macOS not allowing to change the sequence of partitions from command line!

Question

This is the Disk List for my iMac.

I am trying to merge the partitions macOS and macOS 2 using diskutil mergePartitions now the problem is on running this command macOS will keep data on the first partition which is macOS and will erase everything in between the first and last partition (Last partition included), now the last partition is macOS 2.

I want to preserve the last partition which is macOS 2 and delete every other partition so I thought why not include the last partition as the first partition (Which I want to preserve the data on) and include the first partition in the last parameter - which will be deleted.

Here's where the issue occurs macOS doesn't allows me to change the sequence of the partition

So I am stuck with merging partitions from command line

I don't want to use disk utility to merge partitions cause last time when I used it to merge partitions some free spaces were created and were not going away until and unless an entire disk format was performed!

One more thing macOS is the first volume on the disk so removing it from dusk utility using the partition option will not happen

Answer 1

You can't expand disk0s4 to lower blocks numbers with on-board tools! To "expand" disk0s4 you would have to remove disk0s2 , add a new partition with the same size and type as disk0s4 directly following disk0s1 all with gpt, dd disk0s4 to disk0s2, delete disk0s3 and disk0s4 with gpt and finally expand disk0s2 with diskutil into the unallocated space between disk0s2 and disk0s5.

Instead of the last two steps you can also use the diskutil mergePartitions ... command.

All that booted either in Internet Recovery Mode or an external drive with macOS installed.

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• Boot to Internet Recovery Mode or an external boot drive (if you aren't superuser you have to prepend sudo to gpt ... and dd ... commands.

• Get an overview and check disk and volumes (repair if necessary) :

  diskutil verifyDisk disk0
  diskutil verifyVolume disk0s2
  diskutil verifyVolume disk0s4
  diskutil list
  gpt -r show disk0
  

• Remove disk0s2:

  diskutil umountDisk disk0
  gpt remove -i 2 disk0
  

• add a partition with the same size as disk0s3

  diskutil umountDisk disk0
  gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 485642672 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0
  

• copy disk0s4 to disk0s2:

  diskutil umountDisk disk0
  dd if=/dev/disk0s4 of=/dev/disk0s2 bs=4m
  

• merge disk0s2-disk0s4 and rename macOS 2 to macOS:

  diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ "macOS" disk0s2 disk0s4 
  

Answer 2

Since the volumes are about the same size, you can use the Disk Utility application to "Restore" the macOS volume from the macOS 2 volume. You basically will then have duplicated macOS 2. You then can delete disk0s4 and expand disk0s2 to recover the free space.

All these operations can be performed using the Disk Utility application.

If you are wish to use the command line, then here is the command to clone the volume labeled "macOS 2".

sudo asr restore --source "/Volumes/macOS 2" --target /Volumes/macOS --erase

Note: The above command also clones /dev/disk0s5 to /dev/disk0s3.

The command to delete /dev/disk0s4 and expand /dev/disk0s2 is given below.

diskutil mergePartitions FREE "" disk0s2 disk0s4  

Note: The above command also deletes /dev/disk0s5 and relocates /dev/disk0s3 to be below the expanded /dev/disk0s2.

The clone/restore operation could be done while booted from /dev/disk0s5. The merge operation could be done while booted to /dev/disk0s2.