merging 2 volumes into 1

with a tool called iPartition you'll be able to merge the partitions but short of some third party software, the only other way is to boot off your install disk, delete the partitions, create a single partition and reload OSX and your data.

Merging partitions is one of iPartition's functions, yes. As with any utility that fiddles with your hard drive's format or partition scheme and thus puts all of your data at some unknown, possibly trivial or possibly significant, degree of risk, you should make sure everything is backed up on another drive (or two) before using iPartition.

SO iPartition will fix that type of issue without reinstalling everything, which I am really trying to avoid?

short answer yes
Long answer, yes but back up your data. Like any utility that works on your Hard drive's format/structure, its imperative that you have a good backup as Eww posted. iPartition has been out for years and seemingly has a good solid reputation, so there's little risk, but that doesn't mean its risk free, so back up your data.

So what would be the best way to back up a mac?

If you're running Leopard, TimeMachine
If you're running an older version then any number of applications such as carbon copy cloner or data backup from prosoft. Just google it, and you'll see many options.

I don't recommend dragging dropping because you need to be sure of backing up all of your data its not feasible to do that by dragging/dropping.

You don't need Time Capsule for Time Machine.
Any external HDD will do.

Tigerdirect has 1.5 TB HDDs for ~$120 🙂

Hi, ldeffinbaugh. Backing up to a server will make things much more complicated than they need to be. Don't even think about it.

Get an external FireWire hard drive larger than the combined size of both partitions on your internal drive. Partition and format it to suit yourself, making sure it contains at least one partition that is larger than your present internal drive.

Make a bootable clone, on that partition, of the bootable partition on your internal hard drive, using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. When that clone is complete, boot the computer to it to confirm that it is in fact bootable.

Assuming that works OK, drag-copy everything from the data partition on your internal drive onto the cloned volume on the external drive. You can sort and file all the data at this time, or you can copy all of it into a single folder on the external drive and sort it out at your leisure. I recommend the latter.

Boot to the external drive, open Disk Utility on it, repartition and reformat your internal drive, quit Disk Utility, and then clone the external drive back onto the single-partition internal drive, making sure to specify that the clone is to be bootable. This time you will be cloning the entire contents of both partitions that were on the internal drive, because all of them are contained in a single volume on the external drive.

Finally, you will want to sort out and file the data that was on your separate data partition before, fitting it all logically into the folder hierarchy of your newly repartitioned drive.

This is by far the simplest procedure possible to accomplish what you want to do, and a bootable clone on an external drive is by far the most useful and convenient kind of backup to have and maintain in the long run.

Message was edited by: eww

For what purpose? You need to back up your entire hard drive, right? How are you going to do that on a DVD or flash drive?

Burning a bootable DVD would require software that you'd have to buy, costing at least half and perhaps just as much as an external 250GB hard drive (which can be had for $80-90). A standard installation of Leopard requires 9 GB of disk space, and I don't know whether or not you can install only Leopard or a stripped-down version of Leopard using the installer DVD that came with the MBP. So even a DL DVD would be just barely adequate to accommodate a Leopard installation. A 16GB flash drive costs $30-70, and I don't know whether or not a MBP can boot to one.

If your server is a Mac running Mac OS X, you can simply drag-copy files between the two computers over your network. But you can't copy a working OS that way; the only way to copy a working OS is by cloning. You can't make a bootable clone on your server unless you have an unused partition on it of a suitable size to accommodate everything on your MBP's internal HD.

If your server is a Windoze PC, forget the whole idea of backing a Mac up to it.