Can user default to new partition/disk?

I'm new to Macs and the Mac OS. In Windows I was used to partitioning my diak into two logical disks and storing all user data on the "D" disk". Is there a way to partition the disk on my MacBook Pro without having to start from scratch and once I do this is there a way to move all my user files (Documents, Picture and other folders) to the new partition?
Thanks in advance for any help.

I don't know of a way you can partition the disk without starting over.
If the reason you want to do it is so that you can re-install the OS like you had to do with Windows, it isn't necessary. Some people do run into problems that require a reinstall, but rarely. The system won't get slowed down with age or kludged up with spyware.
Many of the apps allow you to set the location of their libraries, but not all. If you move the library folder for iTunes or iPhoto, it will ask you where it is on the next startup. You can also hold down the option key while starting the app and it will ask if you want to change the Library location. There are ways to change the location of your Home directory, either with a symbolic link or using the new Advanced options in the Accounts preference pane (they're well hidden for a reason).
The OS was designed to net boot with a home directory on the network server, so everything should work ok if you do decide to change the Home folder directory.
Search the forums here (or the internet) for moving Home directory or individual app libraries and you can find tutorials on how to make it work, if you still want to do it.

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How can I create a new partition to install Windows 7 by not using Bootcamp

How can I create a new partition to install Windows 7 by not using Bootcamp?

If you want to dualboot you have to use boot camp i think. I think you have already a full disc and cannot make another partition I'm I right?
Your question seems a bit blurry so I'm giving you a general tip here.
If you want to just try the beta you can always use Sun's "Virtualbox".

Disk Utility can't create a new partition

Hello,
I'm trying to create a new partition to install Windows 7 on, but I am unable to do so.
At first I tried to do this with Boot Camp Assistant, but it didn't work.
Then I tried to create a FAT partition with Disk Utility, which didn't work either.
So I verified and repaired the disk, tried to create the partition again, yet it still didn't work.
I verified and repaired the disk and tried to create the partition while running the OS, in Safe Mode and from the Mac OSX Install DVD.
Neither of them worked.
I noticed while running the OS, the info of the HD said the capacity is 749.81 GB, while checking that from the Mac OSX Install DVD it only says about 700 GB (I mentioned 698.6 GB).
Strange..
It might also be important to mention that I recently (2 days ago) I installed a new HD: Western Digital Scorpio Black 750 GB, and today I swapped my 2x 2GB RAM for 2x 4GB RAM (Samsung).
On my previous HD, the Fujitsu 250GB, this proces was no problem at all. I installed W7 on that drive just a week ago.
I made a clone of the Fujitsu HD and "back-upped" it to my new WD HD. The W7 partition on the Fujitsu HD was 50GB, which is the difference in capacity mentioned above. I'm not sure if there's a link here..
I've got a MacBook Pro from mid 2009.
I'm not sure what to do next... I'm stuck!
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Good thing to mention that, I forgot to do that.
Unfortunately it did not help.. The screen to remove the existing Boot Camp partition does not pop up, it just tries to create the new Boot Camp partition.
The partition I'm trying to create it 150GB. The 50GB mentioned above was on the stock Fujitsu 250GB disk.
Edit:
I'm actually trying to avoid using Boot Camp Assistant.. I became to dislike the utility due to problems creating a partition on my previous HD.
I would like to create a partition using Disk Utility and then install Windows 7 by selecting that DVD to boot from.
Thank you for the tip though, I'll post it there as well!

Can't add a new partition without erasing it all.

Hi! I have a problem in Disk Utility in which I cannot add a partition because the plus button is greyed out. I can select to make two partition in the drop down but that would probably erase everything. All I want to do is add one partition to the existing partition without erasing anything so I can dual boot Windows 8. I can't use boot camp because I can only install Windows 7 since my computer is from 2010. Thanks in advance!

^^^ with pic =).
And then just link your object/text with the standard hyperlink menu!

Can't create a new partition

Hi,
I want to create a new partition as I have done before a few times.
Now, the problem is, that I get an error message, when I'm trying to create one.
Unfortunetally the error message is in German, so I try to translate it:
"Partitioning failed
During partitioning is occurred an error:
MediaKit reports: System has for the desired process not enough memory"
You can see the screenshot under following link:
http://www.apfeltalk.de/forum/partitionen-zusammenf-hren-t174556.html
The point is: I have 2 GB RAM and more than 100 GB on my harddisc free!
Probably this problem occured with Mac OS X 10.5.5.
Does anybody know an solution?
How can I contact Apple to inform them about this problem and get some help?!
Best regards
Stefano

Your translation is probably a little off and rather than meaning there's not enough RAM it means there's not enough contiguous hard drive space to make a partition of that size. I'm assuming that you are trying to partition a drive that already has data on it. If I am right, before the drive can be partitioned, it has to be defragmented so that the drive has no data in a group of tracks equal to the size you requested. It is possible to request a partition size that looks like it should fit but there's one or more files that cannot be moved out to make space for it. That, is what I think has happened to you.
If I am right you can try defragging your hard drive with a program dedicated to defragmenting and optimizing. Some people have had success doing this and others have used such a program and still couldn't partition their drive. You can clone the drive to another hard drive (SuperDuper! and CarbonCopyCloner are two good cloning programs) and then turn around and clone right back to original. This will work because as the files are copied to the target drive they will all be placed in contiguous sectors so the drive will be completely defragmented. Or you can try making a smaller partition.

Where can I get a new hard disk in the UK?

I have a Hitachi 80Gb internal hard disk (Hitachi HDS722580VLAT20) which TechTool tells me is failing. I can't afford to have a new one fitted, so I think I'm going to have to do it myself.
The trouble is that I can't find one anywhere. Apple don't seem to sell them and so far any search of the web has been fruitless. Anyone recommend a UK supplier for these?

Have you tried to repair the disk using Apple's Disk Utility or whatever options TechTool offers?
More drastically; have you tried Zeroing All Data on the drive and re-installing the OS? This can cure many Hard Drive issues unless the drive really is on it's way out.
But to answer your question...The iMac G4 uses a bog standard 3.5" IDE/ATA hard drive so they are available from any computer shop. E.g. PC World if you prefer to walk in to a store on a retail park.
The term IDE /ATA/ATA100/ATA66 etc etc are all pretty much one and the same thing so don't worry about that. The only drives that won't work are the new Serial ATA (SATA) drives that are used in new Macs/PCs. You should buy a faster 7,200rpm drive with a cache of at least 8Mb.
I bought my 320Gb drive from dabs.com - I've bought, RAM, disk, media, printers and whole macs from them and have been very happy with the prices and service. If you wanted to shop around I like dealtime.co.uk.
The first iMac G4's i.e. pre June 02 may have trouble addressing hard disks greater than 128Gb. - So long as your machine is younger it should be okay.
mrtotes

Can I replace my new hard disk drive with my old one???

I recently bought a new Macbook Pro 13' (mid 2012) and I wonder if I can put inside the hard disk (SSD) from my old Macbook Pro 13' (mid 2010)

The hard drive itself should work. The only thing to be aware of is the operating system on the previous MacBook Pro. If it's older than the version your new MacBook Pro came with it may not run.

Disk Utility won't add new partition

I have an external 250GB hard drive connected via USB to my Mac Mini (Early 2009) computer. The drive has a GUID partition table that was created using Windows Vista SP 1. The first partition on the disk is a 128MB Microsoft Reserved partition. The second partition is a 120GB NTFS partition. When I try to use Disk Utility to partition the remaining 112GB of space as a Mac OS Extended Journaled partition I keep getting an error message stating "MediaKit reports no such partition". How do I get around this bug in Apple's Disk Utility application?

techguy378,
As they always do, Microsoft has undoubtedly created "their own" proprietary implementation of the GUID partition table. The effect, in this particular case, is that Disk Utility cannot see that unused space. That doesn't mean this is a Disk Utility "bug."
If one were to do the same thing with Disk Utility- create 2 partitions on a drive that do not fill the drive- that empty space would be included in the partition map. Simple. In your case, however, it appears that Vista has just excluded that empty space from the map entirely. Neat trick, huh?
I think your only solution will be to add a partition in Vista, if that is possible without destroying the current volumes. You can then reformat the new partition in Disk Utility.
Scott

[SOLVED] Problem in moving /var to new partition

Hi,
I setup a new systemd Arch instalation on an SSD and migrated successfully from my old initscripts based HDD setup. I have 2 problems now, one leading to another.
I wanted to move /var to a partition on HDD and followed the following steps.
Created a new reiserfs partition for var on my HDD using gparted. Labelled it as "var"
Rebooted to emergency mode and mounted it. (I remounted root as read-write)
# mount /dev/sda8 /mnt/new_var
Copied var contents to new_var
# cd /var
# cp -Rax * /mnt/new_var/
# cd /
# mv var var.old
# umount /mnt/new_var
# mkdir var
# mount /dev/sda8 /var
Added the following line to /etc/fstab
LABEL=var /var reiserfs defaults 0 1
When I reboot after this, systemd is timing out waiting for a var partition. Here is an pic taken during boot.
I restored the old var using the emergency shell and could reboot properly. I tried the same thing as a normal user using sudo after the system was up. (During the moving, I got sudo warnings because the sudo folder in /var/db wasnt there.)
With the new var partition in place, I proceeded to install a few packages. But when I rebooted, I the same thing happened again and had to get into emergency shell and restore the old var.
However, after this, the packages which I installed in the interim are not available in pacman database.
So,
1. How can I move /var to a separate partition and still keep systemd happy?
2. Is there a way to rescan or rebuild the pacman database? Will syncing the 2 different var setups that I've solve the problem? If so, how can I sync them?
Last edited by kungsu (2012-11-04 14:54:25)

I'm thinking in collision propabilities here. How probably might the device node change? I have machines that keep doing this without a real reason. I'd prefer labels on such machines. Other machines don't - without a real reason as well. I'd prefer device node notation on such machines. Labels can be changed manually, new partitions can be added and USB sticks with labled partitions can be inserted. While the USB situation should not be a big deal, both, labels as well as device nodes can be subject to changes, collisions and other arbitrary events. The only thing that is unlikely to change (for no obvious reason), be altered by accident or made collide with another one, are UUIDs.
I would not say using lables is bad, it's just that if you already have an issue, why not rule that out? It seemed to have solved the issue, it can be as easy as playing safe sometimes. Furthermore, the reason why I recommended to change the label from "var" to something else, is how common "var" is. It is like using a keyword in a programming language as a variable name, it may or may not work, so why not make it a habbit of not using such meta-keywords at all?
EDIT: There is no particular reason, I suspect the lable isn't set correctly. Maybe there is a problem with the partition table - that's where I'd suspect the LABLE to be stored.
Or maybe you just did the whole by-label thing wrong.
"/dev/disk/by-label/var" instead of LABEL="var"…
Last edited by Awebb (2012-11-04 15:27:43)

Can I share an exFAT partition between OS X and Boot Camp?

I've just installed Windows 8.1 through Boot Camp on OS X 10.9.3. Now I want to create an extra exFAT partition in order to share data between the two OSs. Can I do so using the Disk Utility in OS X? Can Windows recognise this new partition?
Thanks.
iMac 21.5-inch Late 2013
OS X Mavericks 10.9.3, Windows 8.1
1TB HDD

I've got 2 storage partitions, bootcamp and OSX running on the same machine, internally i.e. all on the same drive. A total of 5 partitions, if you include the 200MB EFI partition.
Guide:
Attempting to edit partitions in OSX will break Bootcamp. Make sure to edit partitions in Windows. I used Partition Wizard (PW), I recommend you use it, Window's default partition editor is pretty nasty.
Before you start, it's best to have the empty space you want to use for your new partition AFTER the Bootcamp partition. So create your NTFS Win8 partition with lots of space so you can shrink it later. After you've got Bootcamp set up with the free space you're going to use for your FAT partition as part of your NTFS Win8, you're ready to go.
Shrink your Bootcamp partition with PW and then create however many partitions you like in the filesystem you need. Pretty straightforward
I'm running Win8.1 and OSX with my partitions in this order: OSX, Win8.1 (Bootcamp), 10GB Storage Partition (NTFS), 90GB Storage Partition (FAT32). All my partitions are accessible by both OSes.
exFAT is basically the same as FAT32 except you can have file sizes greater than 4GB.
System: MBP Retina 13" (Late 2013) 8/256GB

Some files can not be moved to partition hard drive

"Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again." is the message I receive every time I attempt to partition my hard drive for boot camp. Is there a step-by-step way to do this?

Bean Boy:
When a partition is created the computer moves all files to one area of the current partition so that it can have a clean new partition. In your case it appears that your drive is fragmented (files scattered throughout the drive) and Boot Camp is having issues trying to consolidate them in one area. Try moving any large files to an external drive and see if that helps. Perhaps try making a smaller partition size of Windows under Boot Camp.
If none of the above works then you can take more aggressive measures by choosing one of the following. Please note that I have tried none of the below as I did not experience the issue that you are having.
Option 1 - Click [Here|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7311606].
Option 2 - Purchase [iDefrag|http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php] and defragment your HD. This will move all of your files in one area. You can then run boot camp and it should go well from there.
Option 3 - Back up your HD using Time Machine. Boot from Leopard installation disk and format the entire HD (OSx format). Run Boot Camp from Leopard Installation disk and create the Windows Partition and Install Windows. Once that is done then Boot From Leopard Installation disk again and restore the OSx parition with the Leopard backup that you created via Time Machine.
Axel F.

Partition Disk

Can someone tell me if you partition a iMac Intel disk will it erase everything on your main disk or will that main disk stay intact? Also, on the new partitioned disk will you have to reinstall your system software or does it just work all the apps/system software off the main disk?

Hi guys, thanks for your input! I wanted the extra partition incase I crashed I would have a another disk to boot off of (which I think I just answered one of my own questions). If I wanted it for that reason then I guess I would have to do a clean install. I was just hoping I would not have to re-install everything on my main disk/partition. Boy, that is indeed a big pain in the a__!. No real way around that, huh?
The Boot Camp info was nice. So if I partitioned for the Windows side I would then have to install Windows right away...right? I had heard there will be a new version of Windows coming out sometime in Dec. so I thought I would wait for that instead of buying now. What do you guys think?

Have new recovery disk

hello
1 years ago i have bought laptop Hp probook 4530s
by wrong i deleted everything on it so how can i have a new recovery disk?
and how can i download the orginal copy of windows 7 home premium 64 bit?
and thanks

If you can read the 25 character Microsoft Windows 7 license key attached to bottom of laptop , you can download a Windows 7 ISO file to burn to a DVD for the version that is listed on the Microsoft COA sticker.
Link to the Windows 7 ISO file downloads:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/
Get ImgBurn to burn the iso image to DVD using slow burn speed.
Or use the Windows 7 USB/DVD installation tool to convert the ISO file to a Windows installation on DVD or USB flash drive.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool
Use the 25 character product key on the PC to activate the installation.
Next go to your support and driver page to install the drivers you need.
******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**

New Partition With Parallels Windows

I made new partition on my macbook pro, when I open parallels to use windows I can see only the main drive of macbook pro but I can not see the new partition, I would like to know, how can I make the parallels windows see the new partition ?
Thanks

Read your Parallels documentation. It's all about configuring the Preferences.

Use the default format and partition step to format disk0 partition 1 in multiple disks sutiation

As we know,we need to disable the default format and partition step in ts to let mdt deploy os on C and leave the other partitions stay safe when there is only one disk on pc，and the way of installing operation system is logical drive letter store in a varible.
But what if there are 2 disks on pc，and for a record the disk 0 is always the OS disk,don't need to confirmed this.How can we modify the format and partition step to format only C on disk0 under this condition?then lead the mdt to do the rest deployment
by itself.
Thanks

You are pushing up against the design limits of MDT, and the more complex and/or arbitrary the disk configuration the harder it is for MDT to perform installations.
If you want to maintain the *existing* disk configuration, and just update the OS present, then the recommended course of action is to run MDT from *within* the OS (cscript.exe
\\server\deploymentshare$\scripts\litetouch.vbs), not from WinPE. When you do this, it's called a "refresh" scenario. MDT can capture the user files via USMT, and it knows which
partitions to use, because it's launched from within the OS itself.
Disabling the default Format and Partition step has other unintended consequences.
Keith Garner - Principal Consultant [owner] -
http://DeploymentLive.com

Can user default to new partition/disk?

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