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Level 1

8 points

Merge Partitions disk0s2 and disk0s4 (leaving disk0s3)

Dear all,

As the title says, I need to merge disk0s2 and disk0s4 without touching disk0s3 as the latter is my recovery partition. I have not dared to try, but I guess I cannot use this command in terminal since it also merges disk0s3:

diskutil mergePartitions JHFS+ NewName disk0s2 disk0s4

right now when I type the "diskutil list" command I get this:

asger$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *320.1 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 278.5 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Apple_HFS BOOTCAMP 40.6 GB disk0s4

As I am using El Capitan, disk utility does not work either because apple changed it to a useless poor beta like program on El Capitan.

I have considered just typing the above merge command and then somehow reinstall the Apple_Boot Recovery HD, But I really don't want to go down that road if possible.

And no, Bootcamp assistant can't do it since the Bootcamp partition is already erased and formatted into JHFS+.

Any suggestions?

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1), early 2011

Posted on Feb 24, 2016 4:01 AM

18 replies

asgerssc Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 24, 2016 11:09 AM in response to keg55

Okay, cool. So I would actually not be able to use "recreate recovery creator 3.8" Anymore? FYI I reinstalled the recovery partition with the updating-to-10.11.3 method and not the "recreate recovery creator 3.8".

keg55

Level 6

11,743 points

Feb 24, 2016 11:47 AM in response to asgerssc

So I would actually not be able to use "recreate recovery creator 3.8" Anymore?

Sort of.

You could revert your Corestorage volume if you want to. Then you could use the utility. If you don't revert it, then you would have to use a FULL installer like you just did to recreate the Recovery HD.

To revert Corestorage to the native file type, open Terminal and type: diskutil cs list. You will see results like below.

$ diskutil cs list

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)

+-- Logical Volume Group 5F74311B-C542-4AAA-8699-25D5D555EAC9

=========================================================

Name: Macintosh HD

Status: Online

Size: 250140434432 B (250.1 GB)

Free Space: 18882560 B (18.9 MB)

+-< Physical Volume B71D9E01-2F87-468E-BE90-B07E9DDFC776

| ----------------------------------------------------

| Index: 0

| Disk: disk0s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 250140434432 B (250.1 GB)

+-> Logical Volume Family F75A7EB5-171A-497C-8953-EEE8D0C0FAF8

----------------------------------------------------------

Encryption Type: None

+-> Logical Volume 7E3907BC-A632-409B-8CBC-6C4A2C405913

---------------------------------------------------

Disk: disk1

Status: Online

Size (Total): 249769230336 B (249.8 GB)

Revertible: Yes (no decryption required)

LV Name: Macintosh HD

Volume Name: Macintosh HD

Content Hint: Apple_HFS

If you see on the Revertible: line a 'YES' then you can revert it. You would use the value on the Disk: line with the following:

diskutil cs revert disk1

zero7404

Level 3

812 points

Feb 24, 2016 12:51 PM in response to asgerssc

I may be late to this game .... but from what i'm seeing is you have a partition in between 2 which you want to span across and connect .....

you do not (or did not) need to delete any partitions. I sucessfully used a tool called Hard Disk Manager for mac (Paragon) that allowed me to reconfigure (resize and reorder) partitions in recovery mode. I was able to move them to any position I wanted and it successfully updates the GPT (and MBR if you have one). the only drawback to this "preview" version of software was that i was not able to create a new partition after allocating space, so i had to use gdisk and disk utility for that.

just another option in case you chose to try this.

Merge Partitions disk0s2 and disk0s4 (leaving disk0s3)