Files/folders cannot be deleted

Scenario: You merged two partitions successfully. The content of the merged partition has been moved to a folder on the remaining partition. You cannot manage to delete this folder.

While two partitions are merged, the content of the merged partition is moved to a folder on the remaining partition. More recent versions of the Paragon Hard Disk Manager (HDM) name this folder by default “Files from [volume label]”. It is possible during the operation to give this folder a customized name though. Older HDM versions up to 15 named this folder “merged_partition_content” automatically.

The entire content of the partition is moved to the “merged_partition_content” folder. This includes protected system objects like the “System Volume Information” folder.

This kind of Windows system files and folders cannot be deleted from within Windows. Same issues may occur with remainders of incompletely removed drivers like the Paragon UIM driver (as described in “How To Uninstall Previous Version Of Universal Image Mounter“). You can delete these remainders if the machine is booted from any other Operating System.

This could be one of the Paragon Rescue Environments where you can use the File Transfer Wizard (FTW) to remove the folder. Example:

1. Boot from the Paragon WinPE Environment of HDM 17.
2. Select “Disks & Volumes” from the sidebar.
3. Click the three dots on top of the sidebar.
4. Select “Copy files and folders” (= File Transfer Wizard).
5. Browse to your “merged_partition_content” folder on the right half(!!!) of the window.
6. Select the folder and click the bin can symbol above.
7. Click the “Delete” button.

FTW until HDM 15

Unfortunately older versions of the File Transfer Wizard are not able to delete directories recursively. Thus the use of the FTW does not make much sense for these versions.

Most of the Paragon Rescue Environments offer a Windows Command Prompt. In this environment you could use the appropriate CMD commands. With the switch /? you get a list of possible parameters to perform a forced and recursive deletion.

Alternatively you can make use of a Linux Live System – for example a Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora etc. Live DVD. Any arbitrary WinPE environment will be helpful as well. Here you can delete the “merged_partition_content” folder at once. The catch is that the system folders are just protected in Windows. From any other OS they can be deleted comfortably.

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