Merging HFS and FAT32 leaving Boot Camp NTFS intact

Question

I have three partitions -- one for Lion, one NTFS that boots Windows XP, and a third one that is FAT32, originally intended to be partition that can share data between OS X and Windows (this is the "middle" partition). I now want to delete this FAT32 partition and merge it with the Lion partition. What is the safe way to do this ?

Thanks a lot for your help. I'm running a MacBook with Lion.

Answer 1

1. Back up anything you need from your FAT32 partition. If you really want to be sure you're safe and not place your data's safety into the hands of any vendor's software, then back up everything from all partitions, and test your backups before proceeding.
2. Boot from OS X and use Disk Utility to...
   1. Delete the FAT32 partition.
   2. Drag the end of the JHFS+ partition into the space where the FAT32 partition was.

Note that Disk Utility can only resize the "end" of partitions; it can't move the "start" of the partition. So if your JHFS+ partition isn't the one right before your FAT32 partition, this gets more complicated.