How can I format my OS X and unite partitions?

[Folmanik]

I recieved a G4 from my sister, she used this mac for 4 years without formatting it, the only thing she done is accidently partition the hard drive into 3 hard drives what makes the hard drive which the OS X sit on to be low on space.

what i want is to format this mac so it will run faster and unite all the partitions, can i do it alone? is it hard to format on mac?
can someone plz give me a guide?

thanks alot,
adam.

 

[mad jew]

Boot from the restore discs by holding C at startup (with said discs in the optical drive) and use Disk Utility to repartition and reformat the drive. Then reinstall OSX. It's really quite simple once you get going.

 

[Folmanik]

Boot from the restore discs by holding C at startup (with said discs in the optical drive) and use Disk Utility to repartition and reformat the drive. Then reinstall OSX. It's really quite simple once you get going.

o.k. so let me se if i get you (sorry for been that slow, in microsoft it was just activating "partitions magic")
what i need to do is restart the mac and while it restart i should push C, than i will get a screen with "disk utility" from which i should unite drives and format the mac.

than i should take the OS X disc which i have (tell me, is OS X is free? i know my sister have a formal cd) and the put it in the cd drive and reboot again and install OS X?

 

[mad jew]

Don't worry mate. Put the discs in first, then reboot holding C. It'll come up with the installer. Select Disk Utility from one of the menus (I forget it's name, but there aren't terribly many of them), and run from there.

 

[steve_hill4]

Don't worry mate. Put the discs in first, then reboot holding C. It'll come up with the installer. Select Disk Utility from one of the menus (I forget it's name, but there aren't terribly many of them), and run from there.

You'll see in the left hand list of volumes the Hard Drive in your machine, (which in this case should have three volumes below it if three partitions). Select the actual HD and then in the main box, you will see a tab called Partition. Select and then change the number of partitions you require and the space of each. Since this also erases the disk, you'll need to reinstall the OS.

If you don't want to reinstall and lose anything, you should be able to create a disk image of the drive from Disk Utility within OS X before you put the discs in and reboot. Save the image to an external disk. Put the disc in and follow the above to remove partitions, then select the HD and then Restore tab. Select the image, the new partition and tick erase disc to be on the safe side.

I think that should all work too, just in case you want to keep the current install.

 

[Folmanik]

actually i'm aiming for losing all of the information so my mac will be like bran new.

let me see if i get you, i should insert the OS X installation cd into the cd rom and than restart the comp, once i hear the opening sound i'm holding c untill i see a grey screen,

the first thing i do is going into DISC UTILITIES and than i'm choosing the partition which my OS X install on, i erase the other partition and move all the memory into the one partition which OS X is on.

this is for the partition,

now, after that i should see a "format" button or what? to format from? and how i should install the new OS X?

 

[Folmanik]

plz help it's for tommrow..sorry for upping the thread it's urgent

 

[mad jew]

The formatting took place when you were selecting partitions. Now you just need to use the installer to get OSX back up and running.

 

[sndcj1]

Some picture steps...

This is what disk utility should look like when you start.



Then you select partition, and choose 1 partition.



Then as a third step, I usually go back to erase, and rename the drive to something that makes sense, and press erase. There is no need to go into any advanced settings here, though you can if you've got a few hours to kill.



Finally, close the disk utility program, and continue with the installation. Hope this helped...

 

[Folmanik]

thanks i believe i got it, so the partition is a part of the formattin-re installing..

thank you all very much

 

[00poop6x]

This needs to be a sticky. Could not find this on the web.