Recently I decided to delete the partition that came with my pc containing windows restore data. In doing so, I thought I could join my partition to my C: drive and gain a few extra gigabytes. However, I formatted then deleted my partition, and now all that disk space is sitting there as unallocated memory. I thought restarting the PC would allow for the unallocated memory to merge with my C: drive, but it didn't. I can't seem to join the partition with my C: drive with any windows tools or swiss knife. Anyone have any idea how to fix this?

You deleted the partition with windows on it? or the one with the restore data?

If you still have windows (which I guess you do...) you can try this: Partition Wizard
It's free and looks almost identical to Partition Magic. I found this when I realized Partition Magic wouldn't work on windows 7, this will.

Thanks, I'll try it out.

Unallocated disk space won't automatically "merge" with anything - if the space is now unallocated, use any partition utility to move your OS partition left (this will take several hours, depending on its size).

That program seems to be fine, but everyone I work with uses GParted, which comes with the Linux System Rescue CD (partitioning is OS-independent): http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Freeware-wise, I would boot off of an Ultimate Boot CD, and run Recuva, it's the best freeware partition recovery I know of, and I've saved 3 partitions in the past month doing that same thing. Also, if that doesn't work, I'd buy/pirate GetDataBack for NTFS and try that one out, also a good recovery program.