Will Drive Genius work on my Mid '12 Air's SSD?

Question

Level 2

245 points

Will Drive Genius work on my Mid '12 Air's SSD?

I have a Mid 2012 Air running 10.10, with SSD and two partitions. I think the partitions might have been copied from the predecessor MacBook with a rotating drive.

I wanted to change the partition sizes, so I fired up Drive Genius on an external USB drive with a clone copy (SuperDuper) of the internal SSD.

Any attempt to shift, resize or delete the partitions with Drive Genius error'ed out with one of those mysterious "an error has occurred" message. I tried Drive Genius (prosoft) tech support and got a message back in broken English (grrr) that I think says Drive Genius will not work with the proprietary Apple SSD; wasn't entirely clear what they were saying.

Q#1 - does that seem right?

Q#2 - assuming so, what's my recourse? Use Disk Utility to repartition, which would mean running from my clone, erasing everything on the internal drive, reworking partitions, and moving the clone back to the internal??? Seems like a lot of work...

Q#3 - anyone else having unsatisfactory experiences with prosoft lately? Has the rotating drive market gotten so bad that they are no longer sustaining the products?

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10), AEBS, iPh 5s, Air1,1, Macbook2,1

Posted on Oct 31, 2014 12:05 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Oct 31, 2014 12:10 PM in response to Michael King

The problem is with the drive/SSD itself in how it was partitioned by the prior user. Have you tried using Disk Utility? Are you aware that you cannot make the second partition larger? You can only make the first partition larger by first removing the second partition.

There is nothing wrong with the HDD market, and as far as I can tell Drive Genius works fine.

Reply

Answer 2

Oct 31, 2014 12:14 PM in response to Michael King

To me solution #2 appears the way to go.

Reply

Answer 3

Michael King Author

Level 2

245 points

Oct 31, 2014 2:15 PM in response to Kappy

Below is the latest reply to my trouble ticket with prosoft. I'm having a little trouble decoding the grammar so I'm not sure what is meant by "That is not correct," but the key phrase seems to be "Drive Genius 3 cannot modify the partitions." Fortunately I didn't buy the product to use with this Air. Looks like I have to to this with Disk Utility, which will work, just takes longer. (Or live with the partitions I have now.)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello Michael,

That is not correct.PCI based SSD in macs that use Apple core architecture Drive Genius 3 cannot modify the partitions are. It's not all Apple SSD's.Even in Disk Utility once the partition is created you cannot modify it. If you want to change partition you will have to backup the drive and then partition then Clone the data back.

Best Regards

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abu

Prosoft Engineering Customer Support

Reply

Answer 4

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Oct 31, 2014 3:23 PM in response to Michael King

I think they have it slightly wrong. I can't comment re: PCIe flash drives since I don't have one, but as far as HDDs and normal SSDs are concerned repartitioning with Disk Utility depends on what the desired goal is. It's not as simple as repartitioning the entire drive then restore your files.

It is also possible to repartition in ways that Disk Utility won't do using a third-party utility called iPartition 3.4.5. I've never used it, but it purports to be able to do all sorts of partition changes you cannot do using Disk Utility.

But they are correct about the fact that you should backup first. If something doesn't work you could lose all your files.

Reply