Second hand Macbook - how to remove XP Partition?

[peanutismint]

Hi, I just bought a second hand black Macbook, and am loving the switch so far! One thing I did notice, however, was that my 120GB hard drive is listed as only being an 80 gig. So I explored my way to the disk utility which confirmed that yes, in deed, there was a 30-odd gigabyte partition unused. I assume it was holding Windows XP for a dual-boot solution, but whatever was on there isn't anymore, as I don't seem to be able to choose between the two when I boot.

As if to compound the problem, when i 'verified' my 80GB partition (just to see if it was all okay etc), it came up with an error which it said needed to be 'repaired'. The repair button was greyed out, I'd imagine because it's my startup drive. So I rebooted into the disk checky type program included on the OS X disc. It 'checked' my system and found nothing wrong... Strange huh?

So my two questions are (FINALLY! ),

1) How do I get rid of the 'dead' partition, ideally 'adding' it to my current 80gig partition without having to lose any of my current setup etc.

and

2) Is there really something wrong with my drive, or is it just that there's some random weird partition lingering about not being used?

Let me know what you think, guys! Thanks!

 

[ieani]

Right click the partition and check it see how it is formatted, that should tell you whether or not is a Windows partition. If its windows you will need boot camp to remove it.

If its not windows, I would back up any data I needed and then wipe and reformat with a new clean install of OSX.

 

[peanutismint]

Bootcamp won't be there as the first thing I did when I got the Mac was to re-install OS X. I'd rather not use it to be honest, as I doubt I'll want to run any versions of Windows... unless I get bored and try to see if my Macbook will run Half Life 2 or similar!

Isn't there just a smart partition program that will allow me to 'move' my data around, deleting the dead partition and placing the free space at the end of my OS X partition?

 

[JNB]

iPartition shoud allow you to reformat the other 40GB as HFS+, but if you want it appended to the existing partion, then a reformat still may be required. I could be wrong (I am a lot...)

 

[ieani]

Bootcamp won't be there as the first thing I did when I got the Mac was to re-install OS X. I'd rather not use it to be honest, as I doubt I'll want to run any versions of Windows... unless I get bored and try to see if my Macbook will run Half Life 2 or similar!

Isn't there just a smart partition program that will allow me to 'move' my data around, deleting the dead partition and placing the free space at the end of my OS X partition?

Well you would just install bootcamp and then delete it after you use it to unpartition the drive. Did you find out whether or not it was a windows partition?

 

[peanutismint]

Okay, I installed BootCamp and it erased my Windows partition, leaving me with one nice big partition, even if it is 10GB short of my supposed 120GB drive, and also for some reason I now only have 30GB free?! Haha bizzarre. I think I may indeed need to repair my disk!

Good to have BootCamp on though, I guess. Will open up some options in the future!

thanks for the suggestions guys, really appreciate it. Now... how to go about repairing my drive? Remembering the Apple Drive Startup Utility thing (holding 'D' on boot) didn't seem to find a problem...

 

[Fleetwood Mac]

The space should display correctly after you restart the computer. If the Disk Utility on the OS X disc doesn't find a problem there may not be a big one. I've had instances where a problem is detected one day, and gone the next.

 

[Jiddick ExRex]

Also, a 120 Gb hard drive (any hard drive that is) will never show up as 120 due to various reasons explained: here.

 

[Nermal]

For a second-hand system, I'd recommend doing a system restore from the original disks anyway.

 

[peanutismint]

cheers dudes.

1) yeah I know what the difference between a bit and a byte is, it was still showing about 10 gigs short tho!

2) I did do a full re-install. Well worth it!

3) I managed to run the disk utility from the OS X install CDs and it fixed the problem nicely!

Thanks again for the help everyone!

 

[WildCowboy]

1) yeah I know what the difference between a bit and a byte is, it was still showing about 10 gigs short tho!

Glad you got things sorted.

FYI, the "missing" space you're seeing (or not seeing, to be more precise) has nothing to do with the difference between bits and bytes. You can read Apple's explanation here. Your 120 GB drive should be read as a bit under 112 GB by your system.