I need to use the partition & space that Apple unilaterally seized on my drive for multiple OS boots at work. I need to reclaim this space and merge it into another partition. How do I delete and merge the unwanted Lion recovery partition? Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Never mind, solved the problem this morning.
Thanks for not posting for everyone else to see the solution... 😕 I don't understand why people do that.
Sorry, was in a bit of a rush, just trying to be polite so folks wouldn't respond to something I no longer needed a response to!
It turned out to be extremely simple:
1. Clone your Lion system to an external drive using SuperDuper. Or you can use Carbon Copy Cloner, I prefer SuperDuper because it preserves creation & modification dates on all files. I refer to these dates constantly. Come to think of it, I don't know if CCC will actually work here...
2. Shut down & boot off that external drive.
3. Wipe your old drive & format to one partition using Disk Utility off the external drive. This eliminates the restore partition Apple grabs from your drive.
4. Restore Lion & all your system/user folders & files using SuperDuper off the external drive.
Viola! No restore drive, you've reclaimed all your space. SuperDuper does not copy the restore partition. Now you can add other OSes & not run up against the 4 partition rule so quickly.
This took me about 2 hours & was fairly easy. Recovered that huge partition on a small SSD in a MacBook Air - where space is expensive & at a premium. Works like a champ, too. YMMV. Good luck!
how do I delete and merge lion recovery partition?
