London Eric

Q: Reformatting hard drive without deleting files

Hi, I have a hard drive in one of the bays on my early 2008 Mac Pro that is formatted to ‘Mac OS Extended’ this hard disk contains my itunes library. I want to reformat the drive to ‘Mac OS Extended - Journaled’ Can I do this without losing all the existing files? Or should I make a copy, erase the drive then copy the files back onto the new journaled  drive?

Posted on Sep 20, 2013 4:28 AM

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Q: Reformatting hard drive without deleting files

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  • by The hatter,Solvedanswer

    The hatter The hatter Sep 20, 2013 4:40 AM in response to London Eric
    Level 9 (60,935 points)
    Sep 20, 2013 4:40 AM in response to London Eric

    You aren't reformatting. But I would always always no matter what clone my system and have two or three backup sets and different types for redundancy. Bootable backup clones are easy to maintain and handy, say 10.;8.5 didn't go right, or you want to hold off on iTunes 11.1 or even test it on another system drive first. Clone has many good uses. 

     

    To turn journaling on and off using Disk Utility:

    1. Open Disk Utility (located in Applications/Utilities).
    2. Select the volume to enable or disable journaling on.
    3. To enable, click the Enable Journaling button or choose Enable Journaling from the File menu.

      To disable journaling, choose Disable Journaling from the File menu.

    Note: In Mac OS X 10.4 and later, press Option to make Disable Journaling visible in the File menu.

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2355

    http://www.bing.com/search?q=Disk+Utility+Journaling+HFS