Combining two partitions

Hi, I was just wondering how to go about merging two partitions into one without losing any data. I have three partitions on my laptop's HD, I want to combine two of them into one. I created the third partition for backups, but then realized I didn't really need a separate partition for backups and that my other computer had more than enough space to backup my laptop. The third partition has no data on it, but the second one does. My first partition is my main, and I don't feel I need to touch it. My question then is, how do I go about combining my second and third partitions? Thanks in advance for any help on this.

Hello again,

Is this computer your own personal machine or belonging to your company that you are seeking help for?

We only help for personal and home user members.

If it is for personal use, you could go to this LINK and choose one of the sites to follow.

Post back if you need more help and or that you are seeking help for your own computer.

kind regards,

It's for my own computer. Or computers rather. I'll have a look at the link, thanks for the help.

By far the simplest and safest method of doing this is to backup all the data on the 2bd partition, then use XP's Disk Management to delete both the 2nd and 3rd partitions. Next create one new partition that spans all the free space. Format it, restore the saved data and you're done.

If this doesn't seem doable, you could buy software like Partition Magic as Tallin pointed to or use the free Gpartd Live CD which works just as well.