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The simple answer is NO. You cannot make your main partition smaller. If anything you need to make it bigger. Give your second (or third depending how many you are creating) partition LESS space. While you are creating a new partition, you have now made it apparent to the main partition that it is going to need more space to hold temp folders and files should you desire to burn DVD's etc and require the temp storage space. You see, now that you have robbed it of its free space, it has to allow space of its own to function in the every day routines of computing. I have successfully created a partition on a 120GB (111Gb formatted) holding 60Gb of data already. I kept stretching it out until it allowed me to create.
It gave the option to create a 34 Gb extra partition. That would suggest that the partition holding my 60Gb of data required at least an extra 10 to 20Gb if it was to be divided. You may gain some more space by using the "erase empty space" option in Disk Utility before you partition. The clue is to be generous with your Primary partition. It needs space. More than you realize.
To clarify, it was not my "primary" partition that I wanted to make smaller, but a minimum system on external drive from which I could occasionally restart solely to run a couple disk utilities like Disk Warrior, which runs much faster if the computer is booted from a hard drive than it does when booted from a CD. In my situation, on this external drive, I wanted to make Partition 1 (the "utility startup system") smaller (from 30GB down to 10GB), to free up more space for Partition 2 to use as Time Machine destination.
I was in fact able to reduce the size of P-1, but couldn't really do anything with that freed-up 20GB because I couldn't move the "start point" of P-2 to "add it" to the TM destination partition. The really helpful thing that I learned in this thread is that with Disk Utility we can move the end point of a partition but not the start point.
I wholeheartedly agree with you about needing a good amount of free space on the primary drive or partition. I always try to keep at least 25 percent free on my 80GB internal startup drive, and dedicate a little bit of time each week to creating more free space by archiving and deleting files no longer needed.
nerowolfe wrote:
IMPORTANT: While Intel-based Macintosh computers can boot from GPT and APM, Apple only supports booting Mac OS X on these machines from GPT. Apple's GUI tools, like the Installer, will prevent you installing Mac OS X for an Intel-based Mac on non-GPT disks.
That was true for Tiger (because there were no "universal" installs for that OS version), but it is not true for Leopard. See
Mac OS X 10.5: Creating and maintaining a bootable "universal" external disk for the details, but the bottom line is the APM partition scheme supports booting both PPC Macs & Intel Macs from Leopard, assuming of course that the Macs can run Leopard.
I wish I could duplicate your results but so far I cannot. This is on an external Firewire-connected drive, partitioned in APM scheme, with 4 partitions, all HFS+ (Journaled). I have partitions (in order) of about 98 GB, 66 GB, 20 GB, & 5 GB. (The drive is nominally a 200 GB one, about 189 GB formatted.)
What I would like to do is combine the last two partitions so it is 98/66/25. I have no problem deleting the 5 GB partition with the "-" button, but I cannot find a way to 'grow' the 20 GB one into its space. I followed the instructions in the Disk Utility Help topic *Enlarging a volume*, and at step 3 tried both dragging the divider at the bottom of the volume in the Volume Scheme list & selecting the volume, and entering a value in the Size field. In both cases, I get the "Filesystem resize support required, such as HFS with Journaling enabled" error.
In fact, all I can do is click the "+" button, which does add back the unused 5 GB space as a new partition, but even that doesn't work right: as George Orthwein reported, Disk Utility hangs on "Modifying partition map" step indefinitely -- I've let it run for up to 3 hours & it still doesn't finish. When I quit Disk Utility & get the warning about the disk possibly being unusable, what happens is the partition is recognized only by its UNIX name ("disk s1/14" or something like that), & D.U.'s repair fails with the not to helpful message that it failed, but if I go to the "Erase" tab & do a regular (non-zeroing) erase of the partition, it is restored to usability.
Note that neither of these partitions has an OS installed on it (so temp file space is not an issue), & only about 8 GB of the 20 GB partition has any data. I should at least be able to split this partition with the "+" button, & doing so with the 5 GB section after it free does show the expected total space divided equally into two partitions before the "Apply" button is clicked, but no matter what, I get the same failure with the error about needing resize support.
I see what you're trying to do. Just follow these steps.
1. Open Disk Utility.
2. Click on the device you want to partition or resize in the Left panel, and then select the Partition tab on the right. If I understand you correctly you want to bring the final partition of 5Gb back into the 20Gb thus creating one 25Gb partition.
3. Highlight the final partition (5Gb) and hit the - button. You will be prompted to remove the volume. Click "Remove". This will eliminate your 5Gb Partition altogether.
4. If you look closely at the partitions on the bottom right hand corner, you will see the typical Macintosh "Drag thumb print". On your 20Gb Partition simply drag the window to the full extent of the Partition window (Right to the bottom) This will allow your 20Gb to use the remaining 5Gb. Hit apply. Wulla... Youre done. Back to two partitions. Hope this helped.
Sorry I neglected to inform you that before you can drag and resize the partition inside the window, you must first select it. Once selected it should be highlighted with a blue aura. You can then drag and resize it. As you drag the window, you will notice the "size" window following suit. For "your" purpose, drag it right to the bottom.
I have followed the steps you listed many times now. Everything is fine at step 3 -- the 5 GB partition is deleted with no problem or error. Step 4 (including the variations using the size text box, the corner tab you mention, & simply dragging the bottom border of the 20 GB partition downward) does indeed show what I want, but when I click the Apply button & confirm that I want to resize the partition, within a second or so I get the error message "Filesystem resize support required, such as HFS+ with Journaling enabled."
FWIW, I have also tried splitting the 5 GB partition by selecting it & then clicking the "+" button. According to Disk Utility's help topic *Creating new volumes on a disk*:
+Disk Utility splits the volume into two, leaving the data in one of the new volumes. If the volume is less than half-full, Disk Utility creates two volumes of equal size. Otherwise. it creates one volume large enough for the data, and another volume with the remaining space.+
This also results in the 'resize support required' error when I click Apply. Additionally, I cannot choose how to format the volumes that will be erased or created as described in step 4 of that help topic -- the only format choice is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) & if I select it, the name of the second split volume remains "EMPTY NAME" no matter what I put in the name field.
As I said, this drive is an external Firewire one using the APM scheme, & all the partitions are HFS+ with Journaling enabled. It is connected to my G5 iMac & contains (in the second listed partition of about 66 GB) the Leopard OS install I normally boot from. However, just in case this was tan issue, I have also tried resizing the 20 GB partition while booted from the Leopard DVD, using its copy of Disk Utility, so I do not believe that is the problem.
What might be the problem is this drive does have an OS 9 boot partition on it -- others seem to be reporting the same failure message on drives partitioned this way, whether internal or external. It would help a lot to know if you (or others who have successfully resized APM disks) have done so on any drives that have this OS 9 boot partition.
I unchecked the OS 9 Drivers option before formatting my Hard Disk. Leopard doesn't support OS 9 and neither does the GUID format, so unless you want the external to be mounted on an OS 9 machine there is no point. You cannot have only one partition with OS 9 Drivers. You must format the entire disk with those drivers if you are to have OS 9 Capability. Its part of the initial formatting process, not the partition set up (Unless you are partitioning from scratch). I only received the "empy space" issue when I didnt size the primary partition large enough to cope with the split. Try making your primary partition larger before attempting to add more partitions. It wont let you do it if you havent given it enough room to cope with new partitions. Start from scratch again with Your primary partition (unless you have already added data) and give it more space before trying to create extra. I'll check back again later. Gotta go to work.
Thanks for the comments. I do understand that Leopard doesn't support OS 9, but I have several Macs that do, & will continue to use the APM scheme on my external drives because it is capable of booting both PPC & Intel Macs.
Regarding your other comments, I'm not sure what you mean: OS 9 driver partitions are very small partitions clustered at the beginning of the drive, just after the APM partition itself, & one is loaded into memory as part of the OS 9 boot process. They are not scattered over the entire drive; in fact, the reason the disk needs to be reformatted to install them is because there is no room reserved for them at the beginning of the drive otherwise. (Back in the days of System 7, various third party formatting tools allowed one to leave free space in this zone to make it possible to update the drivers with larger ones without reformatting & do other interesting things, but with the introduction of "New World" Macs, they largely faded away into obscurity.)
Also, I'm not talking about an "empty space" issue but an "EMPTY NAME" entry (I'm not shouting; it appears that way) in Disk Utility's restore tab's graphic representation of the partition map. Please reread that part of my post more carefully for more details.
Regarding splitting a partition, I'm not sure how you managed to move the resize line into the used space of any partition -- one feature of the new live resize capability is that it should not let you do that & indeed this is how it works for me. In any event, I don't know what you mean by "primary partition" -- I have two large partitions, one each for Tiger & Leopard, & each is less than 1/2 full. The two smaller partitions have no OS on them & no user files -- they are both empty except for the overhead of the filesystem itself. It is these partitions I want to combine -- the two partitions with content are untouched.
Sorry about the misunderstanding on the OS 9 Drivers. I do understand that the drivers are not scattered all over the drive. A few people think however that they can have one partition "with" OS 9 Drivers and another "without" on the same disk. I was speaking to you thinking you might be one of them. I also totally agree with you on the APM scheme as it is definitely possible to have a triple boot drive for OS 9, Intel & Apple on the one disk if you know what youre doing.
By "primary" partition, I mean the partition being used to create others from. In your case this would be the First partition, the largest one (98Gb) I now realise that your first two partitions 98Gb &66Gb both hold data, approximately 50% and your 20Gb and 5Gb are both without data. Correct...? (Half the battle on these threads is trying to understand each other.) I realize also that you had no problem creating partitions, but you are in need of REsizing.
The only way I was able to emulate the "empty name" (Im sorry, I did mean to say empty name and not empty space in my previous post) problem was when I chose to erase the partition before trying to remove it. I closed DU and then opened it again and went through the same procedure, this time withOUT trying to erase it first. Dont worry about erasing. Lets start from scratch.
Are you able to remove the last partition....? (Click the - button and remove it) If so, once you have removed it, are you able to highlight the 3rd partition..? (Is it highlighted with a blue aura when you click on it..? The next step if you have gotten this far is to look carefully at the bottom right hand corner for the drag point (click and drag thumb print just like on any finder window or safari for stretching or resizing the window) I have these on the highlighted partitions which enables be to drag them to size. What you need to be able to do is drag your third partition to the full extent of the window. (Down obviously) and then apply. This "should" merge your 20Gb and 5Gb into one. I know, I know.... Should...! One more question... Did you partition your hard disk originally with Leopard DU or a third party Partition software...? Just a thought..! All of my partitioning was done within Leopard DU. Maybe you cannot undo what was done with 3rd Party Software.... Hang in there, there must be a solution.
By the way, what happens if you remove both your 5Gb AND 20Gb and drag the 66Gb to the bottom..?
The file system resize error is not one I have seen...
sweetpollypurebred wrote:
APM disks can boot a PPC only. In order to boot an intel it needs to be GUIDE.
not to contradict you but intel macs to boot fine from APM disks with no troubles.
I use it all the time for mac repairs
I have an external hdd partition into 3 1)for PPC Tiger, 2)for PPC intel tiger 3)for extras the drive it self is apm and boots fine on intel or ppc macs, aslo on intels it boots fine from usb as well which was a surprise to me i've heard of it but never tried
EDIT **disregard this others have answered faster than i did
🙂
Thanks for trying to help but I have answered all the questions you are asking twice now in previous replies except for which utility I used to format the drive (Disk Utility from Tiger) & if I have tried deleting both the 20 & 5 GB partitions (no). I am not going to try to do that & resizing the 66 GB (second) partition because that one contains my working Leopard install, also as previously mentioned.
As it stands now, I have to assume the problem is some sort of bug that shows up with an external drive, OS 9 drivers, & possibly other factors yet to be determined.
No worries. I can only think that what was partitioned in tiger through DU possibly cannot be modified in Leopard.
All of my own partitioning was done with Leopard DU. I created two extra partitions on the fly from my already 50% filled 120Gb and removed the final two again leaving one 120Gb with no damage or corruption to my already existent data. If I think of anything else I will post it. Good luck trying to solve your issue. Sorry I couldnt resolve it for you.
rstankey wrote:
One interesting thing that I noticed is that when I go to the partition tab of my external drive in Disk Utility, it seems to think that +the drive is empty+, showing "Available space" to be 231.8 GB for a 232.8 GB partition. That seems a little odd…
That much I have finally figured out. The "Available space" you see in the popup is the +total available space+ on the partition less the overhead of the filesystem itself, not the +free space+ remaining unused by any files already on the partition. If you try to move the tab upwards in a partition with data files on it, you should discover that you can't move it up so far that there is not enough space for those files to fit on the reduced size of the partition. Disk Utility's Help explains this, but rather badly, IMO.
In fact, if you have a really small partition, say 5 GB, you will see a blue band at the top of the partition representing the space the filesystem overhead occupies. (On a large partition, it is too small to see.) By fiddling around with the size box & an "empty" partition, I have discovered that for APM schemes & HSF+ (Journaled) filesystems, the actual overhead is apparently about 680 MB, which the info popup rounds off to the total partition space less a GB for the overhead -- IOW, the "Available space" always shows up as 1 GB less than the partition size. (It may be different for other filesystems or partition schemes.)
