How can I remove a recovery partition and merge two data partitions on an external SSD?

Those EFI and recovery partitions were created for the SSD’s previous Windows installation. They are not required for ordinary external storage, and NTFS does not depend on having a recovery partition beside it. After confirming the disk is the correct one, you can remove the old partition layout and initialize or repartition the drive for its new use.

Since the drive contains no data you need, the simplest solution is to delete every partition and create one new partition using the full drive. Disk Management’s normal format option only formats an existing volume, so first open Disk Management, right-click each partition and choose “Delete Volume” until the disk shows as unallocated. Then right-click the unallocated space, create a New Simple Volume, and format it as NTFS. Be absolutely certain you have selected the external SSD, because deleting the partitions permanently erases its contents.

You can remove just the 450 MB recovery partition with a partition-management tool, then extend the 185.86 GB partition into the freed space. However, because the recovery partition sits between the two data partitions, deleting it alone will not necessarily let Windows Disk Management merge both NTFS volumes directly. Since you do not need any files from the disk, wiping the entire drive and recreating one large volume is safer and much less complicated.