UNpartitioning a hard-drive - How do you do this?

[vreelands1]

OK -- I've read dozens of questions/answers on this topic in various forums now and NONE of them has answered my own question! Specifically, I need to know how to unpartition an older 10GB "LaCie" external drive, which I gave to my daughter, along with my old Mac G3, running OSX 3.0. When I go to "Disk Utility" (even on my Mac here at home, running OSX 4.11) I CANNOT locate ANYTHING about "partitions" or "reformatting." All that's there is the standard: First Aid, Erase, RAID, and Restore. I've had her erase the separate partitions, but all that does is eliminate the data -- the 3 partitions are still intact. HOW DO WE COMBINE THEM, so that the external hard-drive is just ONE volume? So far, I've not seen anyone else ask this specific question, and I don't see an answer for this anywhere either. PLEASE HELP! It's totally unnecessary to have a small 10GB hard-drive partitioned into three volumes. . . but when the drive was new, 10GB was ENORMOUS to me!

BTW -- I also rebooted my own computer this morning and started-up from the system-install disk -- couldn't locate anything on that either for reformatting/partitioning/unpartitioning drives. WHERE IS THIS INFO? Feeling very dense -- just can't locate the solution for this -- and it seems it should be so simple! Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

 

[GGJstudios]

I can't speak for the older versions you have, but Disk Utility allows you to select a different scheme, including 1 Partition:

​

 

[vreelands1]

Thanks GGJ -- but . . . wow -- even the screen-shot you've attached here is VASTLY different from what my "Disk Utility" looks like, and as I said, I'm running Tiger OSX 10.4.11 -- there simply IS NO TAB THERE for selecting a partition -- nor is there anything there to reformat or initialize a hard-drive. I've even looked this up in an older Mac "How-to" book of mine, and there used to be something called the "Apple HD SC Setup" which had tabs for setting up partitions, or initializing a disk. But I guess it no longer exists anywhere with the newer operating systems?? (I've searched.) How horrible of Apple to get rid of something that used to make it so simple!

Surely SOMEONE out there has an answer to this? Isn't there ANY OTHER WAY to initialize (or reinitialize), reformat, or unpartition a partioned hard-drive?? Disk Utility is NOT the answer, from what I can see in Tiger.

 

[Techhie]

Thanks GGJ -- but . . . wow -- even the screen-shot you've attached here is VASTLY different from what my "Disk Utility" looks like, and as I said, I'm running Tiger OSX 10.4.11 -- there simply IS NO TAB THERE for selecting a partition -- nor is there anything there to reformat or initialize a hard-drive. I've even looked this up in an older Mac "How-to" book of mine, and there used to be something called the "Apple HD SC Setup" which had tabs for setting up partitions, or initializing a disk. But I guess it no longer exists anywhere with the newer operating systems?? (I've searched.) How horrible of Apple to get rid of something that used to make it so simple!

Surely SOMEONE out there has an answer to this? Isn't there ANY OTHER WAY to initialize (or reinitialize), reformat, or unpartition a partioned hard-drive?? Disk Utility is NOT the answer, from what I can see in Tiger.

I would boot up into the Tiger install DVD, the copy of Disk util on there is sure to have partitioning abilities.

 

[vreelands1]

Sorry . . . already tried that. My Tiger CD does NOT have Partitioning abilities in the Disk Utility. (This is the original install CD from my Power Mac G5 which we purchased in the summer of '05.)

 

[vreelands1]

OK -- sorry, once again -- I tried again and I discovered that when I select the icon above my partitioned drives (named with a long number!), there IS AT LAST a "partition" button to select!!!!!! Thank you so much.

Now . . . the next problem is that I was just on the phone with my son-in-law, walking him through the process of deleting the various (now empty) partitions, and they won't stay deleted! There is no "OK" or "Finish" button to click on after you delete the partitions you don't want. We are thinking that he now needs to select the "Partition" button, and create just ONE partition, in place of the three . . . is that correct? (GEEZ -- you'd think there would be instructions for this SOMEWHERE -- we're just winging this!) Thanks again for your input!

 

[Sun Baked]

Mac OS X 10.4 - Disk Utility - Partitioning a hard disk

Formatting & Partitioning a Hard Drive in OS X - Tiger and Leopard

Apple has moved stuff around between Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard ... might take some work but you usually can find a way to do it.

You also have HELP on the menu bar in Finder, click on the desktop, go to Help and type in partition... likely will bring up something similar to the top link.

Basically with PPC, partitioning the drive is reformatting the drive into 1 or several parts, you can go back and reformat each partion for OS X, OS 9, Windows etc. Just make sure you check the OS 9 bootable stuff if you want a partition to boot OS 9.