Expand Size of Second Partition - OS X Lion

Resurrecting for Lion the partition resizing problem, previously discussed on archived Leopard posts.
When you have created two partitions in an os / x journaled volume for data storage and backups. You want to shrink partition #1 and give the freed space to partition #2. Simple, right? But no. When you try to use the new space created and increase the size of partition #2, you can't!
On Leopard OS X, it was stated by several super users that the only way to expand partition #2 in Disk Utility was to erase it.
But.. if you are like me and have, let's say, 1.5 Terabytes of media files in disk #2, that VERY time consuming for Mac users.
OS X Lion experts - is that erasure still necessary?
I think most users, myself included, don't feel safe using command line methods, diskutil etc. to repartition / resize, due to the risk of deleting data.
I actually do have all the files backed up elsewhere already - just wish I could have more flexibility partitioning my archive volume partitions.
Here's a previous post from a few years ago on the same subject: https://discussions.apple.com/message/11170907#11170907
OS X hints - same issue identified without Disk Utility solution found (image attached)
http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=91972
Thanks everyone,
Doug
Lion 10.7.2, 3 Macbooks, 1 iMac.. all Intel Core 2 or Quad

You can also try 3d party tools like iPartition. I used this before, but it can be dangerous & would still recommend backups. But it is very easy to use.
Take a look at the os x partition tools here which have lots of user downloads and high ratings:
http://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/partition/downloads

Similar Messages

I have a 15" MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion installed. I have partitioned the hard drive into two partitions. Is it possible to install Snow Leopard on the second partition? If so how do I do it?

I have a 15" MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion installed. I have partitioned the hard drive into two partitions. Is it possible to install Snow Leopard on the second partition? If so how do I do it?

If your MacBook Pro had Snow Leopard on it at one time then sure. (Early 2011 or earlier)
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
Obviously choose the second partition to install into. It has to be OS X Extended journaled formatted in Disk Utility (BootCamp software makes it a MSDOS/FAT32 formatted partition if you used that to partition with)
If it's a Early 2011 or Late 2011 that came with 10.7, it's possible, but it's not easy.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3264421?start=0&tstart=0
If you can't install Snow Leopard, there is a thread over at MacRumors how to run Snow Leopard in a virtual machine program under 10.7 or 10.8

Boot older version of mac as a second partition

Hi I'm running OS X Yosemite on my mac currently and want to make a partition so that I can boot OS X Lion. I have the InstallESD.dmg file and a 4.7GB re-writtable DVD that I've burnt it to and I have created the second partition ready for the operating system to be loaded onto. As far as I can tell, I just need to hold Alt while the mac restarts for me to select the DVD as the startup disk for the installation to start. When I click on the disk however, it just boots into the regular Yosemite startup disk. I want to install Lion from the disk I've created onto my second partition.
Any ideas?
Many thanks,
Dan

It won't boot from the DVD. What you need to do is put it on an 8 GB USB flash drive properly partitioned and formatted for OS X.
Make Your Own Mavericks, Mountain/Lion Installer
After downloading the installer you must first save the Install Mac OS X application. After the installer downloads DO NOT click on the Install button. Go to your Applications folder and make a copy of the installer. Move the copy into your Downloads folder. Now you can click on the Install button. You must do this because the installer deletes itself automatically when it finishes installing.
2. Get a USB flash drive that is at least 8 GBs. Prep this flash drive as follows:
Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
After DU loads select your flash drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the leftside list. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
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.
Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to an hour depending upon the flash drive size.
Use DiskMaker X to put your installer clone onto the USB flash drive. Wait for the process to complete which will take quite some time.

Cannot resize "Macintosh HD" after deleting second partition: OS 10.9.4

I have partitioned my Macbook Pro in order to see if I could install Snow Leopard on one of the partitions, the main HD running Mavericks.
Sadly, my late 2013 Mackbook Pro is not compatible with Snow Leopard (or at least I was unable to determine how to prepare the partition in order that the snow leopard install disc would run successfully). At any rate, after this failed experiment, I deleted the partition I created for snow lion using disc utilities. The problem I am having now is that I am unable to resize the single "partition" to the full size of the drive. I read this thread, Unable to delete second partition, and it suggests booting the mac in recovery mode in order to restore to a backed up version of the HD, however this is suggested as a work around for not being able to delete a partition, which is not my case. Again, my problem is simply that once I have deleted the second partition, I am unable to have the single partition assume the full space of the drive. Any suggestions short of a complete re-install?

Here's the disc utilities snapshot after I deleted the partition that took up the space in the lower part of the quadrant. I'd like the MacIntosh HD to subsume the space leftover by the deleted partition.
a

I've lost the use of Appleworks in 10.9.2. Is it possible to partition the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro and install an older Mac OS (10.6.8) on the second partition with OS 10.9.2 on the other?

I've lost the use of Appleworks by upgrading to 10.9.2.
Is it possible to partition the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro and install an older Mac OS (10.6.8) on the second partition with OS 10.9.2 on the other? I'd like to be able to boot to the older OS when I need Appleworks and few other applications that aren't available on OS 10.9.2.
Any suggestions?
Thank you for your help.

Hello again, WZZZ,
Here's an update. I was successful in creating two partitions on my internal drive, and in installing OS 10.6.6 on the second partition, as per your guidence. I now have it up to 10.6.8 with all the security updates and AppleWorks. A great thing.
Some thoughts:
• The partitioning had one hitch; it failed at first. But once I "repaired" the disc with Disc Utility the partitioning went thru.
• The partitioning took a long time in 'resizing the partition.' A few hours I think it was. Lots of progress bar watching.
• If I had it to do again, I'd size the two partitions differently. My original data was occupying about 230 Gb of the 320 Gb disc. I made the new partitions share the space, about 230 and 75Gb. That left very little available space for the main disc. I ought to have put some breathing room in there. As it is, it's an incentive to clean up all those files, especially all those iTunes files. I now have about 10% of available space there and mean to continue deleting.
So, all in all a good project that got me where I wanted to go. Thank you for your help.
Appreciatively,
wallah

Second hand iMac - Reinstall Lion

I have a friend who purchased a 2010 iMac that was originally shipped with Snow Leopard but was later upgraded to Lion by the original owner.
He would like to wipe this system clean and reinstall Lion, but I believe he will have to download his own copy of Lion from the Mac App Store using his Apple ID and PW so that he "owns" this new copy, as opposed to trying to use Lion Recovery with the exsisting copy of Lion purchased by the original owner. Is that correct?
Secondly, the original owner partitioned the HD and installed Windows which the new owner does not want. Am i correct in assuming that when he reinstalls the fresh copy of Lion that will reformat the HDD thus erasing the partition and eliminating the Windows partition? Or are there aditional steps he needs to take to erase the partition?
Thanks

Joseph Albanese2 wrote:
I have a friend who purchased a 2010 iMac that was originally shipped with Snow Leopard but was later upgraded to Lion by the original owner.
He would like to wipe this system clean and reinstall Lion, but I believe he will have to download his own copy of Lion from the Mac App Store using his Apple ID and PW so that he "owns" this new copy, as opposed to trying to use Lion Recovery with the exsisting copy of Lion purchased by the original owner. Is that correct?
Yes, he will have to purchase his own version of Lion from the App Store using his Apple ID/PW. But I believe he will need to install SL (10.6.8) after wiping the drive then purchase Lion.
Secondly, the original owner partitioned the HD and installed Windows which the new owner does not want. Am i correct in assuming that when he reinstalls the fresh copy of Lion that will reformat the HDD thus erasing the partition and eliminating the Windows partition? Or are there aditional steps he needs to take to erase the partition?
Thanks
Reinstalling Lion will not erase any partitions. That will need to be done via Disk Utilities. What I would do is reboot with the original machine's SL DVD, go into Disk Utilities and wipe the entire drive and repartition to just one partition. Then install SL on that partition and purchase Lion from the App Store using his Apple ID.

Time Machine backup failure on 60Gb iPhoto Library on second partition

I had 1 partition on my Macbook Pro (2010). I have several users on the mac and I use fast switching for them. All users use same iPhoto Library and iTunes Media - they are situation in a separate folder in my partition root. My Time Capsule was setup to backup everything and it actually did it well.
Sometime ago I started to find a solution to avoid file permission problem - when different users add files/photos, they have permission to delete/change for them only. This caused some unwanted behavior. I read a lot of forums and basically the most appropriate solution is to create a separate partition on the same HDD and remove checkbox on it to support "Owner".
So I did it - created new partition. Then I moved iTunes and iPhoto to new partition and then I started backup again. Unfortunately, it failed. It took me 2 days to understand that it actually fails on iPhoto Library - all other staff works ok. But as soon as I allow to backup iPhoto Library, it starts backing up and shows some progress, but when 1-2 Gb (or sometimes 100-500 MB) complete it shows that "Backup failed - ... this might be temporary problem..".
I did not manage to resolve this - so I removed partition and reverted everything back by copying iTunes library and iPhoto library to external drive and then back after removing second partition. When I enabled backing up, everything worked great again - no problem.
So here is the question - why backup failed on iPhoto library when it was on second partition? Are the any ideas?

Move/backup/move back/backup did not fix the problem. TM still didn't backup the missing directories.
I was finally able to convince TM to do the right thing by following the procedure described here:
http://www.nzmac.com/quick-tips/time-machine/how-do-i-reset-time-machine.html
This isn't a solution because I still don't know what caused TM to think that it backed up something that it didn't back up. But the article was suggested by a friend of mine in IT who also owns a few Macs. After following the procedure and running TM again I can see all of the previously missing files backed up on the ext drive. I also used BackupLoupe (http://www.soma-zone.com/BackupLoupe/) to browse the files that were actually copied by the last backup. I see that TM copied the directories that I knew were missing and two other directories that I did not know were missing.
At this point I think my TM backup is complete. But now I'm on the lookout for a better backup solution. Until I find it I'll need to periodically compare backup sizes to make sure that TM keeps doing its job.

MDT formated second partition instead of first one

Hi
I have diskpart script in preinstallation task sequence
SELECT disk 0
SELECT partition 1
FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="System" QUICK
EXIT
And I have "Install Operating System" step configured to install OS on first disk and first partition.
Everything works great, but there are some old WinXP computers that have OS files on disk C: and boot files on disk D:
So, the second partition has boot files and is being active. MDT wizard wiped out this partition and installed OS there. Why?
How to prevent it?

Thank for replies.
Keith Garner, my C: drive is my first partition for sure. Let me explain little bit more.
What I had before:
two partitions/volumes:
1st partition according to diskpart -- Volume C: -- 200GB size -- OS files (Windows, Program Files, etc.)
2nd partition according to diskpart -- Volume D: -- 260Gb size -- Boot files (ntldr, boot.ini, etc) -- Active
What I have after:
1st partition -- Volume C: -- 200GB -- no files (seems to be formatted)
2nd partition -- Volume D: -- 260GB -- old data is deleted, only new OS files (Windows, Program Files, etc) -- --- still Active
fapw, yes I want to preserve second volume. And actually I do it. It works great except some old computers, that were prepared many years ago with boot files
on the second partition.
Unless you explicitly say to not create extra partitions your OSDisk is not the first partition.
Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Boot from second partition on usb hard drive

I have a time machine external usb drive. I have created a second partition of 8GB on this drive and restored OS X Install ESD 10.7.5 to this second partition so that I can easily rebuild if necessary. I would like to be able to boot from this second partition. When I hold down Option key at startup, I see the external drive as an option, but the iMac wants to boot from the Time Machine Backup partition, rather than the Lion Partition. It doesn't give me the choice of the second, bootable partition on this drive. Is it possible to do this?
[Mac 24" early 2009, running 10.7.5 Lion]

rchealey wrote:
Curiously when you boot from this partition, you get virtually the exact same experience as you do when booting from the recovery partition except that the recovery partition tends to suggest that it will download and install Lion, whereas booting from the partition containing the install doesn't mention download.
That's normal behavior. The Recovery HD only has enough code to go to Apple's servers and DL the installer; whereas, the InstallESD contains everything. Do note, however, that running either will check Apple's servers for additional components, whatever those might be. Thus, Internet access is required to do either.

I have created a new partition on the Mac HD for Lion as I would like to dual boot. Do I need to install Snow Leopard on that partition before installing Lion? If so, can I use one of my Time Machine backups to do this?

I have created a new partition on the Mac HD for Lion as I would like to dual boot. Do I need to install Snow Leopard on that partition before installing Lion? If so, can I use one of my Time Machine backups to do this?

zoominnana wrote:
Can I set up 2 different time capsule backups? one for the lion partition and one for the snow leopard partition?
No, you can't partition a Time Capsule's internal HD. Both partitions will back up to the same sparse bundle. keeping the backups for each partition separate.
Time Machine will not take the two OSX partitions as two different computers, but for best results, exclude the Snow Leopard drive from backups on the Lion partition, and exclude the Lion partition from backups on the Snow Leopard partition.
There may be some files on the Lion partition that Time Machine on Snow Leopard won't like, among other things. See #10 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions for details.

How to create a second partition on the harddisk?

Hello To All Members!
I recently got some viruses on my laptop. So I had to use my recovery cd to recover my system.
Now the problem is that I asked me for the partition where are the files which are being extracted. I marked it to 30GB.
So, windows is working fine but my Rest of 50GB will not be shown.
I thought that the recovery cd will make a new second partition as well, but it did not. Now how to make some other partitions?
Second question related to first one is how much time i can use this recovery disk. I mean will the windows remain genuine?????
For the partition problem i dont know of some possible solutions cause i needed three partitions, 1st of 30GB(Windows Default) and other two of 25GB.
The Best Solution coming in my mind is to make any windows ME or 98 bootable cd and run fdisk to create the remaining partitions.
But it is makes some new questions in my mind. Do i have to use a recovery cd again? If yes than I will not use this process again cause it will ask for partition to extract files of windows and i will choose 30GB again.
And again it will remove additional partitions.
Please help me and clear the questions coming in my mind..
[Edited by: admin on 31-Mar-2007 08:32]

Hi there,
do know for the UlltimateBootCD4Win? This from CD bootable WinXP-BartPEedition with additional tools gives you the ability to make such things like partitioning, backup or formatting your HDD.
It has many more applications which help you to maintain your system without booting your original OS.
So I think that this CD will solve your partitioning issues.
Heres a link: www.ubcd4win.com/
Just try it and tell me your opinion.
Nice weekend and greetings from the sunny south ;)

Can't Mount Second Partition on External Hard Drive

I have a 1 TB Seagate External HD that I have two partitions on...a 700 GB one for Time Machine and 300 GB for my personal files (called Nick's External). I was initially having trouble with it and transferred the files from the Nick's External partition to a Western Digital external. I then reformatted the Seagate one into two partitions (Mac OS Extended) and transferred everything back. After attempting a time machine backup and it seizing up, I attempted to eject both partitions. It wasn't done correctly, and now when I plug in the external I can see the drive in Disk Utility and see the first Time Machine partition, but the second partition only comes up as the disk identifier (disk2s3). It cannot be repaired.
I've tried running Disk Warrior but it only sees the first partition (Time Machine) and not the partition I actually have files on (Nick's External). I am also unable to mount the second partition, either through Disk Utility or Terminal.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!

Brad Cook wrote:
Disk Utility stopped reparing "Time Machine." Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Does this mean the drive itself is failing?
Possibly, but not necessarily. The File System on the disk was so badly corrupted that Disk Utility couldn't fix it. That might indicate a problem with the drive. It's not unusual for consumer-quality (ie, inexpensive) drives to fail after 2-3 years, although many will run for several years. It's a bit of a crapshoot.
Before this problem happened, both partitions dropped off the Finder and the light on the drive went off.
Whatever caused that is another good possibility -- if a drive is improperly disconnected, OSX can't "close it out" properly, and that can cause damage to the file system. Sometimes Disk Utility can fix it, sometimes it can't. And sometimes heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair apps like DiskWarrior can fix things Disk Utility can't.
A power dip or spike could have caused it, or an overheated electronic component, etc. If it has it's own power supply, be sure it's on a good (ie, not cheap) surge protector or U.P.S. system.
Otherwise, keep an eye on it. If you don't have "secondary" backups, this would be an excellent time to get another drive for that purpose. See #27 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions for some suggestions.
Bottom line: personally, I'd not trust my only backups to that drive.
(But then, I'd never trust my backups to any single drive, no matter how new or high-quality.)

How can we know the size of the partition

HI,
can any one give me a query or procedure to know the size of a partition in a table in bytes
Thanks in advance

user8884944 wrote:
HI,
can any one give me a query or procedure to know the size of a partition in a table in bytes
Thanks in advanceQuery dba_segments
select bytes, segment_name, partition_name from dba_segments
where segment_name = 'Table_name' and partition_name = 'Name of partition'
and owner = 'Owner'Regards
Anurag

Is it possible to change the size of a partitioned hard drive?

I use an iBook G4 (PowerPC) and partitioned an external hard drive. Is it possible to adjust the size of the partition without losing the contents of the external drive? If so, how?
Thanks!

Hi The Zach;
Please read the requirements of these applications for resizing partitions very carefully! Most of them suggest that you back up prior to using them.
After reading all of these warning rather then using any of these applications what I simply do is the backup first then change the partitioning with Disk Utilities and restore. I find this method to be quick and inexpensive.
Allan

Tecra A8-104: How to create a second partition on HDD

Hello.
i had to use the recovery disk, and i deleted by mistake my initial (two) partitions of the HDD. :(( now i have only one.
Can somebody tell me how can i fix that?
I want 2 partitions not one. 10x

Hello
If operating system is already preinstalled and configured you can now use third part software to split HDD and create second partition. The best tool for doing this is Partition Magic.
If you want to install OS again using delivered recovery DVD there you can find option for doing this. Start notebook and press C button. Keep it down for few seconds. This will force your notebook to use CD/DVD driver as first boot device. Simply follow the menu on the screen.

Expand Size of Second Partition - OS X Lion

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