How to un-partition an external disk?

[Sebastian Tombs]

I got a firewire hard drive a few years back - a Lacie unit that is
about 500 GB in size.

My Time Machine wants to use this as a backup disk, and I think that is
just peachy. But I partitioned it into 4 discs, and now Time Machine
seems to be running out of capacity. I'd like to do the Mac equivalent
to the "Format C" that Windoze is so good at, but I am not clear on how
to put the 4 folders together and then reformat them.

All that is on this thing is backed up stuff so it is OK if it is all
deleted, but can I get a tip on where to go to start, please?

Thanks,

D.

[nospam]

In article <Simon52-DD8F1E...@news.newsgroupdirect.com>,
Sebastian Tombs <Sim...@canada.com> wrote:

launch disk utility (in utilities folder) and erase the drive, setting
it to 1 partition. you will lose everything that's currently on it, so
be very sure you have a copy of anything important somewhere else.

[Sebastian Tombs]

In article <181220092224201625%nos...@nospam.invalid>,
nospam <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:

Thank you. Works a treat.

Merry Christmas, nospam.

D.

[Patrick Wolfe]

To repartition your disk in Mac OS X:

1) Open a finder window

2) click on Applications, Utilities, then start the Disk Utility

3) Locate and Select the external disk you wish to repartition in the
menu on the left side. Be sure to click on the disk itself, not any of
the existing partition names that appear below it.

4) click on the "partition" tab at the top

5) from the pulldown menu, select "1 partition"

6) enter the volume name you wish to use in the box provided

7) optionally, click the "options" button to change the partition table
type from PC MBR style to Mac GUID style. This step is not neccessary
to get time machine to work, but I do recommend it UNLESS you are
planning on having more than one partition, and one of those partitions
needs to work on a non-mac system.

8) click on the "apply" button