Can't modify external drive partition

[480951]

I have a 1TB external HD that I formatted as 641GB Mac OS Journaled and 358GB Fat 32 (for when I needed to back up my PS3). I now want to erase the Fat32 portion and merge it back with the Journaled, but disk utility won't let me.

I was able to move everything off of the Fat 32 portion and reformat it to Journaled so now they're both the same, but I still can't merge them as one. It says it can't be modified because it's using the Master Boot scheme.

I remember doing this before and am not sure how to do it again (it might've been with assistance from an app). There's far too much data (iTunes library, documents) on the drive to completely erase it and start over. Is there any way to make it just a 1TB partition again?

Using Mac OSX 10.6.8

 

[Weaselboy]

I am not aware of a way to actually merge them with data intact. What you need to do is remove the second partition completely then expand the first one to take that space. This will leave you with the data from the first partition intact on what ends up as one 1TB partition.

 

[480951]

I moved all of the data off of the Fat32 partition so now it's empty. I then used disk utility to erase/convert it back to Mac OS Journaled so it matches the largest partition with all of my data on it. I'm still unable to merge it. I read that because it's formatted as the master boot it can't be modified, is that true? Is there any way around that?

 

[Weaselboy]

I moved all of the data off of the Fat32 partition so now it's empty. I then used disk utility to erase/convert it back to Mac OS Journaled so it matches the largest partition with all of my data on it. I'm still unable to merge it. I read that because it's formatted as the master boot it can't be modified, is that true? Is there any way around that?

Can you select the second partition and then click the minus sign at the bottom left of disk util to remove it?

 

[480951]

It won't let me to do that. I remember using an app before that could override things like this but I can't recall what it is. May just have to stick with two partitions.

 

[Mike in Kansas]

How much of the 641GB partition is used? Can you clone that partition to another drive, re-format your 1TB external drive into 1 partition, and then re-clone the data back to it? I had an internal drive where I had a bootcamp partition on it, and it could not remove the bootcamp partition and expand the OSX partition to the whole drive. I had to clone my OSX partition, completely reformat the internal drive, create 1 OSX partition, then re-clone the contents back on it.