Adding partition in free space on internal drive

So, when I bought my 20" Intel iMac, I immediately repartitioned the drive, and created one 200GB main partition for OSX and left ~32GB of free space for a future WinXP partition (which as of today became useful .
However, I cannot find any way to add a partition in the free space without trying some commercial tool (like iPartition). Disk Utility only has the option to repartition -- in OSX it won't let me because it's the system drive, and from the install CD it wants to nuke my whole drive to repartition, even though I don't need to touch the OSX partition at all. I've also dug through diskutil, pdisk, and fdisk, but none of those have an option to add a partition.
It seems totally stupid that I can't just create a partition in free space without killing the whole disk. I have 80GB of stuff on this drive I can't easily backup.
Any ideas???
  Mac OS X (10.4.5)  

The second partition is not for backups... it's for a FAT filesystem for installing Windows so that I can run my research software and play games at native speed.
Installing XP does not involve any firmware changes at all. The EFI bootloader is a blessed file that sits on the HFS partition, and the boot sector of the XP install CD is modified to talk to the custom EFI bootloader.
I actuallly did solve the problem through some brute force after my post. There is a command-line utility built into OSX now called 'gpt' which can edit GUID Partition Tables as used on Intel Macs. I booted off my OSX install CD, went to a terminal, unmounted /dev/disk0, added the new partition (gpt luckily does have an option for adding and removing partition entries without repartitioning the whole disk... Apple really needs to update Disk Utility if you ask me -- this is a common and simple task usually), then rebooted. It all worked fine!

Similar Messages

  • Unable to create partition from free space on hard drive

    I have a segment of free space on my Macbook Air's hard drive. It was formerly a Bootcamp partition.
    When I try to create a new partition from this free space in Disk Utility, it prompts me to start creating the partition, but nothing happens after that. I can leave the machine alone for hours, and nothing has occurred. Disk Utility thinks it's working though, since it prompts me to cancel the process when exiting the app.
    Any thoughts on how to fix this? Thanks!

    Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
      1. See Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks' Storage Display.
      2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
      3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
      4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
      5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
      6. See The Storage Display.
    You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
    You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
    Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

  • Adding partition to free space on external that contains RAID 0 array

    Hello.
    I have a Lacie 2BIG 6TB Thunderbolt drive. This was partitioned into a 5TB RAID-0 array, with some smaller partitions in the rest of the available space for other media and backups.
    I tried to delete the other partitions to consolidate whatever space was used by these for other media. Disk Utility let me remove these partitions, but when I try to recreate anything in the free space now available, Disk Utility states that it will also erase the partition that is used as a slice of the RAID array.
    I do not have the space to move everything off the array to completely re-partition the disk, and am looking for a solution to re-partition only this free space on the pair of physical drives.
    Can anyone offer any advice on how I might accomplish this? I have tried to attach images of what Disk Utility shows when I attempt what what I want to do.
    I have tried iPartition, and would like to try Drive Genius, but I'm not sure that this will help the situation.
    Thanks a lot.

    Just a quick confirmation that I have still been unable to resolve this after a few more attempts.
    Anyone out there know more about this than I do?
    Thanks.

  • Why the difference in free space on internal drive?

    I'm confused - when I look at my Storage info under the "About This Mac" item, my internal drive shows that it has "141.6 GB free out of 499.25 GB" (and why it shows 87.54 GB of Backups, I don't know).
    Yet when I look at a Finder window, the drive shows 230.89 GB available. That's an almost 90 GB difference.
    I'm assuming (until someone tells me otherwise) that the "About This Mac" information is the 'truest' but I, frankly, don't know.
    Could someone please explain this discrepancy to me?
    Ever thankful to have smarter heads than I in these forums,
    Clinton

    Both are correct. You have local snapshots turned on for Time Machine...hence the 90GB's of backups. These backups are deleted as you need space...hence what Finder reports. IMO, there are pros/cons to local snapshots...useful if you accidentally delete something...not so if your drive fails(obviously). Time Machine backups need to be on an external drive, not solely on your internal drive.

  • I made a dumb decision to 'Erase Free Space' on my drive. I now have no free space, I realize because it wrote 0's over all my free space. Is there a way to undo this??? Help please I can't save any documents now! Thanks in advance all, it is truly apprec

    I made a dumb decision to 'Erase Free Space' on my drive. I now have no free space, I realize because it wrote 0's over all my free space. Is there a way to undo this??? Help please I can't save any documents now! Thanks in advance all, it is truly appreciated. how can find the hidden temporary files using the terminal what do i type in?

    It's more likely a failed Erase Free Space, which creates a huge temporary file; that's why it looks like you have no more available drive space. You can recover from this. See these links
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/10938738#10938738
    http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/quickie/recovering_from_a_failed_secure_erase_fre e_space 
    Post back if you need any help with this.

  • How do I get Finder windows to display free space on hard drive?

    In Snow Leopard if you opened a Finder window, at the bottom it would show how much free space your hard drive had left.  Lion by default does not do this.  Is there a way where I can turn that option on so i can view space availible when opening Finder windows?

    Stop blaming yourself. You're not an idiot and it's never the user's fault. It's always the designer's fault. Read "The Design of Everyday Things' by Donald Norman. It's a gerat book about how everyday things can be just difficult to use. He's been also a former Apple employee. Great reading!

  • Erasing Free Space on boot drive

    I am getting ready to sell my older Mac Book Air with a SSD.  I would like to erase all free space on the drive to assure that any confidential data I hadn't securely deleted earlier is not recoverable.  In my most recent cleanup, I moved all my own files and installed apps to the trash and attempted to empty the trash securely.  When the number of files to be removed was down to 30,000 (from neaerly 100,000) it stopped securely removing them.  I rebooted several times and those files were still in the trash.  I attempted each time to securely empty the trash.  It would pop up the progress dialog box but would immeidately close it cleaning up nothing.  Finally, I switched to non-secure and emptied the Trash.
    I've done to the Disk Utility, selected the SSD Drive (Macintosh HD) and selected the Erase tab.  The Erase Free Space button is disabled.  How can I securely clean up the free space so that whoever buys the system will not be able to recover whatever, confidential data may still be hanging around in the free disk space list?
    Thanks,

    read this article, it is outdated, but the info in it is still relevant: http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24002.   Do a 7 pass erase. That conformed to the U.S. Department of Defense's security procedures until they changed their rules to that of completely destroying hard drives physically instead.

  • Re: Oggetto: Re: Knowing the free space on a drive

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Luca Gioppo <[email protected]>
    To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
    Date: Friday, March 19, 1999 9:13 AM
    Subject: Oggetto: Re: Knowing the free space on a drive
    Obviously the solut

    I thanks people that gave their suggestion, but unfortunately these are not
    what I was looking for.
    The runcommand does not redirect output to a textdata but accept the name
    of an output file in a textdata, and in win95 it doesn't exists a grep
    command.
    The thing that bother me is that if I use the environment console, open the
    machine agent and look up the instruments i find the volumes into it,
    afterwards having done this operation I manage to find the volume agents
    form the machine one even from tool program.
    It is clear that the e-console issues some commands during the instrument
    menu of the machine that I miss, but perhaps are available from tool.
    Does someone from Forte knows how to reproduce the same commands of
    instrument menu in tool (I was told that e-console was written using forte
    so...)?
    TIA
    Luca Gioppo
    To unsubscribe, email '[email protected]' with
    'unsubscribe forte-users' as the body of the message.
    Searchable thread archive <URL:http://pinehurst.sageit.com/listarchive/>

  • Adding a new partition in free space wipes all others?

    geez, I hate writing a question when I think I've already found the answer!!
    But in this case, the answer's so baad, I thought I'd run it by you all before I hit "desperation" mode! Here goes...
    I've got a USB 1TB external that I back up on to. It's in 4 partitions (audio, video, system, archives). The 4 partions are using about 750 Gb total, with 250 Gb free. I wanted to resize the "system" partition, as it was getting pretty full. I found some instructions about; (1.) creating a new, fifth, empty partition out of that 250Gb free space then (2.) "merging" the new partition and the system partition, resulting in a single larger partion for system backups. All other partitions *should* have been left untouched.
    I was a bit wary of it all, but Disk Utility's Help says, "You may be able to create multiple partitions on your disk without losing any data" and then goes on to tell me how to, using the + sign, create a  new partition out of the 250Gb of free space.
    I followed the instructions to the letter but, after "Applying", it did create the new fifth partition, *BUT IT WIPED ALL OF THE DATA OFF OF THE OTHER FOUR PARTITIONS!!*
    I'm in major panic mode, did a bit of searching and, on Indiana Univ. help page, found:
    "Warning: ...when changing the partition scheme in Mac OS X 10.5 and later, partitioning your hard drive with Disk Utility erases all the information on the drive."
    As I see it, a direct conflict to what Apple claims in Disk Utility's Help.
    So, I'm about to pull out and upgrade my data recovery programs - - will just try and get the pix and tunes back, I guess.
    But if anyone has any idea how I can "undo" what's been done, it sure would help!!
    many thanks in advance,
    b myers

    I'm not sure what you did exactly, but having done it you cannot undo it.   You may yet be able  to recover files from the drive using recovery software:
    Basics of File Recovery
    Files in Trash
    If you simply put files in the Trash you can restore them by opening the Trash (left-click on the Trash icon) and drag the files from the Trash to your Desktop or other desired location.  OS X also provides a short-cut to undo the last item moved to the Trash -press COMMAND-Z.
    If you empty the Trash the files are gone. If a program does an immediate delete rather than moving files to the Trash, then the files are gone.  Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When files are deleted only the directory entries, not the files themselves, is modified. The space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage, but the files are still on the drive. Writing to the drive will then eventually overwrite the space once occupied by the deleted files in which case the files are lost permanently. Also if you save a file over an existing file of the same name, then the old file is overwritten and cannot be recovered.
    General File Recovery
    If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro.  Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.  Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk.  Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads.
    The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
    Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
    For future reference:
    To resize the drive do the following:
    1. Open Disk Utility and select the drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list.
    2. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
    3. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired new volume's size. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.  (Note: You can only make a partition smaller in order to create new free space.)
    4. Click on the [+] button below the sizing window to add a new partition in the gray space you freed up. Give the new volume a name, if you wish, then click on the Apply button. Wait until the process has completed.
    You should now have a new volume on the drive.

  • Live Partition Resize not working... And can't add partition to free space

    Hello everyone. I have a problem that I'm trying to sort out.
    I have a 500GB WD MyBook external FireWire HD. I had it partitioned into two partitions. One was a 112 GB that I used to create backup images of the 120 GB internal drive of my PB G4 (really 111.66 GB). The other I used for other files.
    Now, I decided that I wanted to start using the Backup partition for Time Machine, but in order to maintain a longer history, I wanted to increase the partition size. I figured this would be a snap with the new capabilities of Disk Utility. Unfortunately, it was not. While it is true that my pocket FireWire drive behaves exactly how I'd expect it to in DU, the 500 GB WD drive does not. I can't do anything to the partitions, in a live manner (the options, + and - buttons are all grayed out, and there is no indication of volume fill status).
    In a fit of frustration, I tried deleting the backup partition. That worked, but now I just have 112 GB of free space, and I still can't do anything with it. I can't even add a 112 GB partition back into this free space.
    Does anyone have any ideas about what is going on here, and what I can do to get things working properly?

    Hello everyone. I have a problem that I'm trying to sort out.
    I have a 500GB WD MyBook external FireWire HD. I had it partitioned into two partitions. One was a 112 GB that I used to create backup images of the 120 GB internal drive of my PB G4 (really 111.66 GB). The other I used for other files.
    Now, I decided that I wanted to start using the Backup partition for Time Machine, but in order to maintain a longer history, I wanted to increase the partition size. I figured this would be a snap with the new capabilities of Disk Utility. Unfortunately, it was not. While it is true that my pocket FireWire drive behaves exactly how I'd expect it to in DU, the 500 GB WD drive does not. I can't do anything to the partitions, in a live manner (the options, + and - buttons are all grayed out, and there is no indication of volume fill status).
    In a fit of frustration, I tried deleting the backup partition. That worked, but now I just have 112 GB of free space, and I still can't do anything with it. I can't even add a 112 GB partition back into this free space.
    Does anyone have any ideas about what is going on here, and what I can do to get things working properly?

  • Satellite L350 - how to use free space on hard drive?

    Hi
    Wonder if anyone can help please?
    We have a Toshiba Satallite L350 with 500gb of HD. Over the past few weeks the laptop has been getting very sluggish ( carried out de frag etc which helped ) however, today I tried to add something to my laptop and was told we have no spare disc space!!!
    On looking at the computer it appears I have 2 drives ( C & D ) and the C drive is almost full yet the D drive is nearly empty!! No matter what I try I am unable to transfer anything over to the D drive so it is 'sat there' doing nothing!!! All that is showing on here is the HDD recovery from intiial setup. I never even realised that the 2 drives were there, asuming the 500gb will be used when you need it!
    Can someone give me an idea on how / what I need to do to make use of this extra 250gb of HD and enable me to use the laptop to it's full potential?
    Many thanks
    Mark / Hereford / UK

    Hi
    First of all the second partition (D) contains the recovery files and this is needed to create a recovery disk and to recover the notebook using HDD recovery option.
    But this should be explained in user manual.
    However, I dont see any reason why you should not be able to move some files like mp3, videos, or pictures to the D partition. This should be possible.
    Of course its not possible to move an installed programs if you have installed such program on C partition.
    In such case you would need to uninstall such software and would need to install it again on D partition.
    Nevertheless you could also increase the volume of C partition by shrinking the D partition and adding the free space to C.
    To do that, you need some 3rd party partitions software.
    I could recommend you usage of Gparted software. its freeware and can be downloaded from internet. Google for that.
    Additionally you could clean the system to get rid of some temporal stored files.
    CCleaner is a good freeware tool which cleans the system.

  • How do I move ITunes Library to External with only 5GB of space on Internal Drive without getting Space issue message when Consolidate library option is executed?

    Details:
    250 GB Internal Hard Drive
    50 GB iTunes Library
    1 TB External Drive w/ 153 GB of Open Space that is Partioned
    Steps followed:
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
    I get Stuck on Step 11 Consolidate Files to new external drive location with Error message: Not enough space to move files.
    This makes no sense Apple. The purpose in doing this is to free up space on my internal drive?
    Any help would be much appreciated as I'm stuck and can't seem to resolve or find any suggestions to resolve...

    Don't use that method.  It does move the whole library, it just moves the media.  The whole library is best left intact.
    iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
    Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings:  Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive.  Open iTunes and immediately hold down the Option (alt) key (shift on Windows), then guide it to the new location of the library.

  • Macintosh HD and Bootcamp Installer Disagree on Free space on Hard Drive

    Im having a hard drive issue.
    I have 500 gb and macosx shows about 300gb free.
    I'm attempting to install windows and the assistant gives about 100gb of space but I'd like 200 or so for windows.
    Theres a discrepancy in available hard drive space!
    I had installed windows prior and made the mistake of following some bad advice and re partitioning for extra space within windows 8. After this I lost the windows partition. I have a third party disk utility that says the drive needs repaired. The drive has issues with discrepancies in drive space and sectors used and not used. The volume gets repaired and allowed some more space for windows (the 100gb) but I should assumably be allowed most all the free space available and would like to (iI have an external for large files).
    How can I fix this? I dont mind command line. Are there third party utilities?

    You have two issues.
    1. Partitioning within Windows and OS X are using two different personalities of a disk, and if not kept in sync, you run into this issue. Apple does not allow Windows partition to be resized because they do not provide the appropriate tools to keep them in sync.
    2. If you are willing to take a backup of OS X and all your files, the cleanest method is to erase the drive and restore from a backup, preferably using a Time Machine backup.

  • Any thoughts on tackling a lack of free space on hard drive?

    Photoshop Elements 9 has left me with little free space on my hard drive.  Per my conversation with Adobe tech support, an external hard drive (which I currently do not own) should not be used to run Photoshop 9, but rather I should move my pictures there. (I have several "hundreds of pictures in jpeg).   I would think that this is OK for editing, whereby I'm only working with one picture at a time.  If I follow Adobe's suggestion, wouldnt I essentially be eliminating the Organizer function once the pictures are moved to an external drive?  Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

    Some of the newer PC's don't have internal drive space because they have raid'ed drives.
    I purchased 3 external 1Tb drives, 2 at home 1 at my office and I backup (never mind how to the office, that's a whole other thing) to one at home and one at the office -- and my phots are on the other 1Tb at home.
    They cost me $99 each, but shortly after they become $69 each -- not much given the cost of the photos!

  • Moved photo library to external, space on internal drive did not change.

    At the end of each year I like to move the current iPhoto library to an external hard drive to save space. The library get retitled Library 2007, Library 2008, etc.
    I do this to save space on my hard drive. My trusty iMac has only 80 gig hd (but that was a lot a few years ago). I was down to 11 plus gigs of free space.
    So, I moved over 4000 photos to the external hard drive, using the directions posted on this forum about using the pictures folder and the library in it, then deleting old photos. OK, so all my pictures from 2008 are on the external. I kept only 72 pictures on the internal hd (had to reimport them after the big move). This only freed about 4G of hd space, and if I do “Get info” or use Whatsize, it shows my iPhoto as using 9.7G of space. 9G of space for 72 photos??? Can’t be. If I select my old Library 2008 with 4000 plus photos it also says the size is 9.7
    I know I have the right Library chosen when I start iPhoto with option key held down.
    What have I done or failed to do???
    I tried shutting down and restarting. Have repaired permissions once, though not from original disk.
    This has been hard to explain, I hope I made it understandable.
    Thanks in advance for all help.
    Jane

    Hi Terence,
    I feel like the world's biggest dummy right now. Remember when I told you that yes, I had emptied the trash? Well, the trash I emptied was on the desktop. I very wrongly assumed that when I selected and deleted photos, all trash was the same. But apparently not. The trash in the iPhoto program was filled with images. When I discovered this an emptied it, I freed up a lot of hd space.
    So, your first suggestion was right, I was just too dumb to know which trash needed emptying.
    Thank you so much for your help and your patience as well.
    Jane

Maybe you are looking for