how to reformat a partition without damaging other partitions

C

cacois

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Hi all. I'm working on a brand new macBook pro, and trying to learn the ropes. I have the drive partitioned into 3 partitions, but somehow one ended up being FAT16, and i need it to be HFS+. The other two partitions are fine. I need to format the FAT16 partition into HFS+ without damaging the other two, but diskutil doesn't seem to want to let me. I've tried the gui (no options available to do it) and i've tried things like "diskutil eraseVolume" from the command line, with no success. Any ideas?
 
really? i've never had any issue. you selected the partition in disk untility, then clicked on the erase tab, and told it what kind of format, then click erase? what did it do then?
 
You can't erase a partition, at least, not without some software..
The "erase" function erases and reformats the entire drive. You can't do this because your system is installed on it. CCC can help you backup your system partition, then reformat your main drive, and restore.
 
I've never had any issues erasing a single partition with Disk Utility. I used to do it all the time, because my video/graphics partition required defragmenting frequently. Open Disk Utility, select the volume (NOT the disk), and click Erase. It's worked for me for years.

That said, I've never dealt with FAT32. It's possible there are complications with that (I wouldn't think, but then I wouldn't know, either).
 
I can't reproduce your problem, but, then again, this isn't a boot drive.




Couple things: Make sure that you've selected the partition you want to erase, and go to the erase tab. Are you getting the same screen I am, except with a faded button?
 
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