How to format HD on my iMac

Sjake

Sjake

Registered
The HD of my iMac has 2 partitions; this was done when I had OS9 on it. But now I need the HD as 1 partition and I can't figure out how to do this. Can anybody help me out with this?
 
Sjake said:
The HD of my iMac has 2 partitions; this was done when I had OS9 on it. But now I need the HD as 1 partition and I can't figure out how to do this. Can anybody help me out with this?
Click to expand...

The only way back to one partition is to reformat your drive. Needless to way, you lose everything on the drive - backup first! (assuming there's anything important on the drive) and then boot to an OS X install CD and reformat your hard drive, then reinstall everything.
 
If you still need classic or OS 9, use the OS 9 CD first, reformat using Drive Setup (back up, back up, back up), install the OS 9 drivers, install OS 9.
Restart, then use OS X to start the computer and install. :)
 
btw It's an iMac G3.
I did a clean install with the OSX 10.2 install CD. I selected the option 'Erase and Install' (Mac OS Extended), but it just kept the 2 partitions alive and installed OSX on the partition I selected. I really have no other options on the install CD.

I can't even restart from the OS9 install CD. Holding the 'C' key has no effect.
 
another thing to think about is that with that imac Mac os X must be within the first 8 gigs of drive space. meaning that the portion that you have os x on must have less the 8 gigs of total space or X will either a not go on that disk or b crash eventually.
 
Sjake said:
btw It's an iMac G3.
I did a clean install with the OSX 10.2 install CD. I selected the option 'Erase and Install' (Mac OS Extended), but it just kept the 2 partitions alive and installed OSX on the partition I selected. I really have no other options on the install CD.

I can't even restart from the OS9 install CD. Holding the 'C' key has no effect.
Click to expand...

When you used OS X to Erase, it did just that and took away the OS 9 drivers.

See if you can use the OS 9 CD to install on the second partition. First go to Utilities on the CD and use Drive setup. Go to the menu and select update drivers - on the second partition, of course. Then you should be able to install OS 9 on the second partition.
 
Cheryl said:
When you used OS X to Erase, it did just that and took away the OS 9 drivers.

See if you can use the OS 9 CD to install on the second partition. First go to Utilities on the CD and use Drive setup. Go to the menu and select update drivers - on the second partition, of course. Then you should be able to install OS 9 on the second partition.
Click to expand...

Okay, thats worth a try. Smart thinking! thanks!
 
Not having the OS 9 drivers installed on the internal hard disk should not affect the ability to start up from the OS 9 CD. Try putting the OS 9 CD in the drive, restarting, and hold down the option key at startup. That should give you a list of drives to boot from, and you can easily select the OS 9 CD. If that doesn't work, well, hey, more troubleshooting is needed.

To make one big partition out of two, yes, you have to reformat, but reformatting alone won't help -- you can reformat one partition or the other, because they are like two separate disks now. You need to delete both partitions on the drive, then make one big one -- and you can do this through disk utility. Just select "Partiton" when you load up Disk Utility and you should be able to resize/reformat/create/delete partitions.
 
Thanks for all the help.
I discovered I couldn’t start up from the OS 9 install CD I have.
Finally I did use the install CD that came with the iMac, and that was OS 9.04!
The problem is solved. Now I only have to wait for Panther to be delivered, to be completely happy :D
 
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