How can I erase all my hd and delete all partitions?

[fsmorelli]

I'm trying to do a clean install of mountain lion, but I cant delete my recovery partition (from lion). I'd the like to delete all of them and merge in a single one.
I used diskutil and it showed me 13 partition, but a lot of small partitions. What is that?
How can I fix it?
thanks a lot guys.

 

[WhoisMedina]

Disk Utility, erase HDD then create 1 partition. That should take care of it, not sure why you have 13 partitions.

 

[fsmorelli]

These all 13 partitions I can see only with diskutil in terminal.
My recovery partition is on disk2.
My Macintosh HD is on disk0. I just can erase my disk0.
The erase option is not avaiable for disk2.
Do you know why?

 

[alexreich]

Disk2 is likely your CD/DVD drive, unless you have multiple hard drives.

 

[fsmorelli]

Disk2 is likely your CD/DVD drive, unless you have multiple hard drives.

I just have one hd. I see the superdrive in the list, but I cant click on it.
I´m doing all of these thing from the boot on the usb flash drive.

 

[Fishrrman]

"The erase option is not avaiable for disk2.
Do you know why?"

I will -guess- that Apple has made the "Recovery" partition a "protected" partition of some sort, so that it can't be accidentally erased.

I'll also guess that you can't delete it while you're booted from the drive on which the Recovery partition resides.

You probably -can- delete it if you boot from "an external source" (OS on a different drive).