A hard disk drive is a sequential data access drive (its pseudo random). Let's say your hard drive space is divided into ABCDE. This division is sequential i.e. The B partition space comes after A and C after B and so on.
You can only merge two partitions if there are adjacent.
- These partitions can be merged together: AB, BC, CD, DE, ABC, BCD, CDE,...
If you try to merge partitions which have another working partition between them, they can't be merged together. They will remain as seperate spaces.
If you really want to merge them (say A and C), you can backup your B data to some other disk and merge the whole ABC, and then create partition from that merged ABC. OR you can move your B data to C and merge AB instead.
There is a utility "EaseUS Partition Master", it is a shareware program. But it also does the same thing.
I suggest you leave those partitions as they are. OR if you want, you can backup your drive and make new partitions from scratch.
@MDTGuy's comment is overly harsh... slightly. Having so many partitions is not very typical due to a lack of necessity in most scenarios. I won't blindly condemn so many partitions without asking why it was ever done. However, the question (of why it was ever done) is worth asking. Of course, this superuser.com question seems to be aiming to reduce the number of partitions (theoretically resolving the concern of an overly complicated layout). – TOOGAM – 2016-04-18T02:10:41.053
You have an extended partition between your logical partitions – Ramhound – 2016-05-18T22:26:58.983
Logical partitions live inside the extended partition. – wendy.krieger – 2017-04-27T09:21:45.847
3For various reasons, you'll likely need to erase all partitions on the drive to get the end result you're looking for. It's possible that the two partitions that were cleared are not suitably physically situated on the platters to merge, or there could be issues pertaining to the partition table. – dotVezz – 2013-12-20T18:05:38.513
1why do you have FIVE partitions??? this is nonsense! – MDT Guy – 2014-01-03T14:06:21.887