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Merging partitions.

post #1 of 6
5/21/08 at 2:14pm
Thread Starter 
Hi Mac section My friend has an old G4 powerbook and its hard drive is partitioned into two parts hes wondering if theres a way to merge those partitions without reformatting and reinstalling or anything else drastic like that. Thanks
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post #2 of 6
5/21/08 at 4:18pm
I think you can do it with iPartition but I'm not sure.
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post #3 of 6
5/21/08 at 5:17pm
Actually I believe diskutil might be able to do it as well, since it did it in 10.4 for the boot camp beta. You might need to use the commandline to do it however, as I am not certain the graphical utility can do it.

Seablade
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post #4 of 6
5/22/08 at 12:31am
I forgot they added partition changing abilities to Diskutil but it looks like it deletes the data from everything but the first partition.

This is from the man page:

Code:
mergePartitions [force] format name fromDevice toDevice
                Merge two or more partitions on a disk.  All data on merged
                partitions other than the first will be lost. The first will
                be erased if it doesn't have a resizable type (e.g. JHFS+) or
                if the force argument is given.  Format and name apply only
                when the first partition is being erased.  Merged partitions
                are required to be ordered sequentially on disk (see diskutil
                list for the actual on-disk ordering).  Ownership of the
                affected disk is required.
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post #5 of 6
5/22/08 at 1:37am
I believe that holds true with ANY merging of partitions if memory serves. Otherwise you would need to copy the files over and then merge the partition. It really isn't merging so much as deleting the second partition, and expanding the first.

Seablade
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post #6 of 6
5/22/08 at 2:56am
Then it shouldn't be called "mergepartition".

To me, when you merge something you bring two things together into one. The data from both partitions should be saved, IMO.

But yes, it looks like even with iPartition the data will need to be moved and/or backed up.

The best thing to do, IMO, is just to save everything on an external drive and reformat the thing from scratch.
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