macbook reinstall to one partition

Part of screenshot when viewing the disk with “disk utilities”

This weekend I deleted all partitions from my macbook (formatted the HD), created one partition for OS X, and installed. Before partitions also existed for Ubuntu and Win XP but no more, just one partition now. I use Parallels to operate the additional operating systems. Everything has gone smoothly so far as I backed up then copied over my old users home directory (/Users/phil) so all appears fine. This is one nice feature of OS X, most everything is kept within the users directory. Granted I now have settings/preferences for programs that no longer exist on my system but they’ll be there for future use (or simply continue take up space) so we’ll see, not a major problem. Copying the itunes directory was simple, I like how itunes uses XML for its database and keeps everything in one directory.

So what does this all mean? Aside from taking time it means setting up my environment once again, especially for developing livedocs. To install openjade I had to revert back to this opendarwin/openjade bug report, I just now submitted a patch to speed up the process of closing this minor bug. I like darwin ports so use it for setting up most tools, such as xsltproc. Haven’t used fink due to it not being “intel mac” friendly, yet. [Update: Fink now supports intel]. But I digress.

2 thoughts on “macbook reinstall to one partition”

  1. I’m new to Macs. I have a new Intel Core2 Duo MacBook with Tiger. I had Boot Camp with Windows XP running well. I purchased Parallels and was able to access my Boot Camp Windows XP installation with Parallels. My Mac froze up last night and now all I get is the OS X kernel panic attack black box on boot. I can access the Windows partition with Boot Camp. When I hold the Option key down and try to access the OS X installation disk as option 3 the apple appears for a second and then it gets lost with a blue screen. Any ideas how I can reinstall OS X, archiving my old data with a clean install? Worst case, I notice that you repartitioned your hard drive and started over. How do I do that in a Mac. (With Windoze I used Partition Magic.) Thanks, Cole

  2. Sorry to hear that… (and sorry for forgetting about your comment!) I’m unsure how to archive the old data since you cannot even get to it. Long ago I used a program called “explore2fs” to explore my linux partitions from Windows, perhaps that will work or something like it.

    To repartition I used the disk utility. Actually I don’t remember but I think that was it. I don’t believe it allows partition resizing but I was deleting everything anyways. Next time I do something like this I’ll be sure to document it as my mind is getting more and more forgetful as time passes…

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