How long does it take to partition?

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Level 2

308 points

How long does it take to partition?

A quick question: I'm partioning a 250 Gb USB hard disk. I go from 2 partitions to 4. Disk utility has now been at it for 30 min. Has something gone wrong? How long should I expect it to take?

MacBook Air 1.6/HDD, Mac OS X (10.5.6), MacBook (10.4.11) iPhone 2G Dell Windows Vista

Posted on Feb 20, 2009 3:13 PM

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Answer 1

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

Feb 20, 2009 3:24 PM in response to ahostmadsen

Partitioning is usually an almost instantaneous process. Formatting may take a bit longer, but I have never had any of these processes take more than a few minutes.

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Answer 2

ahostmadsen Author

Level 2

308 points

Feb 20, 2009 3:34 PM in response to nerowolfe

You were right. Finally it came back and said partition failed due to errors on the disk. It took about an hour. Now I started a repair disk operation.

Message was edited by: ahostmadsen

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Answer 3

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

Feb 20, 2009 4:08 PM in response to ahostmadsen

Yes, it's good to run disk utility and repair both HD and permissions before attempting any major operations on a HD.
I hope everything turns out OK.

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Answer 4

ahostmadsen Author

Level 2

308 points

Feb 20, 2009 8:31 PM in response to nerowolfe

I repaired the disk, and then it was able to do the partitioning. But it did take about an hour.

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