Change partitions on disk with NTFS and Mac OS Extended

I have a 1.5TB external drive formatted with 3 equal size partitions:  1 NTFS and 2 Mac OS Extended formats, each one ~500GB. I'd like to remove the NTFS partition and use the whole drive for the 2 Mac partitions.  Could I copy the NTFS data to one of the Mac partitions, then delete the NTFS partition, and then enlarge the two remaining partitions, of course without losing the information that's already on each of them?  My system is OSX 10.7.5 -- Lion.

Purple Finch wrote:
I have a 1.5TB external drive formatted with 3 equal size partitions:  1 NTFS and 2 Mac OS Extended formats, each one ~500GB. I'd like to remove the NTFS partition and use the whole drive for the 2 Mac partitions.  Could I copy the NTFS data to one of the Mac partitions, then delete the NTFS partition, and then enlarge the two remaining partitions, of course without losing the information that's already on each of them?  My system is OSX 10.7.5 -- Lion.
Probably maybe, with a fair wind & some luck…
It depends on a few factors, such as the order of the partitions on disk, how the disk was originally created, what partition scheme it uses (e.g. GUID, Master boot record…). It also depends on if all that data can be crammed into an existing partition.
I doubt you want to hear this, but it is the safest option… backup the data on every partition before you begin modifying the disk structure.
You have nothing to lose with solid backups on another disk, disconnect it to be extra cautious.
If this disk fails to repartition or you find that the 2 remaining partitions won't not expand to fill all the free space (it just happens sometimes) you can create a new partition table & start over.
Disk Utility may also complain when you try to resize or delete a partition - sometimes it waits until the last button is pressed to begin a task only to tell you something isn't possible!
I wouldn't attempt this 'copy, delete, resize' unless I could afford to lose all the data on this disk, it should work, but there is too much room for error.

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