External Disk Partitions Messed Up

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Level 1

86 points

External Disk Partitions Messed Up

Hi,

I have a 2TB WD passport for Mac. I made a 1.2TB partition on it, splitting it so that there was my 800GB partition with 750GB of used storage. My 1.2TB partion was what I used to backup my computer to time machine through the network (but you can guess how that ended up). So now I don't need that huge separate partition for my backups, and therefore I deleted it. But instead of adding 1.2TB of free space to my first volume, it added 1.2TB of "used" space to my first volume, and "kept" my first volume at its original 800GB size.

So now I have a 2TB drive that is acting as an 800GB one, and I have 750GB of valuable data with nowhere to transfer it to in order to erase the drive and start fresh!

Any tips or advice?

thanks so much!!!

MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS High Sierra (10.13.2)

Posted on Mar 12, 2018 11:21 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 12, 2018 11:35 AM in response to HarrisonMG

Easy enough to get a second external drive https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-storage

You want redundant and diversified backup strategy.

How to create a boot clone

you can google "3-2-1 Backup Strategy" for more info

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Answer 2

Mar 12, 2018 11:34 AM in response to HarrisonMG

But instead of adding 1.2TB of free space to my first volume, it added 1.2TB of "used" space to my first volume, and "kept" my first volume at its original 800GB size.

That is NOT messed up, it is working exactly as designed.

If you would now like to EXPAND your existing 800GB partition, rather than creating different partitions in the newly-freed space, Disk Utility would be happy to help you do that under its Partition tab.

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Answer 3

HarrisonMG Author

Level 1

86 points

Mar 12, 2018 2:42 PM in response to leroydouglas

While I'm not in the market for a new drive, having just made several huge purchases, I do like the idea of boot clone and will definitely give it a go once I get the opportunity.

I will also elaborate on what happened: I used my 2TB WD with its 1.2TB second partition as a TM backup through my router and network. Therefore, it used sparse-imaging to create a single DMG file, which gets (got) corrupted super easily when something like a power outage (which has happened at least three times in the past couple weeks) occurs while data is being transferred.

Thanks for the replies!

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Answer 4

Mar 13, 2018 6:33 AM in response to HarrisonMG

The item showing as "WD My passport..." is the entire drive, It shows a full capacity of 2GB as the manufacturer intended. That is working fine. You will note its type is Disk, with GUID partition Map. It is NOT a Volume, and you can not store ANYTHING on it until you either create more Volumes or expand your current Volume using the Partition function.

Read this article that shows High Sierra illustrations:

How to Resize a Mac Volume With Disk Utility

.

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Answer 5

HarrisonMG Author

Level 1

86 points

Mar 13, 2018 7:30 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks for the reply, but I think I might still not be coming in clear. I do very well know how to resize partitions and volumes and whatnot, but if you look closely between the two images, you will see that the volume, Household Backups shows 2TB of storage in the first image, and 800GB in the second image. When I go to try and partition the drive, it shows me that Household Backups takes up 2TB on the 2TB drive, with ~30GB free space, and 1.9TB used.

So something is wrong here--it thinks the volume is both 800GB and 2TB at the same time, so I can't backup my computer to it anymore because it acts like an 800GB drive.

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