Partition my Macbook

Question

Hey guys,
My setup:
- Macbook Pro 15" / iMac 27"
- Both on Mac OSX 10.7 Lion
- VMWare Fusion
- Windows 7 in bootcamp - *dives away* - AND running thru VMWare
So far, so good. Now what I would like to do is set up a third partition to be able to clone my OSX and test updates in this secondary OSX system before applying them on my primary. (Gosh, I wonder why...)
So, questions:
1. How do I divide my main (Mac) partition savely without disturbing my primary installation nor the bootcap Win 7 partition?
2. How do I clone my primary OS to this secondary partition in such a way that it is still bootable?
3. How do I make his new secondary Mac bootable partiotion be known to the boot disk dialog in SysPrefs?
Thanks in advance,
Gerard

Answer 1

GerardFromUlrum wrote:
1. How do I divide my main (Mac) partition savely without disturbing my primary installation nor the bootcap Win 7 partition?
Open Disk Utility. Choose the drive from the list (not any of its volumes indented below that). Click on the "Partitions" tab. Grab the resize handle at the bottom right of the Mac partition & move it upward, reducing its size until it is roughly ½ the original size. (You may not be able to do this, depending on how much of the Mac partition is already in use & how it is laid out on the drive. If you can't, you won't be able to create enough space for the clone.) Click the + button below the partition display & add a second Mac partition in the space you created, using the same Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume scheme as the original. Click Apply.
2. How do I clone my primary OS to this secondary partition in such a way that it is still bootable?
The easiest way is to use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! Each has simple instructions for its use but basically you just select the source & target volumes from a list they provide. Each automatically makes the cloned volume bootable.
3. How do I make his new secondary Mac bootable partiotion be known to the boot disk dialog in SysPrefs?
The OS takes care of that automatically. When you open the Startup Disk system preference, all available bootable startup volumes are shown.
Note that you can also choose which volume to start from by holding down the Option key on start up. This also gives you a choice of all available startup volumes, but just for that startup, without changing the default one set in the system preference.