Vista Partition Tool messes up my hard drive?

[IHAVEAQUESTION]

Well, first take a look here: http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x...o/Untitled.jpg.

As you can see, the Vista Partition Tool correctly recognizes my 1.5GB external HD (F, but in "My Computer", Vista only recognizes 908GB of the volume. What happened is that I partitioned out the drive a few weeks ago, but the new partition was never recognized by the computer (for whatever reason) and now I don't need that particular partition but since it never shows up on the computer, there is no way for me to delete it. So...now I need your expertise, what do I need to do to reclaim the lost storage space? Formatting would be the last resort.

 

[RebateMonger]

Photobucket: This image or video has been moved or deleted.

 

[IHAVEAQUESTION]

Sorry I lost that screen shot.

Basically I was trying to show that the Partition Tool shows F: at 1.39TB, while in "my computer" Vista only recognizes 908GB. I shrank the volume by about 500GB, so I understand where the 908GB comes from, but the 500GB partition was never recognized by the computer, so I basically lost the 500GB storage space. I hope that explains my question.

 

[RebateMonger]

I was hoping to see the Disk Management screen (I assume that's what you mean by the "Partition Tool"). As far as I know, if, in Disk Management, you have an unrecognized partition ON THE LEFT SIDE of your 908 GB partition, you won't be able to extend the 908 GB partition with Disk Management. Maybe GParted, a non-Microsoft disk management utility, can do it. Or some other third-party disk management program.

Obviously moving partitions around on a disk is not something I'd recommend without backups. But I imagine if you had backups, you would just reformat and recopy the data to the disk.

 

[Rifter]

download a linux live CD, use Gparted to set up the partitions. This has always worked for me.