Re-partioning hard drive

I have a 160GB hard drive on my computer, but rather foolishly I partitioned it into 4 sections of 40GB when I installed the operating system and all the programs. Is there any way I can re-partition the 2nd, 3rd and 4th partions into one 120gb partition?

I'm happy to leave the 1st partition at 40GB for Windows and program files, or should I look at increasing the size of that?

Any advice gratefully accepted!

IIRC there are programs available that can repartition a HDD without needing to format it. The only other option would be to partition it after a reformat AFAIK.

Thanks for the info. Chaos Looks like I might have found a program that can do the trick too thanks to a kind forum member

Partition Magic is the program you need.

Search for "Hirens Boot Disk" in google and download it. This is a self bootable (boot your PC from CD) multi program CD and it happens to have a standalone version of partition magic in the 'partition tools' menu .

in dos use fdisk, its very easy. delete the 3 unwanted partitions first then create one new partition using all unpartitoned space. remember the "primary dos partition" is the one with your OS on, dont delete that one.

I used gparted

remember to back up anything on these three partitions as well if you delete them in fdisk!