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Can get rid of a partition?
#48259 03/19/18 04:22 PM
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kevs Offline OP
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If you partitioned a hardrive into 2, can you later make it 1 again? I've googled this and can't figure it out still.

Also I want to remove the password protection on it, thanks.

Re: Can get rid of a partition?
kevs #48260 03/19/18 04:41 PM
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Yes. Use Apple's Disk Utility to do this. You will lose the data on the drive when you use Disk Utility.


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Re: Can get rid of a partition?
Ira L #48261 03/19/18 04:45 PM
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Yes, Ira, I've gone into DU, don't see a way to ...

Delete the smaller partition, and make the drive whole again..

Re: Can get rid of a partition?
Ira L #48262 03/19/18 06:22 PM
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Originally Posted By: Ira L
Yes. Use Apple's Disk Utility to do this. You will lose the data on the drive when you use Disk Utility.

Will you lose all the data on the drive or only that on the partition you're merging (as I've understood or misunderstood as the case may be)?


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Re: Can get rid of a partition?
artie505 #48264 03/19/18 10:33 PM
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You will lose all the data on the second partition. Disk Utility will warn about this when you attempt to remove a partition.


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Re: Can get rid of a partition?
joemikeb #48265 03/19/18 10:47 PM
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As I thought; thanks for the confirmation.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Can get rid of a partition?
artie505 #48266 03/19/18 11:34 PM
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kevs Offline OP
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Thank Joe/ Ira.

I go to DU, and select the disk I want to unify.
There is + but not a minus.

I click on the small pie one nothing happens.

I even changed 75gb to 0 gb was apply still greyed out. Here is image. Don't mind erasing everything.
[IMG]http://i67.tinypic.com/dlnyc2.png[/IMG]

Re: Can get rid of a partition?
kevs #48268 03/20/18 02:18 PM
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Originally Posted By: kevs
Don't mind erasing everything.

If you don't mind erasing everything, why take the long way to get to one partition? Just use Disk Utility to erase the drive and tell it you want a single partition.


ryck

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Re: Can get rid of a partition?
ryck #48269 03/20/18 02:21 PM
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Ryck, yes easy to erase partitions, but I still at loss how to ask it to make 1 partition. Going in circles.

Did you see the screenshot and text I posted. This would see an intuitive easy thing to do, how do you do it?

Re: Can get rid of a partition?
kevs #48270 03/20/18 02:29 PM
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Try dragging the divider within the circle representation, i.e. one of the blue edges...the right-hand edge, I think, and then hitting "Apply".


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Can get rid of a partition?
artie505 #48271 03/20/18 02:31 PM
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kevs Offline OP
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Dragging the divider does not work.

Re: Can get rid of a partition?
kevs #48273 03/20/18 03:15 PM
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Have you tried selecting the "blank" partition, hitting the minus sign, and then hitting "Apply"?


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Can get rid of a partition?
artie505 #48274 03/20/18 03:17 PM
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kevs Offline OP
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The minus sign is always greyed out. Is there an intuitive just "unify partitions" button?

Re: Can get rid of a partition?
kevs #48275 03/20/18 03:26 PM
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Originally Posted By: kevs
The minus sign is always greyed out. Is there an intuitive just "unify partitions" button?

I dunno, kevs, I just tried it, and it works for me.

Are you booted into the other volume on that drive? If so, that may be your problem.

If there's a "unify" button, I've never run across it.

More: Don't do anything in Disk Utility other than select that partition and hit minus if it's not grayed out.

Last edited by artie505; 03/20/18 04:01 PM.

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Can get rid of a partition?
kevs #48277 03/20/18 04:15 PM
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First you have to select the partition by clicking on the partition you wish to delete. If the minus sign is greyed out that means you are attempting to delete the first partition on the drive and the first partition on the drive CANNOT be deleted. Select the other partition and the minus sign should no longer be greyed out, but if you delete that partition you will lose all the data on it.

Originally Posted By: keys
Also I want to remove the password protection on it, thanks.
I presume you mean you have turned on Filevault for that volume. You will have to do that in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Filevault and you will need an empty volume of the same size to decrypt to and I would encourage doing that first as removing a partition has been known to cause data loss.

Last edited by joemikeb; 03/20/18 04:21 PM. Reason: add new material

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

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Re: Can get rid of a partition?
joemikeb #48278 03/20/18 04:26 PM
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Duh! That's what I was overloking...that the first partition is the first one going clockwise.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Can get rid of a partition?
joemikeb #48279 03/20/18 07:34 PM
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kevs Offline OP
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Excellent Joe, worked like charm, I'm all set thanks. I don't know why I was only trying to delete the first partition, maybe because it was tiny and it seemed logical.. oh well. (and I did not think that if you can't delete one maybe can delete other)

Not file vault, just disk image password, and it got nuked on on erasure.

Re: Can get rid of a partition?
kevs #48414 03/28/18 03:18 PM
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Disk Utility's ability to merge partitions is very hit-or-miss. Sometimes it refuses to do it at all, sometimes it threatens to erase the entire device and all volumes on it, sometimes it threatens to erase one of the volumes, and frequently it claims it can do it and when you try it eventually fails with weird errors. (or stalls / hangs in the attempt)

Disk Utility has become one of the WORST pieces of software inside OS X, for many reasons. I'm often left to dig around in terminal and do what I need to by running Disk Utility from terminal. There, it either works as expected, or fails with an actual useful error message, or at least an error message that is helpful enough to explain why it's failing, what I need to change, or give me a clue as to how I can rethink my process to accomplish my goal. So it's not diskutil, it's Disk Utility (the GUI front-end for diskutil) that I have grown to despise.


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