Acronis DD Merge "Stuck"

I am using XP Pro and Disc Director. Partition 3 to 4 merged fine as did 1 to 2, all the data was intact and it was recognized no problem. I then tried to merge the new partitions 2 to 4 and it is now stuck at 13% and has been running all night. What can/do I do to keep from losing data on this disc?

 

Another question, If I cancel it and there is something wrong, will the partition recovery be able to recover the information.

 

I assume DD is still stuck at 13%? Is there also no drive activity (hard drive access light is not on or blinking)?

There is no point in leaving DD stuck. If it's not doing anything, it's not going to.

Did you create a backup image of the drive before you started the Merge procedures? It's always strongly recommended to do this prior to making any partitioning changes, regardless of the software used.

There is no way to tell what state the drive will be in if you abort or reset the computer. You may have one partition or two partitions. One or both may be corrupt. You may not have any valid partitions.

Data recovery software may be able to recover some files, but I doubt the partition recovery feature of DD will be much use unless the partitions are lost after the abort.

There are those of us (myself included) that recommend against using the Merge and Split options in DD. All too often, something goes wrong and it makes a disaster.

If you abort and your system still works, you'll probably need to run chkdsk /f on both partitions to check for any errors. If it were me, I would also create a backup image of the drive before running chkdsk just in case it makes things worse.