HELP**"The Startup Disk Cannot be Partitioned or Restored to a Single Partition"

mrstimpson · #1 April 5th, 2008, 06:40 PM

Hello, I'm thankful for any help or advice that you can give!

I basically have just finished a clean install of OSX leopard and have just got it how I like it.

I had to install windows to use a program that was required for a job but now Im trying to get rid of the windows partition but am getting this error.

"The Startup Disk Cannot be Partitioned or Restored to a Single Partition"

Im using a 20" iMac - the partition is 50GB formatted to NTFS, how can I get it back to a single partition without having to reinstall osx again, any suggestions?

Thanks Sam

Satcomer · #2 April 5th, 2008, 06:58 PM

NTFS is a Microsoft proprietary disk format. Mac OS X can only READ NTFS (thanks to Microsoft not licensing NTFS to anyone). So you have to reformat the partition to Mac OS Extended then combine the two partitions.

mrstimpson · #3 April 5th, 2008, 07:05 PM

Thanks for the quick reply I will try this tomorrow and report back.
I do this using disk utility off the osx install disk right?

DeltaMac · #4 April 5th, 2008, 07:17 PM

Ah, no, use the Boot Camp utility, that same utility that you used to create that Windows partition in the first place. Run Boot Camp utility, and it will give you the choice to go back to one partition now.

flowerinmyear · #5 April 17th, 2008, 11:38 PM

What if you can't run the boot camp utility? should you not use the disk utility?

**Giaguara** · #6 April 18th, 2008, 04:24 AM

If the partitions were made with Boot Camp, then the partition has to be undone with Boot Camp as well flower.

mrstimpson · #7 April 18th, 2008, 04:46 AM

The problem is boot camp will not undo the partition. how i understand it boot camp creates a fat32 partition on your drive, windows didnt want to install on that so I made it ntfs and windows installs fine....now boot camp cant undo ntfs partitions...lol as soon as this job is over windows will be banished, i never have problems with osx

DeltaMac · #8 April 18th, 2008, 08:06 AM

Boot Camp does not care how you format that Boot Camp partition, and normally has no problem removing that partition - even if formatted as NTFS. Boot Camp does not format the partition - your Windows installer does that. All that Boot Camp does is prepare the drive for installation of Windows. The partition created is not formatted yet. You don't get the choice of fat32 if your partition is larger than 32GB.
The problem comes if you move a lot of large files, or approach filling the remaining hard drive space. I think that would include having less than 50GB of free space on the Mac partition, in your case. Boot Camp may not re-join the two partitions again.
This can sometimes be fixed by going to your Disk Utility, and choosing the Erase tab, then clicking the Erase Free Space button. That will write over the files that are still there (but deleted). Or, you may try a utility that will optimize (defrag) your drive. This is one of the rare times that a de-frag utility is actually useful on your Mac! Hope this will help you...