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Help Removing Linux and Windows, and then rEFIt from a Mac Pro

R

raptorsoft2000

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 21, 2010
12
0
I have a Mac Pro and I don't even remember how the heck I got Linux on there and barely even remember using Windows except for maybe a few times over a year ago. I want to get Linux off since I don't use it, also remove Windows (XP I'm sure), and then lastly I want to remove rEFIt. I'm not sure I even know what rEFIt is or what it does, if you wanna explain it I'd be glad to read about it, but I don't have to know as long as I can get it off here. I like my Mac OS X enough and am happy with that alone. So anyone who knows how to remove the other OSes without damaging my current OS X system, I would appreciate your help! Thanks!

Jesse
 
I don't know if this is the best solution, but I would recommend cloning your OS X partition to another drive. Then reformat the drive with 3 OSes and rEFIt. Then boot from the drive you cloned the OS X partition to. And then clone OS X back to the drive you just reformatted which contained the 3 OSes and rEFIt. :)
 
Well I was hoping not to have to play around with my OSX partition. Does anyone else know any ideas? It's got to be possible, I just have been out of the computer area for quite a while and thus forgot a lot of stuff I used to know. Hopefully someone else on here knows! :)
 
The easiest way I could think of would be just to open up the Disk Utility and remove those volumes from your HD. I think, depending on how you installed Windows, that rEFit is tethered (so to say) to the Windows partition so it should remove itself also.
 
To remove Windows and Linux, go into Disk Utility. Click on the main DRIVE they are all on, click PARTITION. Click on Windows, hit the (-) at the bottom. Click on Linux, hit the (-) at the bottom. Grab the corner of the Mac partition and drag it to fill the empty space and then hit APPLY.

To remove rEFIt, remove the “efi” folder, this folder will be in the main drive probably Macintosh OS X. Next remove the folder “rEFItBlesser” inside Library > StartupItems. Then goto System Preferences > Startup Disk > Pick your HDD as the startup disk.

***Note - rEFIt is a Mac program, so removing Windows-Linux partitions will not remove it.
 
Yeah...Mac's disk utility cannot modify those partitions (as you've found out). The best way to do this is to boot from an Ubuntu Live CD and use GParted. It is MUCH easier to use, not to mention it will actually work.

Download ubuntu 10.10 here (http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download) and use Disk Utility to burn as a bootable CD. There are instructions on how to do this on the link I provided. Just boot from the CD and select "Try Ubuntu" to run from the CD.

GParted is accessible via System>Administration>GParted Partition Editor. Delete the partions you want, and leave OS X alone. *Do not attempt to resize the Mac partition in GParted.* Then, restart into OS X and open Disk Utility. Drag the partition to fill the remaining space, and you're good.

In order to remove rEFIt, follow these instructions: http://refit.sourceforge.net/doc/c1s3_remove.html **The steps to properly remove rEFIt depend on your installation method.**
 
vuarnet said:
Yeah...Mac's disk utility cannot modify those partitions (as you've found out). The best way to do this is to boot from an Ubuntu Live CD and use GParted. It is MUCH easier to use, not to mention it will actually work.

Download ubuntu 10.10 here (http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download) and use Disk Utility to burn as a bootable CD. There are instructions on how to do this on the link I provided. Just boot from the CD and select "Try Ubuntu" to run from the CD.

GParted is accessible via System>Administration>GParted Partition Editor. Delete the partions you want, and leave OS X alone. *Do not attempt to resize the Mac partition in GParted.* Then, restart into OS X and open Disk Utility. Drag the partition to fill the remaining space, and you're good.

In order to remove rEFIt, follow these instructions: http://refit.sourceforge.net/doc/c1s3_remove.html **The steps to properly remove rEFIt depend on your installation method.**
Click to expand...

Disk Utility can not modify size of a non HFS partition. IT CAN REMOVE IT. I dont see easier as downloading Ubuntu, burning a bootable copy, loading that from cd(slow), digging through menus to find some program and then risk removing the HFS partition.

The instructions I posted were from rEFIt's site also.
 
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