On partition wrangling

On Apr 8, 2006, at 8:32 PM, Google Kreme wrote:

There have been partitioning utilities for the Mac for quite a while now. One I know of is iPartition, though to be clear, I don't recommend partition disks under non-Boot Camp conditions, so my mention is not an endorsement or recommendation.

I tend to agree about not partitioning, because of the First Law of Disk Partitions: all partitions are the wrong size.

On the other hand, I do partition now and again. The old, obvious reason to partition (disk size larger than maximum file system size) is pretty much gone.

--John

On or about 4/9/06 1:45 PM, thus spake "John I. Clark"
<jiclarkindependence.net>:

>> Lewis Butler wrote:
>>
>> There have been partitioning utilities for the Mac for quite a while
>> nowŠ
>
> Slipping slightly off-topic, does anyone know of a 'non-destructive
> reformating utility' that would allow one to take a drive that is
> multiple partitions and combine it into to one? I'm guessing not, but
> could use such a thing right now, in order to avoid the time-
> consuming clone/reformat/restore routine that is the likely alternative.

There are such utilities, but I wouldn't trust one. And it just isn't
necessary to take the risk. I partitioned my iMac G5 and restored the
existing Panther installation and all my stuff to one of the partitions,
using only Disk Utility as the backup / restore software, without any
difficulty at all.

Also, consider this: if you think clone / reformat / restore is some sort of
challenge, this suggests a flaw in your backup strategy. If I said the magic
words "Bang, your hard disk just crashed", you should be able to restore
(because you have backups). If that's not the case, you're just asking for
trouble. And if it *is* the case, there should be no big drama if I say the
magic words, "Bang, your hard disk just got reformatted." m.

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On 4/9/06 at 1:45 PM, jiclarkindependence.net (John I. Clark) wrote:

>Slipping slightly off-topic, does anyone know of a 'non-destructive
>reformating utility' that would allow one to take a drive that is
>multiple partitions and combine it into to one? I'm guessing not,
>but could use such a thing right now, in order to avoid the time-
>consuming clone/reformat/restore routine that is the likely
>alternative.

Yes and no. If you mean you want something that would let you do this with a single click or simple menu selection, then no. I doubt such a utility exists. OTOH any utility that can non-destructively resize a partition can do this with a little work.

Just drag the files from one of the partitions to the others. Then delete the empty partition and resize one of the non-empty partitions. Repeat this process until you have the drive partitioned as desired.

Of course this assumes the partitions aren't so full that files cannot be moved from out of one of the partitions. If that is the case, you will need to be able to move files to another physical drive.

On Apr 10, 2006, at 4:37 PM, Bill Rowe wrote:

> On 4/9/06 at 1:45 PM, jiclarkindependence.net (John I. Clark) wrote:
>
>> in order to avoid the time-
>> consuming clone/reformat/restore routine that is the likely
>> alternative.
>
> Yes and no. If you mean you want something that would let you do
> this with a single click or simple menu selection, then no. I doubt
> such a utility exists. OTOH any utility that can non-destructively
> resize a partition can do this with a little work.

On the other hand, you would want to do a complete backup of all
partitions before you start messing around with the partitions, and
in order to do anything to the boot partition, you need to boot from
an external drive anyway. So, I'm not sure that using an utility for
such a task is going to be that much of a time saver compared to the
clone/reformat/restore approach. You will have to do the equivalent
of clone/reformat in either case, so it's only the time required for
the restore that you would be saving---and that's assuming that
everything goes well with the repartitioning.

Tomoharu

On Apr 11, 2006, at 3:20 AM, Tomoharu wrote:

> On the other hand, you would want to do a complete backup of all
> partitions before you start messing around with the partitions, and
> in order to do anything to the boot partition, you need to boot from
> an external drive anyway. So, I'm not sure that using an utility for
> such a task is going to be that much of a time saver compared to the
> clone/reformat/restore approach. You will have to do the equivalent
> of clone/reformat in either case, so it's only the time required for
> the restore that you would be saving---and that's assuming that
> everything goes well with the repartitioning.

[…as well as similar comments from Matt and bitreader…]

Okay, I've been sufficiently convinced that I'm essentially being
lazy in thinking there might be an "easier" way to accomplish this. I
realize now that the various utilities that might be able to
accomplish it are simply not designed for the use I was envisioning.

Backup(clone)/reformat/restore is the way to go, in my case anyway.
Regardless, thanks for the input everyone.

John

Just to mention at least one:

iPartition claims to do it. http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php

Look around for reviews. While some are very happy, others have reported problems and data destruction.

The free Silverlining (LaCie) did this in OS 9 and may still be able to do it.

May be you read e.g. http://www.codecomments.com/archive240-2005-9-592940.html

Backing up to external disk, reformationg and restoring is always preferable.

Peter