Reformatting to get rid of partition?

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Reformatting to get rid of partition?

Ok, I partitioned my hard drive to use ubuntu. When i decided i didnt want it any longer i tried to delete the partition with disk utility but it never gets past the "preparing to delete partition" part. So what im wondering is if i reformat my hard drive will it reformat just my mac os partition or will it redo the entire hard drive and merge it all again to factory settings? I have a lot of stuff on my computer and i dont want to reformat unless i am ABSOLUTELY sure that it will get rid of the partitions.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Oct 29, 2009 7:08 PM

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Answer 1

V.K.

Level 9

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Oct 29, 2009 7:12 PM in response to Cameron belt

if you reformat using the partition tab in disk utility it will reformat the entire drive. if you don't want to loose your data on the OS X partition, clone it to an external drive using Superduper or CCCloner. then boot from the clone, reformat the internal and clone the clone back. that way you won't loose anything and won't have to reinstall anything.

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Answer 2

Oct 29, 2009 7:18 PM in response to Cameron belt

You can erase the contents of a partition, but you can't delete the partition with DiskUtility without erasing your entire HD.

There are apps out there that can resize partitions without erasing the entire HD. iPartition is one
http://ipartition.en.softonic.com/mac

as is
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/26515

but I've never tried any of these, so ymmv. You can also search www.versiontracker.com
for other similar apps.

If you do try one of these apps, make sure you have a backup of your data before you try, just in case.

Jeff

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Answer 3

Cameron belt Author

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Oct 29, 2009 7:26 PM in response to V.K.

My question is when i put in my os x disc and the installer comes up. and it asks me to choose which hard drive to reformat. Will it get rid of the partitions? or will it just reformat my mac os x partition and leave the others alone? I just want to get rid of these partitions but disk utility wont let me for some reason and i dont know what to do.

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Answer 4

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Oct 29, 2009 7:32 PM in response to Cameron belt

Cameron belt wrote:
My question is when i put in my os x disc and the installer comes up. and it asks me to choose which hard drive to reformat. Will it get rid of the partitions?

don't use the installer itself. it will not reformat the whole drive.
reformat the drive with disk utility as I said. there is disk utility on the install DVD. it's available from the utilities menu. to reformat the whole drive with disk utility, select the whole drive (model, not name) and click on the partition tab. set the number of partitions to 1 in volume scheme and hit "apply". that will reformat the entire drive. however, this will also completely wipe everything on the drive. I suggest you use the coning method I described in my first post.

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