Cannot Partition Free Space on my external drive

Hey Everyone,
I am trying to partition the free space on my external drive. Used to have 3 partitions on my drive 2 HFS+ and one FAT (originally created by disk utility). I upgraded to leopard and thought i would give time machine a shot. so i erased two of my smaller partitions (the FAT and small HFS+) and put all the data on the 3rd (HFS+).
The drive now has one partition at 350GB (Lacie Disk) and 100GB at "Free Space".
I have tried Disk Utility, Micromat Disk Studio and Drive Genius 2 and none of them will allow me to repartition the free space on my external drive.
I am rather confused as to why i am "not allowed" to do this. I can't delete the 350GB of stuff since it IS my backup and my drive on my mac is only 160GB.
Any suggestions to work around this or as to why i can't repartion an external drive.
Thanks
R
Message was edited by: Ryan Supeene

selct the whole drive (the model, not the partition name) and disk utility and look at the bottom on the right. what does it say on the line Partition Map Scheme?
If it says Master Boot Record you can't repartition the drive without erasing everything. if it says Apple partition Map or GUID partition table you should be able to add a partition in place of free space by clicking on the + button in the partition tab.

Similar Messages

Partitioning Free Space

Hi all.
Is there any way to partition free space left on a disk without erasing the data currently stored on it?
I noticed in one of the disk utilities that it does give that option but I wanted to check before doing so. Or if not, are there any 3rd party software apps available that will do this?
Cheers

There are utilities that partition without destroying the volume like iPartition and pdisk.
To me it's like doing brain surgery on yourself. iPartition appears to reorganize the drive before it sets up the second partition -- sort of like what Disk Optimizer does by moving frequently used files to the outer tracks and the lesser used files to the inner tracks as an optimization scheme.
Assuming it works reliably, the only downslide I can foresee is if you have a drive that's extremely fragmented with files strewn from outer to inner tracks, it would almost be faster to back up and reformat and restore than to let iPartition thrash away moving everything around.
The only "fool proof" approach, though, is backing up and reformatting with partitions defined.
I'm curious why you want to partition. It could be an exercise in futility, depending on what you are trying to accomplish with partitioning.

Error message while burning DVD with Premiere Elements 13 with Mac Book Pro i7/7200t/mn with 60GO free space available on gard drive. message: "erreur logicielle interne: DVA/premiere/elements/pre12/pre-mediacoreCS7". can someone help burn my DVD (the fil

Error message while burning DVD with Premiere Elements 13 with Mac Book Pro i7/7200t/mn with 60GO free space available on gard drive. message: "erreur logicielle interne: DVA/premiere/elements/pre12/pre-mediacoreCS7". can someone help burn my DVD (the file goes very well with chapters and scenes before burning). thanks very much, response appreciated, Alain

Erratic amount of free space on my hard drive...

Can someone please tell me if they think this is strange, or should I not worry about it.
About a week ago I had 520 gigs of free space on my hard drive (its a 1 TB drive). I decided to defrag it simply because it had been a long time since I had done so. That went off without a hitch. I did not even think to check if the amount of free space had changed afterwards. I then decided to use Disk Utility to 'Erase Free Space'. That ran fine, but afterwards I was shocked to see that I now had 605 gigs (!!!) of free space, meaning either the defrag or the erasing of 'Free Space' freed up some 85 gigs (). Okay, strange I thought, but no complaints here. A couple days went by and I happened to glance at the free space and WOAH, its dropped back down to 570, even though I've added, AT MOST, 5 gigs of photos, music etc. Is it me or does this seem really strange...? Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this, reasoning etc...
Much appreciated
Adam

Hi A,
The used and free space amount are subject to some considerations as use and approach to data storage, here is a link to a previous question about it with reference to two other related posts http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12743931#12743931
It is also curious that when you create and save a data file it will report a different size once you open and save it again even without changing contents.
Good luck, K.

Switching iTunes (older version) from an old latptop with mechanical issues to iTunes on a new computer. The hard drive, issue free, was placed in external drive enclosure. How do I recover iTunes?

I'm trying to moves iTunes (older version) from an old latptop with mechanical issues (non working screen, keyboard, and battery) to iTunes on a new computer. The hard drive, issue free, was placed in external drive enclosure. This was a cost effective way instead of dumping lots of money in an outdated old laptop while I can invest it into a new laptop. How do I recover iTunes?
I'm switching from a 3G phone to a blank 4GS in the process. I would like to have everything that was on my 3G phone and iTunes on my new phone and computer.
Thanks

iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music [library] 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.
Windows users see tip at: https://discussions.apple.com/message/18879381

Adobe Premiere Pro cs5 has eaten a free space on the hard drive!

The initial video file was about 1Gb, I needed to cut it and add audio to it. I tried exporting with DV PAL encoding, there was about 15Gb of free space on the hard drive. It took a long time to export and somewhere at 90% it showed the message that free space on the drive was out. I closed Premiere, the target directory where encoded AVI should be exported was empty. The search by name doesn't find anything. Disk cleanup freed only 5Gb. Could you please tell me what the directory where Premiere store a temporary files while Encoding Sequence.
THANKS IN ADVANCE!

Hello, I have a very similar problem. A few days ago I was alarmed to see all of a sudden my Main Hard Drive full.
The editing station that I'm working on is a new computer and all media and scratch disks are assigned to a project folder on another hard drive.
I started digging through the main drive to find what is loading the drive and realized that Media Cache files folder has over 30 Gigabytes of data in it!
In the Adobe Premiere Media Settings there is an option to redirect the Cache files or Save them next to originals check box (Which I selected).
This brings me to very important questions:
What is the correct process of setting up Adobe Premiere project so there are no temporary, cache, pre-renders.... clog up the main drive or get scattered elsewhere? It would be very preferable to keep everything in one project folder.
Should I redirect or keep the files with originals?
Besides Scratch disks and Media Cache files are there any other files generated by the program? If there is, where can I find them?
Once I complete my project and want to completely delete it from my computer, what is the correct way of removing everything so nothing is left over from the deleted project?
Answers to these questions are very important for me and I would be very grateful to get answers to them :-)

How do you display the capacity/free space for the hard drive......

How do you display the capacity/free space for the hard drive on the desktop, under the hard drive icon.... I have seen this done, but I am not seeing any options to do so.... thanks.

View, Show View Options…, Show item info checkbox.

TT6220: Permanent data partition free space insufficient to allocate

Hi,
I am getting following error while loading data from oracle to times ten group.
TT6220: Permanent data partition free space insufficient to allocate

It means just what it says. The permanent memory area within TimesTen (that holds table data, indices etc.) and whose size is defined by PermSize has become full. Either load less data or increase the size of the datastore by increasing permSize (assuming you have enough free memory).
Chris

Cannot delete bootcamp partition/free space on HD (OS X Mavericks)

I am having trouble removing a bootcamp partition made a while ago. I thought removing this partition would be as simple as using disk utility to delete the partition, and extend the Macintosh HD partition back to its original size.
However, after clicking the minus sign using disk utility I am now left with 51.24GB free space where the bootcamp partition used to be and cannot seem to do anything to bring the hard drive back to one single partition.
I have tried using boot camp assistant, which is useless. I have to tick either "Install Windows 7" or "Download the latest Windows support software from Apple", and when I click to install windows 7 (which below says it can be used to remove an existing windows partition), it only lets me re-size the Windows partition to a smaller 20GB size. It does not give me the option to remove the partition like it says it does on the first page and like I have seen on examples online (which I am sure are from previous OS X versions).
I have tried going to disk utility when booting from the recovery disk, however this does not give me the option to erase the entire disk then start again from a time machine backup; it only gives me the option to erase my current 268.48GB Macintosh HD partition, which wouldn't be any use.
I have verified the disk and all seems ok. I am running OS X 10.9.1 on a mid 2010 Macbook Pro. 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB Memory.
Any help appreciated as I am running low on HD space on my mac and the extra 50 GB that I can't seem to free up would be very useful.

Give this a try:
Install Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion Using Internet Recovery
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.
Partition and Format the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your external hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion. Mavericks: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks and click on the Install button. Be sure to select the correct drive to use if you have more than one.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet
            if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
This will install the default version of OS X that came with your computer if it came with Lion or later. If it came with Snow Leopard, then you must do this instead:
Clean Install of Snow Leopard
Be sure to make a backup first because the following procedure will erase
the drive and everything on it.
     1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
         with your computer. Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
         After the chime press and hold down the "C" key. Release the key when you see
         a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
     2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
         button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
         After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
         size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of
         partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
         and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
         (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
     3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed
         with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
     4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
         Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same
         username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup
         Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh
         install of OS X. You can now begin the update process by opening Software
         Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

I need to erase free space on my hard drive. But when I am in disk utility the format and name are pale as is the erase free space button so I cannot erase free space.

My start up disk is full. I have been through my computer and erased a lot of music and video to free some space. I then went to disk utility to erase free space and find that the erase free space button is pale and therefore won't work. Nor can I select or deselect MacOS extended journaled.
Advice please?!

Recovering Disk Space
If you have less than 20% disk space then it is time to roll up your sleeves and search for what you can delete and what you can offload to another disk.
If you have less than 10 GB you definitely need to delete or offload some files or purchase a lager disk or SSD (see below). You may want to maintain at least 20 GB of free space so when your disk starts filling again it will have some room before it hits that 10 GB mark again. More headroom is better. If you let the space fall much below 9 GB you might not be able to boot your machine.
Initial easy steps to gain disk space:
- Delete all files in the Downloads folder.
Empty the Trash.
- Start iPhoto.
Empty its trash.
Restart.
- Restart in Safe Mode:
Restart the computer.
As soon as you hear the chime press and hold the right shift key.
Be patient. Hold it down until you see the Apple icon.
Empty the trash.
Restart in normal mode.
- Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Hold the option key down and click "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.
    Select "Library" from the drop down menu.
    Library > Mail > V2 > Mailboxes
    Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
- Empty the Trash.
- Restart.
- Re-index your system disk (Macintosh HD):
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409
Time Machine Snapshots:
If your disk is 80% full that is normal. Time Machine uses up to 80% of the disk space for local snapshots. To get rid of these snapshots simply plug in your Time Machine backup drive and run a backup. See About Time Machine's 'local snapshots' on Mac notebooks: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878 and What are Local Snapshots? http://pondini.org/TM/30.html .
If you are concerned that the “Other” category of disk usage is taking too much space and for information on deleting files then look here: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5142
Backup:
Run a Time Machine (or other) backup since you are about to delete and move files and you may need to recover from any inadvertent mistakes or decisions. You will need one external hard drive for your Time Machine (or other) backup and a second if you plan to offload some files. (See suggestions for where to purchase hard drives at the end of this message.)
For more about backups:
Time Machine Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
Most commonly used backup methods:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
Deleting files:
Then use the free application OmniDiskSweeper http://www.omnigroup.com/more to explore your volume in descending order by size so you can attack the problem from the top down, deleting the largest unwanted files first. Delete with caution and do not delete any system files. Remember to empty the trash after trashing the files.
Additional reference on freeing disk space:
http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
Offloading files:
Consider moving some of the no-often-used large files or directories to an external disk. Use ODS again to find them. As noted above this will be at least your second hard drive. Your first one(s) is/are for your Time Machine (or other) backup(s). Do not offload files onto a Time Machine disk.
Format the second drive as Mac OS Extended (journaled). Using OWS to find large files/folders and copy them from the system drive to the external hard drive and delete them from your internal drive.
Then  > System Preferences > Time Machine > Options… > Remove the offload HD name from the exclusions list.
Now both your system disk and your external offload disk will be backed up onto your Time Machine disk.
From: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
To move your iTunes Music folder to another disk or partition:
To change the location of your iTunes Music folder, carefully follow the instructions in the AppleCare® Knowledge Base document "iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Music folder."Additional information can be found in iTunes Help.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.thexlab.com/105/ 00000849.html
Laptop users may want to consider having two iTunes libraries: a small library of current favorites on their computer, while their complete library resides on an external hard drive. Utilities like iTunes Library Manager enable you to easily have multiple iTunes libraries you can use with your account. https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7689/itunes-library-manager
To move your iPhoto Library folder to another disk or partition:
To move the iPhoto Library folder to a new location, employ the instructions in the AppleCare Knowledge Base document from http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2506 corresponding to the version of iPhoto you are using. Additional information can be found in iPhoto Help.
Laptop users may want to consider having two iPhoto libraries: a small library of current, favorite photographs on their computer, while their complete library, or archives of older photos are saved on an external hard drive. Utilities such as iPhoto Buddy and iPhoto Library Manager enable you to have multiple iPhoto libraries that you can use with your account.
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/12175/iphoto-buddy
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7158/iphoto-library-manager
Hardware — Bigger disk/SSD:
If your system has upgradeable storage then if you are still tight on disk space consider larger storage. If you have a disk consider replacing it with a one TB disk. Check out a one terabyte HGST 7K1000 7200 rpm, SATA III drive from OWC http://eshop.macsales.com ($100). If you have an SSD consider increasing its capacity to 240 or 480 GB. A standard 240 GB SSD would cost from $200 to $280. See OWC and Crucial: http://www.crucial.com/ for options. OWC sells 120, 240 and 480 GB SSD upgrades for MacBook Airs. A 240 GB upgrade costs $265.   http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/ . If your Mac is under warranty or AppleCare replacing the SSD will void the warranty.
PlotinusVeritas gives some great suggestions for purchasing external hard drives in this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5602141?tstart=0

Disk Utility - Partition free space?

Hi all
I'm wondering if Disk Utility (or similar) has the functionality to help me out here...
I have a 120gig fw external drive, currently it has only the one partition of 80gigs on it, the rest is free space (don't ask...).
I would like to format the other 31gigs as a useable partition without erasing the 50-odd gigs of music files that are on the first volume.
If this can't be done, that's really no big issue, I'll just use my iPod as a holding space while I repartition the external, but if it can, then this will be a valuable learning opportunity for me & I'll be happy to know the way around.
Thanks in advance

4069
Hi Dr_Dodgy,
You cannot do that with Disk Utility.
There is a third-party application for partitioning a hard drive without losing anything, so I guess this app would be able to do that too.
Not sure, was it "iPartition"? I don't know it anyway, so I can say for sure only about DU.
Axl

30GB of space disappears on External Drive after failed DMG copy via USB

I have a 298.1 GB external Western Digital hard drive connected to my iMac by a USB 2.0 cable. It is formatted in NTFS-3G so I can use it with both my PC and Mac. Yesterday in Disk Utility I created a 50GB 256-bit encrypted DMG and told Disk Utility to save it on a folder in my external drive. It got to about 20GB and then my house's power went out. A few hours later when the power came back on, I turned on my computer, and the available space on my external hard drive went down from about 100GB to 68.21GB.
The first thing I thought was that the DMG transfer ended prematurely so I should just find and delete the incomplete DMG from the hard drive. So I went to the folder I saved it in and it was not there. I checked all the folders and I couldn't find any DMG in there. Then I went to the root of the external drive and used Get Info to find the space each folder took up. It adds up to 194.12 GB. So I subtracted 194.12 from 298.1 and got 103.98. If I'm supposed to have 103.98 GB, why do I only have 68.21 GB available? I double and triple checked the size of everything on the disk and I still should have about 30GB more than I do. The 30GB just disappeared.
I tried verifying the disk in Disk Utility and got:
2009-06-14 11:12:33 -0400: Verifying volume “SHADUSMEDIA”
Starting verification tool: 2009-06-14 11:12:33 -0400
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for LOG_LEVEL: 2
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for UBLIO_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for PROBE_DISABLED: 0
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for MOUNTRDISKSENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for NFCONV_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for ALWAYS_RECOVER: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ntfs-3g script invoked with command line "/System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/ntfs-3g.util" "-v" "/dev/disk1s1"
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Invoking user: MP
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Entering function Verify.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ** No NTFS file system checks have been implemented yet.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ** Reporting that the volume is fine without checking anything.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Reporting that the volume is fine, even though that may not be the case (no fs checks performed).
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Returning from function Verify.
Verifying tool completed: 2009-06-14 11:12:42 -0400
So it appears that it's only telling me that it's fine without even checking. I then tried repair disk and got the error message:
2009-06-14 11:14:25 -0400: Verify and Repair volume “SHADUSMEDIA”
Starting repair tool: 2009-06-14 11:14:25 -0400
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for LOG_LEVEL: 2
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for UBLIO_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for PROBE_DISABLED: 0
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for MOUNTRDISKSENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for NFCONV_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for ALWAYS_RECOVER: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ntfs-3g script invoked with command line "/System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/ntfs-3g.util" "-y" "/dev/disk1s1"
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Invoking user: MP
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Entering function Repair...
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Marking volume to be checked at next Windows boot.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] "/usr/local/bin/ntfsfix" "" currently disabled.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ** /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix has been disabled because of volume corruption issues.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ** If you still want to try fixing your volume, use /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix from the command line...
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Returning from function Repair with FSUR_INVAL.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400:
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Disk Utility stopped repairing “SHADUSMEDIA” because the following error was encountered:
Filesystem verify or repair failed.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400:
I tried restarting my iMac and disconnected and reconnecting the cable and that didn't work. I plugged it into my PC and it still says that all the files on my external drive add up to 194.12 GB. Which still means I should have 103.98 GB of free space instead of 68.21 GB.
So I'm stumped now and not quite sure what to do. Here is the information about the external drive from Disk Utility:
Name : SHADUSMEDIA
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk1s1
Mount Point : /Volumes/SHADUSMEDIA
File System : Windows NT Filesystem (NTFS-3G)
Connection Bus : USB
Device Tree : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/USB7@1D,7
Writable : Yes
Capacity : 298.1 GB (320,070,288,384 Bytes)
Free Space : 68.3 GB (73,348,239,360 Bytes)
Used : 229.8 GB (246,722,048,512 Bytes)
Number of Files : 145,472
Number of Folders : 0
Owners Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Owners Off : No
Can Repair Permissions : No
Can Be Verified : Yes
Can Be Repaired : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : No
Supports Journaling : No
Journaled : No
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 1
You can see on there it says I've used 229.8 GB, when I've actually only used 194.12 GB. Here are the specs from System Profiler for my iMac:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B09
SMC Version: 1.8f2
Serial Number: QP6450GKVUX
I'm running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6. If you need any more information just ask, I'd really like to get my 30GB back. Thanks in advance.

Can anyone help?

Time Machine doesn't manage the space on my external drive- no space left

I have a 500GB internal drive and have a 500Gb external firewire drive. I have around 200Gb of music and video files but had been happily letting TM get on with things. Today i started to get an error screen saying that the external drive was out of space and the backup had failed. Does TM not manage the backups and automatically delete the oldest to make space for the newest one?
I'm a little confused and the logic used in the help options seems to point to me either excluding items going forward (which seems counter productive) or buying a new external drive to fill up each month. Can someone please shed some light for me.

My understanding of how this works is that hourly & daily backups "expire" & are automatically removed after 24 hours & one month respectively, but weekly backups never expire -- they are kept, as the preference panel says, until your backup disk is full.
Thus, if your backup drive fills up, TM will try to create space by removing older, unexpired hourly or daily backups (& optionally warn you about this) to make room for new ones, but it will not remove older weekly backups to make room for new hourly or daily ones.
If you think about it, this makes sense: a weekly backup is most likely much larger (in terms of actual file space) & contains many more files than a daily or hourly one, so it would be undesirable to delete a lot of files to make room for relatively few others.
IOW, the drive will eventually fill up with weekly backups & at that point, it is full, period.
Related comments:
I believe there is no danger in using the Leopard Finder to 'delete a file' in the time-stamped folders it exposes. Because of the changes made in the file system to support TM, what happens is only the link in that folder is deleted. Links in any other folders remain unaffected. Only when you remove the last link to the actual file does the file system mark its space unused in the directory, effectively the same as a normal file delete.
This is why just deleting an instance of a TM backed up file won't gain you more than a few bytes of drive space -- only by deleting all instances is the file space of the actual file freed up.
For similar reasons, Disk Utility's 'erase free space' function should be safe to use on a Time Machine volume for security reasons. Just don't use any disk utilities on this or any other Leopard-formatted drive that aren't rated for use with Leopard -- they don't know about the changes in the file system & could really mess things up if (for instance) they try to rebuild the directory structure from scratch.

Erase Free Space vs Reformat Hard Drive

I am getting ready to sell my computer. In the past I have had troubles when I reformatted my hard and then reinstalled the OS. If I use "Erase Free Space" from the Disk Utility and choose 7 pass overwrite should I be confident that all deleted personal information will be securely removed?
Thanks
12" PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 768 MB RAM, Superdrive

It would be simpler, not to mention much, much faster, to do an Erase and Install of OS X. If you've had problems with the hard drive in the past, then I suggest doing the following before installing:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disk. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
After formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Now proceed with the OS X installation. When the installation has completed DO NOT RESTART. Instead simply shut down the computer. When the new owner starts up the computer it will automatically start up in the Setup Assistant as if new out of the box.
Why reward points?(Quoted from Discussions Terms of Use.)
The reward system helps to increase community participation. When a community member gives you (or another member) a reward for providing helpful advice or a solution to their question, your accumulated points will increase your status level within the community.
Members may reward you with 5 points if they deem that your reply is helpful and 10 points if you post a solution to their issue. Likewise, when you mark a reply as Helpful or Solved in your own created topic, you will be awarding the respondent with the same point values.

Unable to Turn Off File Vault - I don't have enough Free Space on my System Drive.. Any Advise?

I am trying to Turn-Off File Vault on my MacBook Pro. The Following Message Appears: There isin't enough Space on your Harddrive to Turn File Vault Off.
It requires an additional 28.7Gb of Free Disc Space on my System Drive to proceed... I currently only have 4,78Gb of Space available on my System Drive..
Any advise on how to do this??

Better yet, could you adjust the size of the partition of your System Partition? I didn't know you had your HD Partitioned, I would really avoid moving the whole Applications folder off it is possible it will mess things up. Maybe give it more room, so that file vault can copy everything over. If that is possible to just take space from the Projects and give it to System, that would be the best option.
Thanks,
Kevin

Cannot Partition Free Space on my external drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for