Change a drive from case-sensitive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

When creating a new drive for my iTunes Library, I mistakenly formatted it as case-sensitive.


I used Carbon Copy Cloner to back up the library. That CCC drive is not case-sensitive, which is causing issues.


Can I convert the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) without erasing the drive?


Advice for a cure is appreciated.


Thanks!




Mac mini, macOS 12.3

Posted on May 18, 2022 4:01 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 19, 2022 9:05 AM

I'm assuming this is an external drive that you use for backup purposes.


The fact that you formatted it as MacOS Extended Journaled Case Sensitive itself should not be a problem. You should be able to make any copy (even with CCC) to a case-sensitive drive.


The problem you have encountered may be from name conflicts - some file(s) or folder(s) with names that differ only by the case of one or more letters in the name. (e.g. "File1" vs. "file1"). In that case you could either get an error or one of the files or folders simply won't be copied ... neither of which is desirable. In the case of iTunes this could happen if you change the name of a song, playlist, album title, etc. by changing a capital to lower case or vice-versa - this could result in a name conflict.


I'd suggest the best way out would be to back up any necessary data to another drive; then reformat this drive to Mac OS Extended Journaled (NOT case sensitive).



5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 19, 2022 9:05 AM in response to David Ris

I'm assuming this is an external drive that you use for backup purposes.


The fact that you formatted it as MacOS Extended Journaled Case Sensitive itself should not be a problem. You should be able to make any copy (even with CCC) to a case-sensitive drive.


The problem you have encountered may be from name conflicts - some file(s) or folder(s) with names that differ only by the case of one or more letters in the name. (e.g. "File1" vs. "file1"). In that case you could either get an error or one of the files or folders simply won't be copied ... neither of which is desirable. In the case of iTunes this could happen if you change the name of a song, playlist, album title, etc. by changing a capital to lower case or vice-versa - this could result in a name conflict.


I'd suggest the best way out would be to back up any necessary data to another drive; then reformat this drive to Mac OS Extended Journaled (NOT case sensitive).



May 18, 2022 4:45 PM in response to David Ris

David Ris wrote:

When creating a new drive for my iTunes Library, I mistakenly formatted it as case-sensitive.

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to back up the library. That CCC drive is not case-sensitive, which is causing issues.

Can I convert the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) without erasing the drive?

Advice for a cure is appreciated.

Thanks!





I do not see how that is possible...


Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/erase-and-reformat-a-storage-device-dskutl14079/21.0/mac/12.0

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Change a drive from case-sensitive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

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