Can't get rid of wasteful partition at start of disk

[YaronShr]

Hello,

My hard disk has 3 partitions, in the following order on the disk:

1. E drive, that was once upon a time a manufacturer recovery drive, now useless (15GB)

2. C drive, main drive (915GB)

3. Windows recovery drive (1GB)


I bought a new disk to replace this disk.

I used Macrium Reflect to clone partitions 2 and 3 to it.

So, the new disk ended up having these partitions:

1. Empty, unused partition (15GB)

2. C drive, main drive (915GB) - clone of (2) above

3. Windows recovery drive (1GB) - clone of (3) above


Which, functionally, was fine - it booted.

However, I want to get rid of that empty partition, and include the space in the main partition.


I used MiniTool Partition Wizard to merge partition 1 into partition 2.

This worked in the sense that the main partition now started at the beginning of the disk, and includes the space from both (1) and (2) above.

However, when I then tried to boot from this, Windows did a "recovery" of the disk, and basically undid the repartitioning that I did - it re-created the partitioning shown above - it re-created the unused partition at the front, and shrank the main partition back to its original size.


I did this twice, with the same result.

How can I extend partition (2) back into the space of partition (1), without Windows wanting to undo this when I boot from the disk?


Thanks!

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