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"Untitled" partition can't be deleted- help!

S

sethypoo

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 8, 2003
1,583
5
Sacramento, CA, USA
I recently bought a 15" MacBook Pro on eBay. It's essentially brand new, and works fine (besides having the whine and the heat issues). However, I noticed when I first started it up that there were two drives mounted on my desktop (see pictures below). I tried going into Disk Utility to erase it (it appears to be a Boot Camp partition that was never removed when the previous owner restored the computer), but it would not let me erase it. I was able to unmount, it, but the next time I restarted the computer, it was there again on my desktop.

I don't have ownership permission of the partion: is there any way to delete it? Thank you!
 
yellow

yellow

Moderator emeritus
Oct 21, 2003
16,018
6
Portland, OR
It is indeed a partition from BootCamp.

Under normal circumstances, you cannot "delete" a partition. A partition is a logical separation to your phsyical hard drive.

If you want to gert rid of it, you need to completely erase your HD (creating 1 partition) and reinstall, or use a 3rd party app like iPartition (there are others) to re-add that partitioned space back to your boot partition.

#1 is the safe option.

Since you bought this on eBay anyway, who KNOWS what is on there? Erase and reinstall ;)

EDIT: Apparently BootCamp allows the deleteion of a partition. Who knew? They thought of everything!
 
yellow

yellow

Moderator emeritus
Oct 21, 2003
16,018
6
Portland, OR
Or download Boot camp and install it.

But as I said.. you got this off eBay. From someone you don't know. You have no idea what is on there. For safety's sake.. wipe it and start over.
 
S

sethypoo

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 8, 2003
1,583
5
Sacramento, CA, USA
yellow said:
Or download Boot camp and install it.

But as I said.. you got this off eBay. From someone you don't know. You have no idea what is on there. For safety's sake.. wipe it and start over.
Click to expand...

The computer was wiped before I received it, but of course the partition was not. When the computer was wiped, Boot Camp was erased, but not the partition.

I just downloaded and installed Boot Camp, and removed the Windows XP partition. I earned myself an extra 11GB of space in the process!

I don't think there is any malicious software left on the computer, and I don't think there ever was. Mac OS X was restored back to version 10.4.5, and Windows XP was left. So, I think when I removed the partition, and thus Windows XP, I finished wiping the computer.

Thank you for all your help! I love how quickly I can solve computer issues here on Macrumors. You guys (and gals) rock!
 
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