time machine drive partition

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Level 1

5 points

time machine drive partition

I have a current external drive that is no longer accepting TM backups, although i understand the existing data isn't corrupted. Just not able to write further data

Game plan is to partition an other external 2TB drive that has 600Gb of movies on it. To give say 600GB for my TM backup. It's already in the correct MAC format. However when i use Disk utility the partition option is greyed out. How can I partition without having to reformat and lose my my existing data on the new drive?

Help appreciated

Symon

Mac Pro

Posted on Jan 24, 2019 7:58 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

lllaass

Level 10

210,519 points

Jan 24, 2019 8:55 AM in response to Symon

It is not the a format acceptable for TM. I looked at my TN dsisk and it is GUID Partition Map and you have a PC format of Master Boot Record.

You need to either get another disk or move the 600 GB of movies to another disk and format the disk in a TM format, partition and then copy back the movies and use the other partition for TN backup

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Answer 2

Symon Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 25, 2019 8:21 AM in response to Tesserax

Thanks for that. A couple of issues have arisen:

I've partitioned the drive as you outlined. For some reason when i connect it to my Synology NAS it shows me about 8% less storage on each partition. I appreciate that's a bit off topic for this forum?

However, when I remount onto my mac, open Disk UtilityI'm able to add new partition s but unable to resize existing partitions. Apply is greyed out. What might I be doing wrong?

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Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

158,604 points

Jan 24, 2019 10:42 AM in response to Symon

To add to Illaass' comments, I provided images from Disk Utility of my external WD MyBook Pro drive. In my case, SG2 is used for TM backups.

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Answer 4

Jan 25, 2019 8:41 AM in response to Symon

Disk Utility does not want you to lose data. It is not prepared to MOVE large amounts of data needed for arbitrary resizing when data are already on the drive.

Therefore, it only allows you to resize the LAST partition and free space on the drive. Disk Utility will only do Arbitrary resizing when the drive is empty.

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In historical terms, drives are really cheap these days. You can never have too many extra drives.

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Answer 5

Tesserax

Level 10

158,604 points

Jan 25, 2019 8:52 AM in response to Symon

FWIW, I use my Synology DS916+ for TM (and a bunch of more things). I have it configured with two volumes, with one dedicated for TM that is configured as Synology Hybrid RAID, btrfs with a single storage pool using two of the device's four drives. I've been using it in the configuration for over two years now and not had a single issue with TM or the NAS itself.

Unfortunately, I don't have a LaCie drive to test what you're seeing as mine, as you know, is a WD My Book Pro ... which I don't have any issues with the partitions (as you saw in my screenshots.) Sorry!

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