Deleting partitions on WD external hard drive

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Deleting partitions on WD external hard drive

I bought a western digital external hard drive to backup my macbook air and I made 3 partitions

1 partition is for time machine, the other is just assorted mac and the 3rd is set for my windows pc

I want to keep the time machine partition and would like to just delete the other 2 partitions so my time machine will have more room.

I used disk utility and tried to erase them, I guess it erased them but didn't remove them.

Is there a way to remove them and free up the space for my time machine.

thanks for the help

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on May 5, 2014 9:48 AM

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Answer 1

smelly_ Author

Level 1

1 points

May 5, 2014 2:45 PM in response to smelly_

anyone know?

Maybe it's not so difficult but I don't want to erase my whole external hd

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Answer 2

Klaus1

Level 9

52,905 points

May 5, 2014 3:19 PM in response to smelly_

To resize (or delete) an existing partition without losing data, you will need to use, for example, iPartition:

http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php

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Answer 3

smelly_ Author

Level 1

1 points

May 5, 2014 3:23 PM in response to Klaus1

Thanks Klaus

Hey can I just open my external hd and copy the backups folder onto my mac... then reformat the external hd and move it back?

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Answer 4

Klaus1

Level 9

52,905 points

May 5, 2014 3:29 PM in response to smelly_

Yes of course, that's the easy way - but make sure you have sufficient free hard drive space!

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Answer 5

smelly_ Author

Level 1

1 points

May 6, 2014 1:32 PM in response to Klaus1

if i'm saving my time machine backup folder to an external hard drive.... will it work ok if the hard drive is formatted for windows and has files and folders already saved on it?

thanks

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Answer 6

Klaus1

Level 9

52,905 points

May 6, 2014 2:17 PM in response to smelly_

Nope.

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Answer 7

Jul 22, 2015 8:26 AM in response to Klaus1

I have a similar problem. I had two partitions on a western digital external drive with two different backups. They both ran out of space. So I erased one of them. But the partition remained, so the other one still will not run. I then tried to erase the entire drive and just start the backup from scratch. But I get a message that the drive cannot be unmounted. How do I erase this drive completely--partitions and data--and just start over? Surely that is possible.

This is an iMac running Yosemite 10.10.4.

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Answer 8

gchanner

Level 1

4 points

May 7, 2017 4:19 PM in response to smelly_

I just followed this guide to resolve the exact same issue:

https://www.lifewire.com/disk-utility-add-delete-resize-existing-volumes-2260078

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