Reformatting hard drive without deleting files

Hi, I have a hard drive in one of the bays on my early 2008 Mac Pro that is formatted to ‘Mac OS Extended’ this hard disk contains my itunes library. I want to reformat the drive to ‘Mac OS Extended - Journaled’ Can I do this without losing all the existing files? Or should I make a copy, erase the drive then copy the files back onto the new journaled drive?

You aren't reformatting. But I would always always no matter what clone my system and have two or three backup sets and different types for redundancy. Bootable backup clones are easy to maintain and handy, say 10.;8.5 didn't go right, or you want to hold off on iTunes 11.1 or even test it on another system drive first. Clone has many good uses.
To turn journaling on and off using Disk Utility:
Open Disk Utility (located in Applications/Utilities).
Select the volume to enable or disable journaling on.
To enable, click the Enable Journaling button or choose Enable Journaling from the File menu.
To disable journaling, choose Disable Journaling from the File menu.
Note: In Mac OS X 10.4 and later, press Option to make Disable Journaling visible in the File menu.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2355
http://www.bing.com/search?q=Disk+Utility+Journaling+HFS

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I have been using an external hard drive on a PC, I have now moved over to a macbookpro, is there a way to reformat the hard drive without deleting the files currently on the hard drive?

I have been using an external hard drive on a PC, I have now moved over to a macbookpro, is there a way to reformat the hard drive without deleting the files currently on the hard drive?

if it's fat32 then the mac can read it without problems
if it's ntfs then you can install programs which make it possible to write to it too otherwise it's read only

Is there a way I can use my external hard drive without the files being transferred on to my computer? as like like my iTunes music being on my hard drive without them being copied onto my computers hard drive ?

is there a way I can use my external hard drive without the files being transferred on to my computer? as like like my iTunes music being on my hard drive without them being copied onto my computers hard drive ? because i dont have that much memory and i wanted my external hard drive to be the source for my music files and not my computer.

Many users keep their iTunes libraries on external drives. You just have to remember to connect and power up the drive before launching iTunes.
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

How do I reformat hard drive without affecting recovery partition?

I would like to know how I can reformat my Toshiba hard drive without affecting the hidden recovery partition? I would like to get rid of the preinstalled Windows 7 OS and replace it with Windows XP, which is not as bloated. Also, does anyone know of a good 'free' disk scrubber program? I actually have the original 'disk scrubber' software, but the software disk just won't work any more. Finally, I tried to get the computer ready for the drive scrubbing, but I still can't change the disk order on my Toshiba laptop. I did get into the 'bios' screen by hitting the F8 key on startup, which did bring up the 'boot menu' screen. When I selected the cd/dvd drive and then hit the F10 key to save the change, nothing happened! I put in a data disk, but the laptop still booted into the Windows 7 OS. If I can't get the laptop to boot into the cd/dvd drive, I don't think that I can erase the hard drive and put Windows XP on since I wouldn't be able to boot up the laptop with the Windwos XP disk. Is that true? Anyway, without changing the boot order, I can't do anything. Please help! Thanks!

If you use the recovery that is on the hidden partition (hold down the zero key while starting up computer) then your OS reinstall will not affect that hidden partition, just overwrite the c: drive.
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Reformatting External Hard Drive Without Losing Files

I recently switched from a crashed HP to a Macbook and am trying to reformat my external hard drive, but it looks like every option requires me to delete the files on my hard drive. Is there a way to avoid this? I'm a fitness instructor and ALL of my music is on the hard drive...
Thank you!!

Why are you reformatting the drive? Is it formatted in NTFS for Windows? If so, the Mac can read the files off the drive, which is what you'll need to do. Reformatting is a destructive process, so if you want the drive in a different format (such as Mac OS Extended) you will need to copy the files off to another location temporarily and then bring them back once the drive is reformatted. Since the Mac can read the old drive, an external drive formatted Mac OS Extended could be attached as well and the files moved over.
If you don't want to do that, there are some third party options that will allow the Mac to read and write NFTS drives. The downside is that it's more than a bit tricky to do, and the risk of things going wrong when writing is likely why Apple defaults to only reading the NFTS drives and not writing to them.
If you will need to use the drive on both Windows and Mac machines the one "common" format is FAT32. That has its own issues (including a hard and fast 4GB maximum file size) but either OS will read and write the drive without complaint.

How do you resize existing partitions on an external hard-drive without deleting their contents?

Hi, I've got an external hard drive (1 GB Western digital) Which I bought with a view to both storage and time-machine functions.
Initially, I partitioned the hard drive such that I had 750 GB for the time-machine segment, and 250 GB for the storage segment.
Now that my storage is approaching the 250 GB limit, and my time machine is only taking up 80 of the alloted 750 GB, I want to transfer some of that space across so that I'll have more room for storage.
When attempting this on disk utility, I can reduce the size of the time machine partition, but I am unable to increase the size of the storage partition.
Can someone please advise what I should do to sort this out without deleting the contents of each partition.
Regards,
Josh

Well, this is not easily answered. You can shrink existing partitions in order to add additional ones. But in order to add space from one partition to another that can only be done by first removing the lower partition first. If that partition has data, then it will be lost. Unfortunately, Disk Utility cannot manipulate partitions in place. You need a third-party utility for that, iPartition 3.4.1.
Now with that said I'll pass on a bit of advice. Do not us your Time Machine backup drive for extra storage. External storage and backups should be kept on separate drives. I suggest you get a separate drive for your storage or Time Machine backups.
If you use Disk Utility you can shrink your Time Machine partition, but the only way to put that space in another partition is to first delete the storage partition, then recreate it with a larger capacity.

Hard drive maintenance - deleting files not needed?

I noticed that everytime I download/install a itunes or ipod update, a new folder is created in
C:\WINDOWS\Downloaded Installations
Each folder contains some very large ipod/itunes related files. Do I need these after I've installed the updater? Can I delete them? Do I need to keep only the most recent? Or can I delete that, too?
dell latitude Windows XP

You can delete all of them. However, in order to use the 'repair' option in Add/Remove Programs in the event of an error, you may want to keep the latest version of the installers.

Reformatting hard drive without disk

How do I reformat my internal harddrive without the osx disk, I recieved this laptop while I was in school. It came with the operating system already installed and I never got a OSX disk. I currently run os 10.5.8.

You cannot. I would buy a copy of Snow Leopard. If you need to purchase Snow Leopard, you can still purchase a copy from Apple's online store's telesales agents.[1-800-MY-APPLE (1-800-692-7753) or Customer Service and Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775.] Ask for a Sales Representative.
Third-party sources for Snow Leopard are:
Snow Leopard from Amazon.com
Snow Leopard from eBay
After you install Snow Leopard you will have to download and install the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 to update Snow Leopard to 10.6.8 and give you access to the App Store.
This will be less costly than trying to locate Leopard plus it can put you on track to Lion or Mountain Lion.
Apple - OS X Mountain Lion - Read the technical specifications.
Macs that can be upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion
iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
Xserve (Early 2009)

Can I recover data from a reformatted hard drive? I did not do a back up prior to talking to Apple Support and the guy having me delete the hard drive and start anew. My bad but is all lost??

Can I recover data from a reformatted hard drive? I did not complete a back up prior to talking to Apple Support and the guy having me delete the hard drive (10.5.8) and start anew (10.6.3). My bad but is all lost?? Years of very important information....

You will need to purchase reovery sofware such as such as FileSalvage
http://subrosasoft.com/software/filesalvage
You can download a demo copy that will tell you what it can recover
If you want to recover that you must pay for the software then
When you do the recovery, you will need another disk drive to receive the recovered files
Having install a new operating system on the disk after the retformat is going to gradually reduce the amount of data that this software will be able to recover for you
Allan

How can i reformat my external hard drive without loosing any data?

how can i reformat my external hard drive without loosing any data?

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
It's impossible to format a hard drive without losing the data. One thing you can do before formatting is to copy the files from the external drive to your internal drive, and then, format the external drive. After formatting, copy the files to the external drive again, and everything will be as before formatting it

How can i format my external hard drive to write files from Mac without loosing the files that i alredy have on my external hard when i used it with windows?

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I have been using Windows to write files to my 1TB WD external hard drive and I do not want to format to loose the files capacity of around 500GB
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Hi Allen,
Is there any way to store the back up to Mac and restore after formating?

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tt2

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Terence Devlin wrote:
Stay away from the Masters folder. Rooting around in the Library package can damage the Library and is unnecessary and less useful than the supported way to so this.
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This User Tip
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4921
has details of the options in the Export dialogue.
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Reformatting hard drive without deleting files

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