Repartitioning a single drive from 2 partitions to 1 while maintaining a Time Machine backup

This is a bit of a quirky situation and I had a very difficult time finding the right search terms to bring me anywhere close to an answer. I still don't have one.
So here's the situation: I have an iMac hooked up to a 1TB external HDD via FireWire. Previously I had the HDD partitioned into 1 500GB partition for Time Machine and 1 1500GB partition for media files. I have since decided to move all my media back onto my internal HDD and would like to repartition the entire external HDD for use with Time Machine (as I will now have Time Machine backing up many of these media files as well) but I don't want to lose my existing backup history. I've seen the instructions for moving a Time Machine backup from one drive to another but how do I move a Time Machine backup off of an external HDD, reformat said drive from 2 partitions to 1, and move the backup back to it without disrupting the hard links?

BacktwoBedlam wrote:
The Time Machine backup is just an image
No, it's a complex set of folders and files, intricately linked together with multiple hard links.
Copying it to your internal HD will take a long time, if there's room for it; and emptying the trash after deleting it will take an extremely long time, and likely result in permissions and/or locked file problems.
If you do have to copy the Backups.backupdb folder, copy it only to a separate partition so you can just erase it when done.
See #18 in  Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions for details.

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