"Untitled" partition can't be deleted- help!

[sethypoo]

I recently bought a 15" MacBook Pro on eBay. It's essentially brand new, and works fine (besides having the whine and the heat issues). However, I noticed when I first started it up that there were two drives mounted on my desktop (see pictures below). I tried going into Disk Utility to erase it (it appears to be a Boot Camp partition that was never removed when the previous owner restored the computer), but it would not let me erase it. I was able to unmount, it, but the next time I restarted the computer, it was there again on my desktop.

I don't have ownership permission of the partion: is there any way to delete it? Thank you!

 

[yellow]

It is indeed a partition from BootCamp.

Under normal circumstances, you cannot "delete" a partition. A partition is a logical separation to your phsyical hard drive.

If you want to gert rid of it, you need to completely erase your HD (creating 1 partition) and reinstall, or use a 3rd party app like iPartition (there are others) to re-add that partitioned space back to your boot partition.

#1 is the safe option.

Since you bought this on eBay anyway, who KNOWS what is on there? Erase and reinstall

EDIT: Apparently BootCamp allows the deleteion of a partition. Who knew? They thought of everything!

 

[Vader]

edit: beat

I believe reformatting/erasing the drive is the only way to delete partitions, I might be wrong though.

 

[Peace]

Go to Applications>Utilities>BootCamp
Use bootcamp to delete the partition

 

[sethypoo]

Go to Applications>Utilities>BootCamp
Use bootcamp to delete the partition

There is no Boot Camp in the Utilities folder on the computer. Any other ideas? Should I just download it again?

 

[Peace]

There is no Boot Camp in the Utilities folder on the computer. Any other ideas? Should I just download it again?

Ok since bootcamp isn't there I'd do what the other fine folks said..
Do a clean install.

 

[yellow]

Or download Boot camp and install it.

But as I said.. you got this off eBay. From someone you don't know. You have no idea what is on there. For safety's sake.. wipe it and start over.

 

[sethypoo]

Or download Boot camp and install it.

But as I said.. you got this off eBay. From someone you don't know. You have no idea what is on there. For safety's sake.. wipe it and start over.

The computer was wiped before I received it, but of course the partition was not. When the computer was wiped, Boot Camp was erased, but not the partition.

I just downloaded and installed Boot Camp, and removed the Windows XP partition. I earned myself an extra 11GB of space in the process!

I don't think there is any malicious software left on the computer, and I don't think there ever was. Mac OS X was restored back to version 10.4.5, and Windows XP was left. So, I think when I removed the partition, and thus Windows XP, I finished wiping the computer.

Thank you for all your help! I love how quickly I can solve computer issues here on Macrumors. You guys (and gals) rock!

 

[yellow]

I don't think there is any malicious software left on the computer, and I don't think there ever was.

My point is that you never know..

Glad you got rid of it!