Disk Utility & Partition Query

I've been asked to help someone get to grips with using a Mac (pretty sure it's running 10.5.8). The machine was set up for them about a year ago but has been little used since. Its internal hard drive has been partitioned into two and from the contents of the smaller partition, my guess is the intention was to use it for a second copy (I hesitate to call it a backup) of important files. Due to lack of knowledge this has not been done so the files on the small partition can if necessary be deleted. My question is, is it possible to delete the files on the small partition then combine the two partitions back to be just one internal hard drive volume without destroying the data (OS and user files etc.) on the large partition? (We'll then get an external drive to use Time Machine for a more conventional backup).

Yes, provided the small partition is the second partition with the OS X boot volume being the first partition.
Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder. Select the topmost entry for the drive in the left sidebar then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. You will see a graphical picture of the two partitions on the drive. Assuming the small partition is the bottom partition you're good to go. Click in the rectangle box representing the second partition. It will become outlined in a darker blue. Click on the Delete [-] button in the lower left corner. The partition will be removed and you will now see a gray area instead. At the lower right corner of the remaining partition is a triangular shaped sizing gadget. Grab it with the mouse and drag it all the way to the bottom of the partition area. Now click on the Apply button and wait patiently until the process is finished. If the procedure is successful then quit DU.

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I have a 32GB thumb dr and I wanted to encrypt it. I used disk utility, Partition, apply. Then went back and tried to encrypt it and it still ask that GUID be setup on it. What must I do now, or how is the better question?

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What do I do? Please help me. (Mountian Lion, Disk Utility, Partition, Boot Camp)

I was trying to upgrade my snow leopard to mountian lion on my macbook pro 13". I didn't fully understand how to do it so I googled and found out i had to make a partition with a specific format. Prior, I did a bootcamp so I can install window 7. I partitioned my macbook with window 7 and osx. When i went to disk utility i didn't have enough space so i deleted my window 7 partition. ( i think i did it unproperly hence i have the problem). When i deleted it, it gave a random partition disk, my apple partition and the empty space i deleted for my window 7. I basically gave up on my mountian lion installation and restarted my computer. When my computer boots up it comes up with "Non-System disk" "Press any key to reboot".
What i tried was to stick in the mac ox cd in, and the application cd. Both doesn't work. Im trying to find where my window 7 cd is to see if i can restore the partition i deleted. I thats not the solution please help me
UPDATE: Also i was thinking about buying the Macbook Pro 15". With the current condition i have on my macbook pro 13" am i able to recycle it and get some store credit for it?

Once you back into OS X, reboot holding the command option r keys down, or command r keys and use that Disk Utility to repair your drive or MacintoshHD partition.
Then reboot normally and use that Disk Utiltiy to grab the little corner resizer of your MacintoshHD partition and drag it over the gray space at the bottom to reclaim the deleted Windows BootCamp partition.
If you want to try Mountain Lion, I suggest you do so on a extenral powered drive.
1: Format a external powered drive in Disk Utility Partition 1, Option: GUID Format OS X Extended Journaled and give it name like Mountain Lion (formatting a drive erases all data on it)
2: Download to Snow Leopard, Carbon Copy Cloner and use it's default settings to clone your MacintoshHD partition to the external drive.
3: Reboot the machine holding the option/alt key held down, boot from the clone.
4: Use that clone of Snow Leopard to upgrade to Mountain Lion via AppStore.
5: If and when your ready, you can boot from the 10.8 clone and reverse clone or clone Snow Leopard to another drive or whatever you need.
Most commonly used backup methods

Disk Utility - Partition map needs repair because a data partition needs loader space.

I just finished setting up both my OSX and Windows installs from scratch after fitting an SSD, which in-turn was right before my logic board died and Apple replaced it, now it looks like I have some sort of hard drive issue brewing.
This was my plan for the SSD, and how it currently displays in Disk Utility although that wasn't the case earlier:
And in Terminal:
My intention was to have two boot partitions for each OS, 'Macintosh HD' and 'Win 7 Pro' and a third shared data partition 'Projects' on the SSD, which I made in Drive Genius after installing Boot Camp. I don't want Macintosh HD accessible from Windows because I'll be using Paragon HFS+ or MacDrive to give write access and don't want OSs stomping on other OSs turf, hence needing three partitions. Everything looked fine until I just checked Disk Management under windows and realised it couldn't see the Projects volume. Even though it's fine in OS X, it was just marked black/unallocated space.
So I booted back into OSX, all my files look fine so I ran Disk Utility and the Partition tab looked really odd - unfortunately I didn't get a screenshot. All volumes reported their size correctly but visually, Macintosh HD took up most of the drive. I could see 'Windows 7 Pro' under this, but the Partition Layout section had a scrollbar, which if I scrolled down showed 'Projects' squished into a tiny gap at the bottom. I ran a Verify, which reported no problems, and at some time since the Partition Layout has reverted to how it should look (as in the screenshot above), with 'Projects' book-ended by "Macintosh HD' and 'Windows 7 Pro'.
Now when I run a Verify on Macintosh HD or Projects volumes, it says there's no problem, but if I run one on the drive, I get this message:
Volume Macintosh HD on disk0s2 has 0 bytes of trailing loader space and it needs 134217728 bytes
Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting
Error: Partition map needs repair because a data partition needs loader space.
I've only managed to find one other mention of this error here, but the fix is not relevant to me because I don't have Sophos installed. I've tried Single User/Safe Mode but it just boots into normal mode, so I can't do a fsck -fy.
** /dev/rdisk0s2 (NO WRITE)
Can't open /dev/rdisk0s2: Permission denied
That value in bytes is exactly 128mb, so I suspect the problem lies with one of the invisible partitions that show up in iPartition and Disk Management under Windows, but not in Disk Utility. I have backups and I suspect the root of the problem is partitioning in iPartition after installing Boot Camp, but I've never had issues with this approach in the past so I'm wary of just giving up and reinstalling Windows again will be massive hassle because I no longer have a SuperDrive and last time it refused to install from USB.
Anyone have any idea what's going on? It seems like the sort of issue Disk Utility should just handle, at least in Recovery mode, but it's not playing ball. It also doesn't seem like a massive problem since my files all look fine and performance is OK, so I'm reluctant to do anything major.
I'll update with a shot of the drive in Disk Management from Windows in a few minutes, in case that sheds light on anything. Thanks!

Similar issue here. I manually partitioned my hard disk for triple boot (using Gparted on Linux), then everything was just fine until I ran bootcamp, to do something as simple as create a boot USB.
I get the same error as a result and have to work my way into booting, by resorting first to a Linux live USB, then restarting from the live USB, to finally reach my rEFInd boot manager, or whichever boot manager should be initialized at startup.
I suppose that the cause in my case is that some operation "scratched" the protective MBR. See this:
http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.23/23.03/APMtoGPT/index.html
I am hoping to fix it using an external Yosemite installation media: see this guide -
http://www.macworld.com/article/2367748/how-to-make-a-bootable-os-x-10-10-yosemi te-install-drive.html
And as a last resort to reinstall.
I'll admit I am negatively surprised. I need this computer for professional reasons, and for the sake of "preserving the integrity of OSX", measures defined by Apple instead tend to make partitions far easier to damage. And this problem seems to affect a number of users.
As for what I have to go through to fix it: a 5GB download, during which I have to register my credit card to the Apple Store. "Pay first, get your free software next."
IF Disk Utility can fix it, from the external media, then fair enough. The hassle is unpleasant but it files as "a choice".
Otherwise you can file it safely under software design calamity.

Disk Utility Partition Issue- 1Tb Seagate External

Hi All-
I recently received a 1Tb Seagate external hard drive connecting via a Firewire 400 cable. Problem is, it won't let me reformat the thing as a single, continuous partition map. 2 is a problem as well: it only lets me format it if one side of the partition is MS-DOS and the other is OSX Journaled. if both as OSX, then Disk Utility once again fails to partition the drive. Is there some lurking cap on hard drive capacity that the MBP can understand?
Thanks.

I bought recently the Seagate FreeAgent Desk 500 Gb drive (the USB only Windows preformatted model since this one was 150$ cheaper than the made-for-Mac model with FW ports). I had the same problem as you ("one side of the partition is MS-DOS and the other is OSX Journaled"). My friend on an iBook G3 PPC running Panther bought the same model and didn't experience such problems (and was able to upgrade easily from 10.3.9 to 10.4.11 after her initial system backup).
However, I was able to reformat my Seagate drive with Disk Utility and use Time Machine afterwards to backup my entire MacBook Pro but since Disk Utility was showing MS-DOS (FAT) as a volume format for the main external drive, I was worried about future backup problems.
Then I read this recent news on MacFixIt ( http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20090111225651243 ) about this particular issue since the 10.5.6 update and possibly 10.5.5. I followed the instructions (as explained originally in this thread ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8700407& ) and reformatted my USB external drive and everything went smoothly and as it should be. The GUID option did it for me.
Hope it does it for you.

Disk Utility partitions wrong physical drive?

I have two firewire drives... one is daisy-chained to the other. Let's call the one attached directly to my iMac as DiskOne and the drive that's plugged into DiskOne we'll call DiskTwo.
So, I was resizing partitions on DiskTwo using the Disk Utility in Leopard 10.5.2. It's pretty obvious in the interface what physical drive you're on. The resizing of DiskTwo went fine. Looks great.
Afterwards, I then realized that DiskOne had been repartitioned as well. Yikes! 28,000 photos and my iTunes library gone. Poof!
Like I said, the interface in Disk Utility is very clear... I never took action on DiskOne... and yet it's now "empty".
Lesson Learned: Only have one physical drive plugged in/turned on when repartitioning.
I'm optimistic that professional disk recovery will be able to get my files back for me. Didn't use secure erase, nor has anything been written to that drive since.
Just wondering if anyone else has seen this? And if you've "accidentally" partitioned a drive, is there a Apple or third party utility you'd recommend to get those files back?
Thanks!

unfortunately, the nature of this kind of thing is that all directories, file names, and other descriptive info are all gone.
Even if I find my iPhoto library files, they'll be useless as they contain pointers to images files that no longer reside in original directories with their original names.
A data recovery tool just finds every file it can, names it something generic and unique, and in this case, throws all .JPGs in one folder, all .MP4s in another, etc.
Not fun... and reiterates the fact that you really can never be too careful even keeping multiple backups... because even though there's a very high probability that even though all 28,000 photos were found in this case, I'll likely never be whole again b/c I'm gonna hafta sift thru 100,000 recovered .JPGs to attempt to find them. And that's not including the whole out-of-whack iPhoto database that describes files in locations that no longer exist and cannot be recreated.

Disk Utility-Partitioning EXTREMELY slow

I just purchased a 250GB external HD for backups. I want to create two partitions so I have 50GB as a bootable HD clone (using Carbon Copy Cloner) and the remainder to use as ongoing backups with Time Machine. In Disk Utility, selecting First Aid works normally. But selecting Partition is extremely slow going. I click on Partition and it's gray, not blue. Only after 2 minutes do I get the Partition info. I select the 2 Partitions drop down. That takes another 2 minutes to activate. Naming the 1st partition takes the same time and so forth. Why? I've repaired disk permissions but it still behaves like this.

The hard drive I'm partitioning is a new external one and it's empty. Do you mean that my internal hard drive (which has about 40GB of data) could slow down partitioning of the ext. HD?

Disk Utility Partition

I need to reformat an external hard drive. Disk Utility does not show a Partition tab, which is what I believe I need to do this. Does this mean my version of Disk Utility is faulty, and if so does anyone have ideas as to how I can fix it?
Thanks

Hi
See http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4421396 as it seems you need to click on the name of the external disk (e.g 149.1 GB LaCie etc) for the Partition tab to come up. Because it's an external drive, it shouldn't require DU being run off the install disk.
Steve

Apply Disk Utility Partition Changes not Applying

Hey Folks
I've a 2013 iMac with a 3TB Fusion Drive - Currently the HDD is split 2.48 TB as the primary HD - and 521 GB as FreeSpace.
What I want to do is format this 521 GB section for Windows Bootcamp - The Bootcamp Utility created this split in the first place; but after sitting for 5 hrs it appeared to feeze mid-process and after checking for advice online; I reluctantly force-quit the utility. Next I attempted formatting this HD section in Disk Utlity as MS-DOS (FAT) but when I choose Apply - and click Partition - absolutely nothing happens - and no changes take place.
When I re-open Bootcamp Utility - it's seemingly unaware of this 521GB of Free-space and only sees the primary Partition; which I do not want to further split up - remember it's Bootcamp stalling in the middle of the partition process that caused this mess in the first place.
I've also tried booting form the Windows 7 Disk to reformat and Partition this Free-space - but the installer just spits back the message that the partition is GPT and Windows 7 requires NTFS. So next - I bought and installed Camptune X - which now adds the NT file-system formats directly into Disk Utility but since I cannot 'Apply' these changes - it makes no difference whatsoever.
To troubleshoot - I've already repaired my HD permissions, and repaired the drives, booted into recovery mode - done the same steps - but am now at a totally loss what else I can do to successfully create a Windows Partition - if Disk Utility simply won't Apply any of the changes I select.
Any suggestions or advice yourselves could give me would be hugely appreciated.

Hey Folks
Still no luck - I've now tried using iPartition to add a new Windows formatted Partition in the area that is currently designated 'Free Space' and I get this error message.
"iPartition was unable to get write access to the device .... This may mean the device is write protected, that you do not have permission to access it, or that it is in use by something else. "
Does this mean I can unlock the write access through a command in the terminal and return to Disk Utility or indeed iPartition to add the Windows Partition I need?
Some advice would be hugely appreciated.

Problems with Disk Utility - Partition of my HD cannot be repaired.

Sorry, I rarely post here and not sure if I am posting in the right forum.
I have an issue with using the disk utility on my Mac OS X 10.4.1
I am trying to recover a partition on my hardrive.
Image here (on the right):
http://img118.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture1ztl.png
I don't know how to recover HD2_Personal. I can't verify or repair it. Any recovery software avaliable?
Thanks for your attention.
Message was edited by: jbnk-w

Ya, but you are talking about some systems files, I think.
Actually I am talking about any file. I'd hate to discover too late that that I'd copied over a corrupt data file, erased my drive, and had ruined my chances of perhaps repairing it and getting a good copy.
If he/she can backup needed files, reformat, install new system, update, and then copy needed files back. This to me, takes less time, and you got a nice clean new system.
Yes, you have a new system, but if DW works it will take a lot less time than what you're talking about doing, especially since you have to be at the computer doing it all! Install new system, then all the updates, then all the software again, with all their updates, then put all the preference files, etc. back?
I have DW, and I bought it in hopes to recover one file, waste of money, think its version 4 dot something
I don't know the versions offhand. Make sure it is the correct version for your OS.
gladly give it away.
I'd take you up on that!

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

Disk Utility Partition Error

I updated from Tiger to Leopard, and in the last 2 wks noticed I had little remaining space on my hard disk. After checking in Disk Utility, however, I found that my hard disk partition had reduced from what should be a full 160Mb, to a mere 52Mb or so, but there is NOT another partition (just a grey area for the rest of the blank space)! When I try and increase my hard drive partition a little or even to the full amount, I get an error:
"Partition failed with error:
MediaKit reports partition (map) too small"
I've tried updating to 10.5.2, OS is totally up to date, and have tried starting up from Leopard install disk and using Disk Utility on that to try and increase partition, but all with same error.
Not sure if related, but when I try fix permissions, there are a few unfixed problems regarding ACL's (?), but no other issues.
Message was edited by: gwa75

I am having the same problems on 10.5.2. I have a maxtor onetouch 500gb, I reformatted it to work with time machine, and the partition on the disk is only 382.4gb, with a lot of grey space showing up. When I try to expand the Onetouch partition or create a new partition to fill in the space, it keeps giving me
"MediaKit error: size of disk too small" or something along those lines!

Disk Utility Partition Problem

I have an 6-month old 80GB Samsung SP0822N 80GB HD I was using on a PC and decide to erase everything on it and use it as my backup. However disk utility only sees it as a 31.5GB hd when ever I try to erase or partition!!! What do you is going on here?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Clyde

OK. You really didn't answer all of my question 2. Sounds like it was partitioned into 2 or more partitions on the PC and at least one partition was formatted as NTFS. Mac OS X can read, but not write to, NTFS volumes. You might want to try reformatting the entire drive as FAT32 on a PC, then seeing if you can reformat it as Mac OS Extended (HFS+) on the Mac.
You might also want to contact the manufacturer of the enclosure to see what they think.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

Disk Utility : Partition / Raid or Raid / Partition ?

I have two external USB drives that I'm attempting to set up using Disk Utility.
I'd like to create either
- one RAID1 set with two partitions, or
- two RAID1 sets with one partition
however I'm not having much luck with either option. Is either scenario possible?

After some experimentation, I seem to have come up with a kludge ...
Partition both disks into identical volumes (A1 = B1, A2 = B2)
Using Disk Utility :
- create RAID Set 1 ( A1 + B1 = RAID1)
- create RAID Set 1 ( A2 + B2 = RAID2)
Error message 'Creating RAID set failed'
Restart ...
Using Disk Utility :
- click on partition A2 (now renamed RAID Slice)
- Erase partition
Upon erasing the partition / RAID slice will remount and the Disk Utility should show two RAID sets. A cursory examination of each RAID set's behavior leads me to believe it is simply a bug in Disk Utility that prevents the creation of two RAID sets on the same disk pair.

Will a complete Mavericks reinstallation fix disk utility partition problems?

I tried to delete a bootcamp partition after a failed attempt at installing windows 7. I only got as far as the partition selection screen during the initial windows installation. I actually clicked "delete" for the bootcamp partition and it essentially erased the partition but it still shows up. All partition options are now greyed out. I cannot make any changes. The bootcamp partition still appears but I cannot click on any of the options. I am beyond frustrated at this point after researching the issue for hours. I haven't attempted a reinstall yet because I'm not even sure if that will help.

When you don't do things correctly, be prepared for bad endings. Reinstalling won't fix a thing. You need to backup your OS X volume, if you can. Then you must repartition the drive and reinstall OS X or restore the backup.
It would help to know exactly which iMac model your have. It would also be helpful if you would open Disk Utility, select your main hard drive entry (shows mfgr.'s name and size) then click on the Partition tab in Disk Utility's main window. Now take a snapshot of the Disk Utility window and post it here.
To post screen shot do this:
Press COMMAND-SHIFT-4 which will change the cursor to crosshairs.
Hold down the mouse button and use the crosshairs to select the part of the screen you wish to capture.
Release the button and the image will be saved to your Desktop.
Click on the Camera icon in the toolbar of the forum message editor.
Drag the image onto the Choose File button and click on the Insert button.

Disk Utility & Partition Query

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