Resize RAid-1 partition

My Mac Mini Server has a RAID-1 disket. Now I want to divide each disk into two partitions so I can seperate my data from the system files.
Is there a way to do this without losing data? Disk Utility tells me the disks can't be changed, but I find that a lame answer :-)

The Apple DiskUtility gui tool does not allow having multiple HFS+ partitions in-conjunction with a software RAID setup. However this should be possible using the command line version.
Danger Will Robinson!
I strongly advise having a full backup before you try this, I also advise carefully reading the Unix man page for diskutil. The steps would be -
Convert it from RAID1 to two standalone drives. sudo disktutil appleRAID delete raidVolume
You can then do the next step of shrinking the volume on the drive that is being used as the boot drive to make room for the additional partition you want. Obviously if your existing volume is too full to allow this you will not be able to make enough room for your desired second volume. Do the same on the second currently not being used as the boot drive and make sure the sizes on both drives exactly match. For the second drive you could in theory wipe it and set it up from scratch
Once you have both drives with two volumes as you would like we then need to convert them back to RAID1. This will be done at the volume level not the drive level. I find it best to do it in last listed order, i.e. do the last one first.
So lets list the partitions using diskutil list
The ones you are looking for are going to be type Apple_HFS if you have both drives setup the same then the quantity and sizes should also be the same, and also the 'slice' numbers so this might as an example result in disk0s4 and disk1s4 disk0 is the first drive typically the boot drive, and disk1 will be the second drive, s4 is slice4 i.e. partition number 4. The full names for these (remember we are using Unix) is /dev/disk0s4 and /dev/disk1s4 or whatever your own numbers are.
We then need to convert these back to a RAID1 the command will be sudo diskutil appleRAID create mirror setName JHFS+ /dev/disk0s4 /dev/disk1s4
The above should make them in to a RAID1 set, this adds an extra partition so to do the next pair of volumes you should first do another diskutil list to find the right numbers as they will have changed.
Note: Apple do not support (officially) having more than one volume on a software RAID set. I have done this successfully a number of times on various versions of OS X. It is likely the more volumes on a drive you try to do the less reliably it will become. I have done 3 in the past but try to stick to no more than 2.

Similar Messages

After resizing a disc partition using disk utilities, I can no longer boot windows. HELP! what is the best thing that I can do to fix this

Bare with me as Im no computer genius but ... This afternoon I wanted to create more disc space on my Windows partition as I am using CAD software and wanted to free up as much space as possible. So, I went into disk utility and reduced the size of the Mac partition, then clicked apply.
When I came to reboot the computer to use windows the windows OS, the option to use windows was no longer there.
After looking at some online forums, I've found that most people suggest reformatting the hard drive and re-installing mac OS and also windows from back up data.
Is there no easier way for which I will not lose any data? Please help! I really need to use Windows ASAP!

The only apps I know of that can backup a Windows partition and or resize a windows parttition on a Mac so you don't have to go through the wipeing out, resizing and reinstall is WinClone for backing it up and WinTune (I think that is the name) for resizing a Windows partition on a Mac.
Once you create a Windows partition, install Windows in that partition, you can't fool around with any partition on your drive with either Windows Disk Management or OS X Disk Utility and expect Windows to boot.
The only thing you can try is to run Boot Camp Assistant.app again and remove the Windows partition and then run it again to create a larger partition and then reinstall Windows. Once you remove the windows partition put all the space back into the OS X partition and start fresh.

Is it possible to resize a mac partition from windows?

Here's what's going on. I originally wanted to use Disk Utility to do this, which is clearly the easy way to do things, but my computer is so slow that Disk Utility immediately becomes unresponsive upon wanting to resize -any- partition. The windows side works fine though, it isn't slow as crap. Is there a way to resize the mac partition from windows (HFS+)? Any possible way? Even crazy ones? I'm open to suggestions.
Oh yeah, and in case you want to know...my Mac Mini just randomly started getting really, really slow, so slow in fact, that now my old iMac from 1999 is faster (it doesn't even have ANY RAM!). I tried resetting the PRAM/NVRAM, multiple times, booting into safe mode takes forever, but I left it for awhile and it finished. Almost worked, the finder showed up quicker than usual, but then it reverted back to it's slow self again once I opened Disk Utility. I tried booting into single user mode and typing /sbin/fsck -fy, and it's so slow, that it couldn't even do that! It got stuck at checking libraries or something, for hours, and i could type things in still, but it wouldn't recognize any commands (ie fsk - fy). I also cannot replace the RAM because it is an older mac mini and those things are hard as f*** to repair, trust me, i've tried. The weirdest part of all of this has to be that this is the computer that we DON'T download many apps onto, so it most likely isn't bloatware, adware, a virus or something else. We download most stuff to our MacBook, and go to the sketchy websites on it as well (it really should be the other way around, the mac mini would be around 3x less expensive to replace, it's just that it's the family computer). And that's always slow, but this surpassed it (btw, the laptop is a year or so older). I do not have the installation disk.
Can someone help? Mainly about the first thing...please. The second thing is hopeless, I will need to get a new computer pretty soon, and these macs don't last as long as they used to I guess, we'd most likely get a quality Windows PC to replace it, this has been a disappointment. I'm just trying to get a little more life out of it with Linux, maybe a year or two. That's what i've done with my old iMac. Runs GREAT. Especially for a 13 year old computer. The thing is, my folks don't want me to completely eliminate the mac partition even though it's virtually unusuable.

I'm not really understanding what the end goal was. But in case anyone else comes across the thread, neither the built-in Windows volume resizing utility nor any 3rd party Windows resizing utility should be used to resize either the Windows partition or the Mac OS partition. Invariably they all manipulate the NTFS volume in such a way that the secondary GPT is corrupt, the primary GPT is rendered invalid, and only correctly alter the MBR. It's a recipe for data loss.
Conversely, while Disk Utility can resize a Mac OS volume, it cannot resize an NTFS volume. With Lion and Mountain Lion, upon using Boot Camp Assistant there are already four partitions: EFI System, Mac OS, Recovery HD, and Windows. There is no more room for a fifth partition in the MBR partition scheme, and if you try to add one, Disk Utility will apparently let you and render Windows unbootable (because Disk Utility adds the fifth partition to the GPT, but can't add it to the MBR, and instead removes the hybrid MBR needed for Windows support and replaces it with a PMBR.)
So in effect this is not to be done except with 3rd party utilities.

No RAID or partition but won't install

Hi. I have a 2008 2.53 GHz Intel C2 4G Macbook Pro. I am trying to install mountain lion with no RAID or partitions. However, it won't install because of the recovery feature. I did it on my iMac with no problems. Please help!!! Thank you.

Are you using an internal CD/DVD drive or external USB CD/DVD drive? If it is external try unplugging and plug into another port when you get the error.
If you call HP Support you should be able to order Recovery Media for your laptop.
If you live in the US/CA, contact HP info Here.
If you live in another part of the world, start here>>Contact HP
******Clicking the Thumbs-Up button is a way to say -Thanks!.******
**Click Accept as Solution on a Reply that solves your issue to help others**

Cannot resize Time Machine partition

Hello all,
I currently have a hard drive split into 2 partitions (both Mac OS Extended (Journaled)). One of the Time Machine partitions is far too big (for the backups it contains) and I want to reclaim some space as a regular data partition (for my windows PC). Unfortunately I can find no way to resize the existing partitions. There is no "corner to drag" in my disk utility. 617GB are free in the 697GB partition.

Time Machine likes to be the first partition, otherwise it will continually ask you where?
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/how-to-resize-a-live-pa rtition-in-snow-leopard-and-lion/#.
http://osxdaily.com/2009/11/20/resize-partitions-in-mac-os-x-with-disk-utility/

I was trying to resize my bootcamp partition and it got deleted now I have 217 GB of free space that I cant use and I want to rejoin it with my macbook partiton.

So I was trying to resize my bootcamp partition with Paragon and it was taking forever so I decided to use iPartition the Paragon started doing something and it was almost done when my macbook began to shut down. It was shutting down becuase I though the paragon wouldnt work. Anyway it shut down and I wasnt able to boot to the iPartition CD, so I decided to just screw it and just stick with Mac osx. Then while in the iPartition app once I booted up back into OSX it said I had 217 gigs of free space and my hardrive/mac os partition can only use like 270 gigs. But I desparetely need these 215 gigs back becuase I do things that require alot of memory. Does anybody have any idea how I can rejoin this free space with my mac partition. I already tried it in disk utility and it kept failing with a couldnt unmount disk error everytime I tried to resize back to its full size! PLEASE HELP! Heres a pic of what iPartiton shows me.

You need an external disk that is formated as HFS+ with a GUID partition map.
You can use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to create the clone.
Once ypu have the clone you can boot from my holding down the option key ater power on.
Once booted from the clone open Disk Utility.
Select the internal drive.
Click partition.
Select single partition.
Once drive has bee formated, restore the clone nack with the application used to make the original clone.
Boot from internal drive.
Allan

About: making RAID sets - partition independant?

(the querry made simple: look last 2 lines)
When making a RAID set, whatever the type it is, will it rely on the partitions or on the disk itself?
In the Disk Utility help it keeps mentioning "disk", and when I was about to create a set, it also asked me about "disk".
I have set up 2 partitions for the purpose of testing RAID for me, being about the same size on a big backup drive.
The drive itself also has a bit of free space filled with original files.
So I wanted to mirror, say, RAID test 1 and RAID test 2, both of them being on the same disk.
Will it work?
Or will it wipe my disk?

A RAID may be constructed using individual partitions on separate drives although using the whole drive would be preferred for speed. You could actually RAID multiple partitions on the same drive, but of course what would be the point.
I've actually used two drives each with three separate partitions and created three separate RAIDs of two partitions each. Not particularly efficient but it does work.
There is really no point to creating a RAID of two partitions on the same drive. And, certainly no point creating a mirrored RAID this way.
Any RAID you create with Disk Utility will erase the drives used (or partitions.)
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial
RAID Array and Server: Hardware and Service Comparison>.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?

Dynamic resize of FAT32 partition with disk utility?

Hi there.
I have a 1TB external FAT32 drive with 300GB of data on it.
I want to convert it to HFS+, but I know there's no easy way to do that.
What I want to know is can I resize my FAT32 partition to 500MB and keep all the data?
Then I'll move it to the new HFS+ 500MB partition, delete the original partition and resize the HFS+ partition.
Or do I have no hope of that?
Thanks
Greg

Greg,
You're probably out of luck on this one. If the drive was partitioned and formatted by a PC (every drive has a partition map, whether there are multiple partitions or only one), it almost certainly has an "MBR" partition map. This would preclude a dynamic resizing by Disk Utility. It will need to be partitioned using either GUID (Intel) or APM (PPC).
Scott

Problems Resizing "Macintosh HD" Partition

I recently bought a macbook with Leopard installed on it. I wanted to install XP on it, and with bootcamp, created a 32GB partition. (I had 232GB of internal hard drive space altogether) After concluding the first XP install stage (blue screens with partitions and creating files) there was a mishap. I decided to merely delete the second 32GB partition and resize my original. While I was able to delete the second one (BOOTCAMP), I was not able to resize my original. I tried to resize it from Disk Utility. I used the First Aid option to try to repair it, but it did not allow me. When I verified the permissions and disks there were errors. My question is, how can I resize my primary partition (currently 200GB and labeled Macintosh HD) to be 232GB?
Thank you.

IIRC you can't resize an active partition - that is, the partition you're currently booted from.
You'll need to boot from some other device - either an external hard drive, or the Leopard Installer DVD in order to resize the partition.

Will resizing a TM partition cause problems?

Hello everyone,
I was just wondering if resizing a TM partition will cause any problems. I'm a little nervous using TM as it is, due to a lot of the problems I've read about, and I was just wondering if anyone has done this or knows of problems with doing this.

If you use Disk Utility:
You will lose the data. I don't think DU does a very good job of resizing. But is this a problem? If you have a good install running now. resize, and run TM again.
If you want to try a third party application that does this. VolumeWorks is one.In any case, expect the TM not to survive, and go into this with that mind set.

How can I mount a Raid set (partition in an external drive)?

Hi,
I have 3 partitions in my external drive. I tried to create a concatenated Raid from 2 of the partitions. However, I end up with an offline Raid Slice (one of the partitions is under this slice) which is grayed out in Disk Utility.
When I try to delete the Raid Set, I get "Deleting RAID set failed. This RAID configuration is not valid" warning. When I try to erase the RAID volume, I get "Volume Erase failed with the error:The chosen size is not valid for the chosen filesystem." warning. I cannot mount the volume either.
So, I have 2 of the 3 partitions mounted. The 3rd partition (which is under RAID) is unmounted. Do you have any suggestions to have access to the 3rd partition?
Thanks.

Why are you trying to RAID two partitions on the same drive? Aside from the fact that it doesn't work it also makes no sense when you can simply create a larger partition by joining the two into one.

I erased my windows partition using disk utility then realized I should have used boot camp, because now I can't resize the original partition and seem to be stuck with a ghost unusable space. Boot Camp now doesn't give me the option to install or re

I erased my windows partition using disk utility then realized I should have used boot camp, because now I can't resize the original partition and seem to be stuck with a ghost unusable space. Boot Camp now doesn't give me the option to install or remove windows partition.

Hi, Ralph,
The problem is that I did erase the partition, using disk utility, but I can't go back to my original disk size pre-partition, as disk utility won't let me do it and gives the message "Couldn’t modify partition map because file system verification failed." When I try to use Boot Camp Assistant it won't let me select the third option to remove windows.

How to resize/erase a partitioned external drive

Just checking if I got this well before proceeding.
I have a new Western Digital external FW drive (1TB). I partitioned it in two for using with Time Machine (300GB) and the rest for my huge iTunes and iPhoto libraries.
Now I've changed my mind and I want to have a single partition (or no partitions at all ) in the WD drive and use it for my data only. I don't really care about the Time Machine partition at this time, since it's relatively new and I use SuperDuper! for my startup drive anyway. Right now I care about my libraries in the lower partition. I have another external, Maxtor 500GB hard drive that can be used for Time Machine and other backups afterwards.
The problem is: The first partition (the UPPER one) is the partition I'd like to erase, and the bigger one with my data is below. I've read there's no way to resize the lower partition without erasing it or corrupting/losing the data. I know I should think before partitioning in the first place.
So, my only choice would be backing up my libraries and other data from the WD in the 500GB drive, then erase the WD drive and copying everything back again to a single, new and fresh partition? Hope there were a better solution for this. If not, I'd appreciate a comment anyway.
Thanks for your help and comments in advance, gurus.
JJ

Now that I think of it, I can try something. Copying the lower to the upper partition is a good option, and it could be done if I temporarily move SOME of the files stored in the lower one. Then copy the rest to the upper partition and do what you suggest.
Some questions about this: Can I first erase the data in the upper partition to have more room to copy data? And... is this resizing procedure SAFE for the rest of the data?
I'll think about it before proceeding, anyway
Thanks for your suggestion, it could be the answer.
JJ

Resized Boot Camp partition; now I have "disk0s4"

OK so i was following this tutorial on how to increase your boot camp partition from this website.
Following this blog post:
http://blog.craigharvey.me/2012/09/02/resize-boot-camp-partition-for-free-window s-8/
I resized my Boot Camp partition to give Windows 7 more space. In Disk Utility on OS X ML, I reduced the size of my OS X partition. So then i clicked apply and now that partition says disk0s4. I tried to verfiy and repair it through disk utitlity but It wont let me as there are problems. I have reiszed my parition before and never had this problem before. What did I do wrong and will I be able to fix it?

As you have found out, those instructions do not work, so.
If you can you still boot to OSX, you can Use Boot Camp to remove the Windows partition and return the Mac to normal, then start agin.
Next time you need to resize an NTFS partition use Paragon Camp Tune, which can do it without borking things.
Do Not Ever use Disk Utility to do anything to a Windows partition, it will make the problem worse.

Resize windows 8 partition on OSX Yosemite

When I initially setup my Windows 8 partition through Bootcamp, I split my HD roughly in half. I've now come to realise that I don't need that much space on the Windows size, and require more on the Mac side (win for mac!).
I'd like to resize the Windows partition to make it smaller -- how do I do this?
Kind regards,
Jeremy

There are no Apple tools which support this. The Apple direction is explicit. From Boot Camp 5.1: Frequently asked questions - Apple Support
Can I resize the Windows partition after installing Windows?
No. Back up your important files, then use Boot Camp Assistant to delete the old partition and create a new one.
There are third-party commercial tools like Winclone and Camptune which do that. You may be able to Gparted, but I have not tested it.

Resize RAid-1 partition

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