Hi Rich, And thanks for your reply, Yes Rich i do have partition magic and i like the program,and it is so simple to use, if they where next to each other it would have been so simple with Partition magic to merge,but when they are seperated with a partition in between it can be done but not with the freeware, I have Paragon hard disc manager which was able to do the job, But i do know what your talking about, I learned the hard way, A while back i tried to clone a partition not reading the instructions all the way through and it wiped the drive clean, thats when i learned the importance of a backup,and it did get me a little nervous as it took so long 3-4hrs, but i do thank you, I am packing, getting ready to leave our neighborhood and head south to sunny florida, fed up with earthquakes,Hurricanes, and snow, Patch41.