How can I resize my Lion partition?

Question

Level 1

46 points

How can I resize my Lion partition?

Good morning everyone,

I have a MacBook Pro 15" Late 2008 with a 750 gb hard drive (upgraded). There were two partitions: one with Lion and all apps, and the other with videos and GIS files from my work. As files in the second partition were increasing exponentially, I decided to copy these files to the main partition, remove the second one and resize the remaining partition.

Removing the second partition was ok. The problem is that Disk Utility will not resize the main partition. There are 250 gb of unused space. Disk Utility says that it was not possible to modify the partition map, because the file system verification failed. Just in case, I repaired all permissions in the remaining partition and checked also the HDD as a whole. There are apparently no problems.

Could you please help me? Thank you very much.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Jan 15, 2012 2:51 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 15, 2012 3:42 AM in response to morceg@o

You might try repairing the harddrive by restarting your computer while holding down the R key to boot into the Lion Recovery partition. From in there select Disk Utilities and run Repair Disk from in there. This might help solve the file system verification failure. I would also then run Repair Permisiions from in there.

Hope this helps 🙂

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Answer 2

morceg@o Author

Level 1

46 points

Jan 15, 2012 6:35 AM in response to Radiation Mac

Thank you! I tried this, but it didn't work. The disk and the permissions seem to be ok, but the start-up partition cannot be resized by Disk Utility. What might be the problem?

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Answer 3

keg55

Level 6

11,743 points

Jan 15, 2012 6:46 AM in response to morceg@o

Can you provide an image of Disk Utilites like below? You should see the bottom right corner of the partition available to resize.

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Answer 4

morceg@o Author

Level 1

46 points

Jan 15, 2012 7:10 AM in response to keg55

Thanks for the reply. Here is the image:

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Answer 5

keg55

Level 6

11,743 points

Jan 15, 2012 7:18 AM in response to morceg@o

Ok, so when you drag the bottom right corner down and click Apply, the verification fails and it won't resize?

I have another suggestion then. Create a USB thumb drive Recovery HD using the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant. Download this and install it. Then, insert a thumb drive and create your bootable Recovery HD. Last, boot from the USB thumb drive and from inside the Recovery HD on that, try the resize.

I know from my experience, I had issues inside Lion and it's Recovery HD when trying to create/resize partitions. When I used my thumb drive, it worked. Hopefully the same will happen for you.

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Answer 6

Tony T1

Level 6

10,232 points

Jan 15, 2012 7:33 AM in response to morceg@o

morceg@o wrote:

Thank you! I tried this, but it didn't work. The disk and the permissions seem to be ok, but the start-up partition cannot be resized by Disk Utility. What might be the problem?

When you booted into Recovery HD (Hold ⌘R on Boot), and select Disk Utility, did you:

Highlight the disk (750.16 GB ...) and click [repair]

and

Highlight the Volume (Macintosh HD) and click [repair]

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Answer 7

morceg@o Author

Level 1

46 points

Jan 15, 2012 7:33 AM in response to keg55

Thank you so much! It worked. Fortunately, I had a USB thumb drive here with Lion, but forgot about it (I had tried external boot before, but from my Snow Leopard DVD). I booted form the USB thumb drive, repaired the disk again, and resized it without any problem.

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Answer 8

keg55

Level 6

11,743 points

Jan 15, 2012 7:38 AM in response to morceg@o

Make sure your Lion Recovery HD is still present by opening Terminal and typing diskutil list. You should still see the Apple_Boot Recovery HD (650mb size) after the Macintosh HD.

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Answer 9

morceg@o Author

Level 1

46 points

Jan 15, 2012 1:05 PM in response to keg55

It's there, checked. Thank you guys for the help!

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