Hi Paul, I've never tried changing the partition boundaries of my main hard drive, so hopefully someone else can tell you about restrictions, but you can do this with a software tool called iPartition from Coriolis Systems, who are the same people who make iDefrag, which I've used, and which has also been used by others on this list. Here's an old post (October 2008) pulled up from a Mail Archive search of a different list written by Jacob Schmude on resizing partitions: <begin quote> Sorry I accidentally deleted the message this is in response to, but actually there is an accessible program to resize partitions on OS X. It's called iPartition. It's not free, cost is $50, but well worth it if you do a lot of work with hard drives IMHO. It's one of those programs that some features don't look accessible at first glance but there's a lot of hidden keyboard support in there. You can grab the demo and have a look at how it works, you can't commit your changes with the demo but it'll give you an idea of what to expect out of the interface. Have a look here: http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php In particular, the resize feature can be done from the keyboard but this isn't explicitly stated. Highlight the partition in the partitions table and it will appear in the pie chart (yes, the pie chart is accessible, and it will give you the current partition and size). Use the left and right arrows to resize, note that arrowing to the right makes it smaller not to the left in some cases, it depends on where the partition is located on the disk and how the data is layid out on the partition. At any rate, you'll be able to see the new size as you go. Resizing of HFS+, NTFS, and FAT is supported. The usual warnings apply, have a backup of the disk in question!!! Partition resizing isn't a fault tolerant operation and even if you don't make any mistakes the unexpected can happen--the power could go out, etc. <end quote>
I think Gordon may have experience using iPartition, too, but it's not something that I recall being actively discussed on this list, the way that iDefrag was. Incidentally, the Mail Archive has wonderful search features, including wild cards, search by subject, poster, date range, and more -- all with a simple syntax, so this should really make searching our own list archives very flexible. Cheers, Esther On Jul 13, 2011, at 23:00, Paul Hopewell wrote: > Hello, > I have two partitions on my iMac built-in hard disk. Each partition is a > different level of MAC OS. I have Time Machine and SuperDuper! backups of > each of these partitions on an external disk drive. > > I need to change the partition boundary on my iMac hard disk so that one > partition gets more disk space at the expense of the other partition. At > present one partition has over 100 GB of free space while the other partition > has only 15 GB of free space. > > SO I opened the disk utility, selected my iMac disk drive and selected the > partition tab. In the scroll area I could see my two partitions but disk > utility would not let me change either of them. So I thought that might be > reasonable as I had booted off one of the above partitions which might thus > be "locked". So I then booted one of m my SuperDuper! backups on my external > disk drive and again tried the disk utility. Again his refused to let me > change either of the partitions on my iMac internal disk drive even though I > had booted from an external disk drive. > > SO how can I change the way my iMac internal disk drive is partitioned? If > there is no other way I suppose I could erase both partitions; create two new > partitions of the desired size and then use my SuperDuper! backups to > populate these two partitions. However that seems a high risk procedure not > to be lightly undertaken. > > And here is a SuperDuper! question. Can I use SuperDuper! to restore a > SuperDuper! backup to a partition whose size is different than the partition > size when I did the SuperDuper! backup? > > Many thanks for any help. > > Paul Hopewell <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find a monthly formatted archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at the following URL: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <https://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
