How to delete hard drive partican? - what to believe?

[CarsonS]

Hi
I have a partican on my iMac that I would like to get rid of. I read that to unpartican I will need to wipe all of my memory. True? Other descriptions of how to do this don't mention this troublesome bit of info.

If I do need to wipe the memory how can I back it up? - The same site was saying to not use time machine to make a backup - why not? - what are my other options?

What is the right process for getting all of my Mac memory back? - I'm running 10.9.5

Thanks much for all your help.

 

[Nermal]

Deleting a partition will wipe everything inside that partition, but won't affect the rest of the system.

With that said, it's a good idea to keep a backup anyway, just in case something goes wrong. Time Machine should be fine; I don't know why you were advised to stay clear of it.

 

[CarsonS]

Thanks. I don't need anything that's inside the partican.

How do I get rid of it though?

 

[Fishrrman]

[[ I don't need anything that's inside the partican.
How do I get rid of it though? ]]

You can try this first:
1. Boot to the Recovery Partition
2. Launch Disk Utility
3. Try to delete the unwanted partition.

That may work, or...
.... it may NOT work.

If it DOESN'T work, here is what WILL work:
1. Use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone your boot partition (the one you want to KEEP) to an external drive.
IMPORTANT: if you use CCC, it will also clone your recovery partition, as well.
2. Boot from the external drive (hold down option key at bootup until startup manager appears, select external drive, hit return)
3. Once "booted externally" use Disk Utility to delete the partitions on the internal drive. If that doesn't work, RE-INITIALIZE the entire drive.
4. Now, use CCC (or SD) to RE-CLONE the contents of the external drive BACK TO the newly-initialized internal drive.
5. When done, boot up, "look around", be sure things are "as you want".

Done.

Note:
You can download CCC for FREE, and use it for FREE for 30 days.
SD will do a "full clone" of your drive without registering.
So either of the above will work for you.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

If the partition happens to be a Boot Camp partition, use the Boot Camp Assistant to remove it. You'll run into problems otherwise.