Managing Hard Drive Space/Partitions

I recently purchased a laptop with Vista x64 on it.
When I went to manage my hard drive there was a ~150gb C drive and a ~140gb D drive.
There was also a 10gb partition in front of the C drive with absolutely nothing on it, so I turned it into unallocated space. Is there any way to merge this with the C drive to gain the 10gb?
I can format this 10gb but It is only contiguous with the C drive. I was thinking possibly using other software to do this but i'm not sure what would work.

I'd appreciate any insight, tips, help, etc.

Hi,

Often laptops come with a "recovery" partition of about 10gb.

You may have destroyed that.

Did you get, or run off any recovery/installation discs?

What machine is it ? - make and model please.

Please also post a jpeg screenshot of Disk Management.

To post a jpeg, click Quick ( at the bottom of this post ), then click Go Advanced and follow step 8 onward of this tutorial

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/148532-how-use-snipping-tool-vista.html

Hope it helps

SIW2

It's an ASUS G50VT-X1
I'm sure it wasn't the recovery drive because it was completely empty. Plus my laptop came with recovery discs.

Good.

Need the screenshot to advise on partitioning methods/tools.

SIW2

Before I formatted the 10gb partition, it looked odd.

It was formatted but did not have a drive letter, and did not have anything on it. It was an empty partition. I do not know what purpose it served.

Hi,

That would be the recovery partition, then. You are not supposed to know it's there - it is /was a hidden partition.

As long as you have the recovery discs, it's not a disaster.

The recovery partition is useful , as it is faster than using the discs, and you may not have them with you. The discs are an extra precaution in case the recovery program/partition on your hd gets damaged.

Disk Management can only shrink a partition from the right, and extend a partition to the right.

This is deliberate to avoid boot problems.

You can get 3rd party apps. that will merge that unallocated space, but will probably need to do a startup repair.

The only free ones I know that will do that are bootable Linux app. Gparted is popular - there is a tutorial here

Using GParted to Resize Your Windows Vista Partition :: the How-To Geek

Alternatively, if the only thing you did to that partition is delete it, you should be able to Undelete it with a 3rd party app and return it to it's previous state. (It is possible the manufacturer used non standard partitioning - so it may not work )

If you wish to try the undelete, I can help you with that.

SIW2

that'd be good seeing as how i can't do anything with that space anyway. how would i go about undeleting it?

it's been a few weeks since i deleted it.

also, during boot, i don't get any options such as "F12 for BIOS" or anything of the sort. all it shows is the Republic of Gamers logo and then it continues to boot. Would I still be able to access boot settings and bios settings?

Boot-It NG is a shareware partition management utility that can be used to manage the shrinking and extending of partitions better than Vista's built-in tool. It has an old DOS style interface, but it works well. You can download a fully functional trial version here:
Boot Manager, Partition Manager, and Drive Image Utility - BootIt Next Generation
I downloaded the free trial version and burned it to a CD with the included program MakeDisk.exe in order to be able to move some unallocated space immediately behind one of my four partitions that I wanted to extend. I just booted from the CD, clicked Cancel when it asked whether I wanted to install the program on the hard drive, then clicked on the menu choice for "Partition Work", and then used the "partition slide" concept to move the unallocated space. The TerabyteUnlimited site has a good deal of documentation, tutorials, answers to FAQs, videos, etc. for how to use the program:
TeraByte Unlimited :: Support :: BootIt Next Generation
A good overall article about the various things you can do with Boot-It NG, together with some screenshots, can be found here:
BootIt NG Next Generation