Dynamic resize of FAT32 partition with disk utility?

Question

Dynamic resize of FAT32 partition with disk utility?

Hi there.

I have a 1TB external FAT32 drive with 300GB of data on it.
I want to convert it to HFS+, but I know there's no easy way to do that.

What I want to know is can I resize my FAT32 partition to 500MB and keep all the data?
Then I'll move it to the new HFS+ 500MB partition, delete the original partition and resize the HFS+ partition.

Or do I have no hope of that?
Thanks
Greg

MBP 2.2, Mac OS X (10.4.10), I have a few....

Posted on Jun 13, 2008 5:44 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 13, 2008 6:07 PM in response to Greg Alexander1

Greg,

You're probably out of luck on this one. If the drive was partitioned and formatted by a PC (every drive has a partition map, whether there are multiple partitions or only one), it almost certainly has an "MBR" partition map. This would preclude a dynamic resizing by Disk Utility. It will need to be partitioned using either GUID (Intel) or APM (PPC).

Scott

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Answer 2

Kuro Rai

Level 1

145 points

Jun 13, 2008 7:20 PM in response to Scott Radloff

Just a little side note: The reason for that is because microsucks just doesn't realize how backwards they are being hanging onto old features. OS X was a completely new code from OS 9. I have yet to see any popular Linux hang on to old formats that do not dynamically reparation as well.

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Answer 3

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Jun 13, 2008 7:39 PM in response to Kuro Rai

You're somewhat delusional if you truly believe there's no legacy code kicking around in OS X. HFS+ in particular hails from the System 7 days and was finally rolled out for public consumption in OS 8.

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Answer 4

Jun 13, 2008 7:46 PM in response to Scott Radloff

Thanks for that.
I'm buying a new external shortly (the one I'm talking about is actually my parents).

I'll reformat the new one, copy the data across, and reformat their current drive.

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Answer 5

Kuro Rai

Level 1

145 points

Jun 13, 2008 7:51 PM in response to orangekay

I know that Apple didn't rebuild the ENTIRE OS. That would take forever.

But compared to going from 2000 to XP and from OS 9 to OS X, there is a LOT more in change on the OS X side. the two OS's were also made with many different ideologies for doing things.

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Answer 6

Kuro Rai

Level 1

145 points

Jun 13, 2008 7:52 PM in response to Greg Alexander1

You were able to get it working with Disk Utility?

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Answer 7

Jun 14, 2008 6:14 AM in response to Kuro Rai

Not sure what you're asking...
I've taken your advice NOT to do anything to the disk 🙂

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