Combining 3 partitions into 1

[sikkinixx]

My hard drive is currently partitioned 3 ways.

1 is OS X, 1 is Windows XP and the other is nothing (formatted as extended journaled).

I wanna put them all together is one again but I can't seem to do it through disk utility. When I go to 'partition' is tells me the drive won't be deleted and all the options seem to be greyed out.

In Windows I would just use Acronis to mess with the partitions but I'm not sure how to go about this in OS X. I could always reformat the whole thing but I don't wanna have to reinstall Leopard etc.


Any advice? Am I just missing something?

 

[MasterNile]

Have you tried boot camp assistant to merge the windows partition back into the Mac OS X partition?

 

[TEG]

You cannot do this kind of thing to the starup disc while running OS X. Boot off of the OS X Disc and do it. YOU WILL DESTROY ALL DATA ON THE DRIVE.

TEG

 

[MasterNile]

I recommend Carbon Copy Cloner and cloning the main HD to an external drive to keep from having to re install everything, then repartition it to one partition then boot from the external and clone back to internal HD

TEG-could he get it down to 2 partitions using the bootcamp assistant tho?

 

[TEG]

TEG-could he get it down to 2 partitions using the bootcamp assistant tho?

I don't know, as I'm still on Tiger. But I don't believe you can expand the primary partition while running because of the remapping of the master boot record is required.

TEG

 

[MasterNile]

Ah I see (about being on tiger) but yeah with bootcamp assistant you can rejoin your windows partition while being on the Mac OS X partition no problem, but I didn't know if adding another partition into the mix will cause any difference since I only have 2 partitions on my internal HDs, one for Mac OS X and one for Windows XP and i've merged them into one no problem while running the Mac OS X partition using bootcamp assistant