Need help resizing external hard drive partition.

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Need help resizing external hard drive partition.

I have a 1TB western digital mybook studio edition harddrive that i had partitioned as HFS and FAT32, each taking up half the drive. now i have 2 partitions of HFS, one blank and one with a lot of media. i want to resize the partition to give the media more room and use the smaller one as a time machine drive. disk utility isn't giving me the thing in the corner to resize it like on my boot drive. i need a way to resize the partitions without destroying my data.

My media drive is Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive, Journaled)
the blank drive is Mac OS Extended (journaled)

iMac 24in;MBP 15, Mac OS X (10.5.7), 3.06 Core2Duo 4GB DDR2GeForce 8800GS 512MB;2.66 C2D 4GB DDR3 GeForce 9600 512MB

Posted on Aug 4, 2009 8:31 AM

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Answer 1

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Aug 4, 2009 8:52 AM in response to pathumx

what is the partition scheme for the drive? select the whole drive (model, not name) in DU and read it off at the bottom. only GUID and APM partition schemes support on the fly resizing. also, only HFS partitions can be resized. I'm not sure from your post if you are trying to resize a FAT partition.

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Answer 2

pathumx Author

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Aug 4, 2009 9:01 AM in response to V.K.

Partition Map Scheme: Master Boot Record

I deleted the FAT partition. I have 2 HFS partitions. One labeled Resize which is Journaled and Media which is Case Sensitive Journaled

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Answer 3

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Aug 4, 2009 9:26 AM in response to pathumx

MBR partition scheme does not support on the fly resizing. at least not with disk utility. something like idefrag might be able to do it. but in any case you need to reformat the drive if you want to use it from TM backups. it should be partitioned GUID for intel macs and APM for PPC ones for use with TM.

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Answer 4

pathumx Author

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Aug 4, 2009 9:29 AM in response to V.K.

is there anyway to redo the partition scheme without destroying data?

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Answer 5

V.K.

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Aug 4, 2009 9:41 AM in response to pathumx

pathumx wrote:
is there anyway to redo the partition scheme without destroying data?

not with DU. maybe with ipartition, I'm not sure.

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Answer 6

Aug 4, 2009 10:07 AM in response to pathumx

Hi pathumx;

Addition to V.K.'s response, if you will read the documentation for any of the partitioning software, they all distinctly state that you MUST backup your data first.

After reading that I decided to invest in a disk for backup and forego the partitioning software. After I backup my data I reformat the drive the way I need it and restore the data. Used the money for the software to pay for the disk.

Allan

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Answer 7

pathumx Author

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Aug 4, 2009 10:24 AM in response to V.K.

with DU doing a fresh format, how do i format the way i need to?

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Answer 8

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Aug 4, 2009 10:45 AM in response to pathumx

select the whole drive (model, not name) and click on the partition tab. set the number of the partitions you want, click on options and set the partition scheme. set the formats of individual partitions, adjust the sizes and hit "apply".

BTW, I agree with Allan's comment about partitioning in general. any operation manipulating partitions be it using DU or any other software has a pretty high risk of failure so having a backup is very important.

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Answer 9

Justin

Level 1

20 points

Sep 5, 2009 12:34 PM in response to pathumx

DiskUtility doesn't give me the option to resize my HFS+ partition on an APM drive.

http://lopht.net/images/diskutility.tiff

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Answer 10

Sep 10, 2009 12:15 PM in response to Justin

Same issue. I have a GUID formatted drive that it won't let me resize the partition without formatting it. It used to be easy to do under Leopard.

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Answer 11

ntoren

Level 1

4 points

Dec 6, 2009 10:43 PM in response to Mikooster

I'd like to use a two-year-old Western Digital external HD as a TM back up location for a different computer than the one it's been used with in the past. The external is already partitioned into two and I'm happy to keep that set-up and sizing. What's the best way to erase what's on the external and prepare it for the new computer which is running Leopard? Many thanks.

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