. I know that Paragon isn't exactly free, but if you look around you can find older free copies or if you have a good virus scanner, you can find warez versions that work well with no problem. Also it should be known that if NTFS is your ONLY partition, EaseUs works fine, but for some reason it has trouble in placing the 2nd NTFS partition