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Help/How to safely remove Mavericks.

D

dumb

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 1, 2009
85
1
I have installed Mavericks on a separate partition along with ML and Windows via boot camp. After happily poking at a few iterations of the beta releases of Mavericks, I want to remove the Mavericks partition, which currently boots as the primary partition. How do I

1) Delete the Mavericks partition.
2) Revert ML as the main OS while boot up.
3) Merge the Mavericks Partition back to ML... don't want extra partition.
4) Ensure I end up with ML and boot camp, that I don't end up with a MBP that does not boot up.

P.S I will have things backed up just in case..

Thanks, hope others are in the same boat and can help me/others out.
 
Dalton63841

Dalton63841

macrumors 65816
Nov 27, 2010
1,449
8
SEMO, USA
dumb said:
I have installed Mavericks on a separate partition along with ML and Windows via boot camp. After happily poking at a few iterations of the beta releases of Mavericks, I want to remove the Mavericks partition, which currently boots as the primary partition. How do I

1) Delete the Mavericks partition.
2) Revert ML as the main OS while boot up.
3) Merge the Mavericks Partition back to ML... don't want extra partition.
4) Ensure I end up with ML and boot camp, that I don't end up with a MBP that does not boot up.

P.S I will have things backed up just in case..

Thanks, hope others are in the same boat and can help me/others out.
Click to expand...

Boot into ML, Open Disk Utility, delete Mavericks partition, expand Mountain Lion partition to take up the empty space. Done. Mountain Lion will automatically become the primary partition to boot from.
 
D

dumb

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 1, 2009
85
1
^ Thanks. Deleted Mavericks, now ML boots as the default OS. However, I'm not able to merge back the unused space from Mavericks partition back to ML participation.

Also, what happened to the Mavericks Recovery partition, is that still lingering somewhere ?
 
Dalton63841

Dalton63841

macrumors 65816
Nov 27, 2010
1,449
8
SEMO, USA
dumb said:
^ Thanks. Deleted Mavericks, now ML boots as the default OS. However, I'm not able to merge back the unused space from Mavericks partition back to ML participation.

Also, what happened to the Mavericks Recovery partition, is that still lingering somewhere ?
Click to expand...

Open terminal and type:

Code: 
diskutil list

Screenshot that window and post it here.
 
D

dumb

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 1, 2009
85
1
Here is what's on diskutil.

/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *320.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 216.3 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data Windows 80.7 GB disk0s4
 
mikecwest

mikecwest

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2013
1,188
493
dumb said:
^ Thanks. Deleted Mavericks, now ML boots as the default OS. However, I'm not able to merge back the unused space from Mavericks partition back to ML participation.

Also, what happened to the Mavericks Recovery partition, is that still lingering somewhere ?
Click to expand...

You might need to boot from another disk, check for and repair disk errors. You might need to defrag your drive.

I had an issue with adjusting a partition size in the past, it was very frustrating.

It might take a while longer, but try to resize the ML partition to include 25% of the free space, instead of all of it. If it lets you do that, keep proceeding, adding more. I once had to do it in six increments. I could not explain to you why this works, or may work, but it did.
 
D

dumb

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 1, 2009
85
1
Thanks for the inputs, I'm just following up with the fix.

Looks like you cannot resize (increase) the default OS X volume via diskutility tool or by Booting into Recovery Partition or by Cmd + R. The problem I see is that the recovery partition cannot be unmounted, even with diskutil unmount, hence hindering the resizing of the disk.

I had to boot from my Snow Leopard Disk then I was able to resize, as there was no lock or all the disks/volume were unmounted.

Caution: After resizing, it may cause your Bootcamp to become unbootable, I had to restore MBR to the windows partition.
 
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