How to merge partitions?

[ninethirty]

Hi there,

A few months back I created a separate partition for a previous version of OSX. I believe I did this with Disk Utility run from the Mac OSX Install DVD. I no longer need that install of OSX and would like to remove that partition and rejoin that space with my main disk (Macintosh HD).

Can anyone tell me how I might do this? Disk Utility does not seem to give me access to this anymore.

Thanks!

[macjack1]

While there are some utilities that claim to do this on the fly Like iPartition, the best way to accomplish it is to clone the volumes to another disk, then re-format.

EDIT: What do you mean by DU won't give you access?

-mj

[kainjow]

Originally Posted by macjack1

EDIT: What do you mean by DU won't give you access?

You can't partition the startup drive in Disk Utility.

[ninethirty]

Sure you can... that's how I did it in the first place.

Originally Posted by kainjow

You can't partition the startup drive in Disk Utility.

[kainjow]

Originally Posted by ninethirty

Sure you can... that's how I did it in the first place.

I think you are confusing this. The startup drive is the drive that the OS is currently running from. As of 10.4, you can't re-partition this live with Disk Utility. See this screenshot:

Attachment 86890

Now, it's certainly possible since BootCamp can partition on the fly, but it doesn't seem to be part of Disk Utility... yet.

However, you can partition other drives, such as the main hard drive when you have booted from the Mac OS X DVD/CD (which is what you are referring to).