Can I have a space with only 1 partition?

I'm having problems with a space that has 4 partitions. When data loads from the database into the 4 partitions, they lock the database at the same time, and the load fails. So I decided to reduce the number of partitions from 4 to 1, by changing this:
**-max-instances-per-vm 1 -cluster schema=partitioned-sync2backup total_members=4,1**
to this:
**-max-instances-per-vm 1 -cluster schema=partitioned-sync2backup total_members=1,1**
in my deploy script.

But now when I run my application, I get this error, because the application still thinks there are 4 partitions:
**com.gigaspaces.internal.remoting.routing.clustered.SpaceProxyLoadBalancingStrategy findActiveMember
SEVERE: Failed to find an active server for partition #2 to execute ExecuteTaskSpaceOperationRequesttask=org.openspaces.core.executor.internal.InternalSpaceTaskWrapper@3947cbb6**

Other than in the deploy script, where might the number of partitions be specified?