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How do I partition my external hard drive without losing the data already on it? I've been using it with Time Machine on my old computer, but want to use it as a regular drag-and-drop type back up on my new computer. Is there any way to basically split the hard drive so I can still access the Time Machine backups on my old computer, but also be able to use it with my new mac? Thanks!
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
If you reformat the drive all data is lost.
The only way to save the data is to copy it somewhere else during the reformat.
Drag & drop will not backup things correctly.
I suggest you set up partition for each Mac and then point Time Machine to each of the partition for each of the Macs.
Go to your applications folder, click Disk Utility, find your external hard drive on the left, click partition, click the + near the bottom. Make sure the new partition is MS-DOS (FAT) which is the proper format for drag-and-drop. This should not erase your data currently stored on the disk.
How do I partition my external hard drive without losing data?
