Intel Mac :: Choosing External Drive Partition Scheme
Feb 15, 2012
I have a 1 TB LaCie drive that I am currently using with a MBR partition scheme. It has two partitions: one for time machine and one for windows. What I want is to use this drive to hold my time machine back ups in one partition for Lion, which I am about to switch to and install on the iMac internal drive, my windows stuff in one partition, and a third partition in which I would put a clone (CCC) of my current internal drive (Snow Leopard) that I could boot from when desired.
This would enable me to run Lion normally from the iMac's internal drive, switch to the windows partition (holding down the option key when powering on) on occasion when I want to work in a windows only app, and using the same option key on power on trick, boot into Snow Leopard when I need to use old, apps that won't run on Lion. For this, I assume that I should use the GUID partition scheme. Am I right? Is there a better way to accomplish my goal?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Jul 19, 2009
I just ordered a 1 terabyte WD external drive, and I'm planning on creating one partition for music/movie storage, and a second smaller partition for a superduper clone. So my first question is, what format should each partition be in? I'd like the movies/music partition to be Windows compatible...will choosing FAT32 make any difference in my use of this partition when used with my OSX machine, and what benefits would I see by using Extended Journaled instead? Then, what format do I want the Superduper backup partition to be? Finally, when I initially format and partition the external drive, is there anything I should do to prepare it first, or just go right ahead, divide it in two (approx. 650gigs for music/movies, the rest for superduper) and then format each partition on its own into the formats they need to be in? Also, do I use GUID partition format?
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Aug 29, 2009
I can't install Snow Leopard because my hard drive doesn't have a Guid partition scheme. how do i reformat my drive without losing all my info.
P.s. I'm backing up my hard drive now to and external drive with carbon copy cloner.
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Feb 27, 2012
I've been going on two weeks now without my 13-inch mid-2009 mbp...i installed the 10.7.3. lion update but after it was completed i powered down my laptop and started it up only to find a blinking folder with a question mark...the logic board was replaced in mid-2010...i'm able to boot of an external drive running lion 10.7.3...i replaced the wd hdd with a new one & now it doesn't recognize it in disk utilities...i've replaced the ram with new ram & changed the hdd cable...i took it to apple & they said it should be either the cable or the hdd...i tested the hdd in another enclosure & it's running fine..
Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Dec 17, 2009
I don't know how I managed to do it, but I'm running Leopard on my MBP on an Apple Partition Map. Anyhow, I got my Snow Leopard disk yesterday and it wants me to reformat to GUID and warns me that it will erase everything. Now I have to figure out how a way to backup everything, install SL on GUID and restore everything while retaining my settings, serial numbers and all that good stuff. Is this possible?
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Jan 18, 2010
I'm trying to set up a new partition scheme for all my storage. I just purchased another drive and will buy a 1 or 1.5TB drive next week. I'd like to encrypt certain partitions. Please read on...
Hopefully someone can help me. This is my current setup:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 465Gi 407Gi 58Gi 88% /
devfs 113Ki 113Ki 0Bi 100% /dev
Plato is my iPod - I use 40GB for music, the rest for backing up files.
Wittgenstein is my backup. I exclude backups of ~/Music, another big DIR and ~/Movies and it has room to backup everything else.
I also have an 8GB USB stick that I've named "mnemosyne".
What I am purchasing. I am waiting for my new 500GB 7200 drive to arrive, which will replace the current 500GB main drive. I also purchased a 32GB flash drive.
What I'm getting in the near future. I'm purchasing a 1TB or 1.5TB internal drive and building an external HDD from it within the next two weeks. I'd like to split it to 500GB for backups, the rest for media storage. I'd like to encrypt my current /System dir, my ~/Documents and all preferences from my my Applications.
I've heard filevault is prone to errors. Is this true? Are there any other full disk encryption options for mac? Would dm-crypt work through macports without corrupting my filesystem? Can I use truecrypt and create an encrypted container of say (what is now) ~/Documents
Creating the partition scheme
Questions
1) Can I resize a partition once I've created it if there's physical space left on the HDD?
2) Should I leave some space without a partition? Or should I just name it something benign and use it as a "dropbox"
3) What options do I have for encryption on a mac?
4) Is filevault prone to errors? Any benchmarking tests out there?
5) Can I use dm-crypt through macports and have a FDE setup that won't fail because it's through macports and not native? In other words, I realize all encryption schemes can fail, but I'd like to minimize risk.
6) How would I have some movies on my main HDD and others on the external volume? Is that possible? Or would I need to create two partitions for that? So, say, I want to store 40GB of everything that is currently in ~/Movies on my main HDD. Just create a partition for that, and then another partition on the external volume at 210GB?
7) How do I create separate partitions in mac?
8) How do I easily mount all partitions from all hard drives?
9) Is rsync and a script my best option for encrypting backups since Timemachine has no security whatsoever for backups?
10) What filesystem should I use? (I'm only using OS X on my macbook)
11) Any sample partition map you could share with me that will help me build this properly?
12) How do I set up a link so Mac OS X will read the partitions like they are now and display over on the left side of Finder.app as they show now? I.e. a list of Desktop, $username, Applications, Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures
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Aug 29, 2009
So much for upgrading... Does anyone have a fix for not having a GUID partition table scheme? I was hoping I wouldn't have clean install, I just got everything how I wanted it. *sigh*
Something tells me there's no way around this.
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Feb 5, 2010
I reinstalled Snow Leopard on a new volume, transferred stuff I wanted from the old volume to the new volume, and deleted the old one. In disk utility, I have not been able to stretch the volume to fit where the old one was. I can't change the volume scheme. Has anyone got a method to let me use my full 160GB hard drive rather than half of it? Or maybe software that can alter it.
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Mar 1, 2010
I want to delete a partition and create a new one, but I need to be able to click option in able to do this. For whatever reason, disk utility will not let me edit my external in any way without deleting the whole thing which I do not want to do.
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Feb 12, 2009
I am trying to format my external drive to have (2) partitions. A NTFS for backing up my Windows computer and a HFS for backing up my MacBook Pro.
This is what ive tried:
1.) Create 2 partitions on my Mac in Disk Utility. 1 partition HFS, 1 partition FAT32. After doing this both show up in OSX but neither one shows up in WinXP. I was hoping the FAT32 would show up in WinXP so I can convert it to NTFS.
2.) Create 2 partitions in WinXP using Disk Management. 1 partition is NTFS and 1 is FAT32. Connected the drive to my MBP and both partitions mounted in Finder. I then opened Disk Utility and tried to "Erase" the FAT32 partition to HFS. The process seemed to be working but then it changed the name of the partition to disk1s1 and nothing else. The partition doesnt mount in Finder or WinXP.
3.) Create 2 partitions in WinXP using Disk Managment. Both partitions as NTFS. Connected to MBP and both partitions mounted in Finder. Opened Disk Utility and tried to "Erase" one of the NTFS systems to HFS. Same thing happen as #2, renamed the partition but didnt do anything else. The partition doesnt show up in Finder or WinXP.
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May 22, 2010
Have a G5 Imac, Intel Macbook and a 1.5 TB external drive for backups. I created 3 partitions on the external for backups for both computers and the extra partition for storage of some rips.. Is it possible to partition the external so that the Imac partition (HFS+?) is bootable and the Macbook partition (GUID) is bootable?
Thanks for any advice..
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Mar 11, 2009
Recently I bought a Mac OS X Leopard, which comes with the Bootcamp. I have the XP operating disk, and Virtual Box, which is another program like Bootcamp. Instead of the bootcamp way of rebooting every time you switch between operating systems, Virtual Box allows both systems to run simultaneously. Instead of taking up space on my hard drive, I purchased a Seagate FreeAgent (Desk Edition) 1TB external drive.
I need to partition this drive in two, to allow the combined running of PC and Mac OS X using Virtual Box. The formats I will be using are FAT 32 and Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The latter is very easy, as I can simply do this on the Mac. However, the FAT 32... Since I am splitting the external hard drive in two, my XP PC cannot create a partition using FAT 32 which is greater than 32GB, and if I create the F32 partition using the Mac it won't be recognized by the PC operating system.
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Oct 12, 2009
Here's what I want to do. I have a 1.5 Tb external USB drive that I want to use with both my MacBook Pro and my soon-to-be Windows 7 desktop PC. I want to make image backups of both systems onto this external drive. For Windows, I'll use a boot CD with Acronis TruImage. For the Mac, I'll use SuperDuper! I've been playing around with partitioning this drive so that I can accomplish both of these goals and I'm a bit stumped. I was able to get a two partitions created - one for Windows (NTFS) and one for Mac (HFS+), and at first look they appear to work fine. However, there appear to be two problems:
1) When I look at the disk in Windows Disk Administrator, there are two smaller "hidden" partitions that I did not create. I think they were created with the Mac formatted its partition.
2) When I boot my Windows computer with the Acronis TruImage CD (and have the external drive plugged in to USB), the Acronis software doesn't see the external drive. When I boot into Windows, the drive is there and accessible.
So, I can deal with problem #1 if those hidden partitions are necessary for the Mac. However, I really need to resolve problem #2. My initial guess is that it can't see the drive because when I partitioned the drive on the Mac, I did not choose "Master Boot Record", rather, I chose the one for Intel-based Macs.
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Oct 25, 2009
i as planning to sell my macbook in the near future and i wanted to back up everything to my external hard drive. I heard of offsite backup but i didn't plan on doing it yet. Anyways i used time machine to make my external hard drive to be my backup disk. First i had to take everything off it (80GBs worth of music, movies and documents) and i put it on the desktop cuz Time Machine said something about incompatibility and i had to erase my external drive first. I then backed up at least 120GB of content altogether to the external hard drive. I checked my external drive and found out the stuff i took out and put on the desktop was NOT backed up. So i deleted the backup and put the 80GB of movies, music, etc stuff in a folder in my computer.
However i can't back up to my external drive anymore. It says it only has 61.28GB of memory left. I'm wondering why is that if i deleted the backup already! I then tried to take the backup out of the trash and put it back in the external drive and it won't go in because there is only 62.28GB of memory. I don't see any partition of any sort on my external drive, no folders, files or anything yet it has magically lost 190GB of free storage.
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Nov 25, 2009
if I could partition my external hard drive so one half holds all my Mac OS X data such as Itunes music and the other half hold my Microsoft Windows files.
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Apr 5, 2006
Can I put the bootcamp xp pro partition on an external drive? i only have 8 or so gb left on my internal, but have about 80gb on my external would that work? or do they have to be on the same drive
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Jul 23, 2008
i have a 320gb external hard drive and was wondering if i could partition it so i could use it just as an external hard drive on one partition, but have time machine on the other partition. i just recently got my frist mac, which is a macbook, and i love it.
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Jul 22, 2009
I have a WD 640GB External drive and i would like to partition some for time machine and some for storing my files. i just have some questions:
1) If i partition the drive into 2, in the future can i join the two partitions together again?
2) does the whole external drive have to have the same file system like HFS or NTFS or can one partition be HFS + for time machine and the other partition NTFS to make it readable on windows?
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Aug 17, 2009
I've got an external 500gb Seagate drive with 2 journalised partitions.....one for my time machine backups and the other for holding audio samples for my drum machines and such. All of a sudden today the audio partition won't mount but the time machine partition still works fine. I go into disk utility and it shows ther but just says unable to mount when I try to mount it. It suggests first aid so I verify and repair numerous times and it says everything is ok. I can boot up Ubuntu in VMware andboth partitions are visible and all the files are there....everything is just as it should be. I was using 10.5.7 and just upgraded to 10.5.8 tonight and nothing changed.
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Dec 26, 2009
if i can partition my Windows NFTS External Hard Drive. I do not want to format it because i have some important files and programs on my External Hard drive, But I also want to use it for Time Machine Backup. I was wondering if it was possible to Not format my Hard drive, Partition it, And then format the 2nd partition to Mac, and use it for time machine. I am using Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8
The Capacity of the EHD is 55.9GB
Available: 37.1GB
Used: 18.8GB
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Apr 5, 2010
I've done some searching on the forums, but I cannot find exactly what I need. I currently have a Maxtor external hard drive partitioned into two sections; one for time machine, the other for music, movies, etc. Normally, the two separate partitions would show up on my desktop (labeled "Music" and "Time Machine") but as of lately the Time Machine partition fails to show. I cannot find the volume anywhere, but the Music partition still reads perfectly fine. how I can relocated the Time Machine partition?
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Mar 25, 2009
so I have about 60 gigs free on my windows 320GB external. It is currently NTFS formatted. Is there a way I can allocate some of that free space to function as a mac formatted drive.I've tried googling this for a long time and all I can find is the reverse of what I want to do.my specs/capabilities:I 24 inch imac bought new this month.which is supposed to translate as: 10.5.6, 4GB of ram, 2.66GHz core 2 duo)I have the whole fuse thing working, but disk management won't give me the format option...is there a program for this? or some kind of tricky business I need to do?n
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Jul 25, 2009
I have a MBP and would like to use a bootable, OSX loaded external drive to install windows 7 via bootcamp. Is this possible? If so how?
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Jan 4, 2010
I currently have XP installed on a Bootcamp partition on my main iMac hard drive. I've got a new external USB 2.0 SATA hard drive enclosure on the way that I plan to install a couple of spare SATA drives into. I was wondering about somehow moving my current Bootcamp partition off the main iMac drive and onto the spare WD Raptor drive that I've got without having to reinstall everything all over again. My second question would be - if I am able to switch the Bootcamp partition location, would the USB 2.0 transfer speed be fast enough for when I run windows? I typically use Windows for gaming only and very little else.
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Dec 6, 2014
I have an external hard drive that is about one third full. Can I now partition it into 2 partitions in which the existing data is in Partition 1, and Partition 2 is empty and available for new, different data?
Info:
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
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Nov 2, 2010
i'd like to format my lacie external hard drive with two partitions:
1. HFS+ partition as a bootable clone of my internal drive
2. FAT32 partition readable by any windows (and mac) machine
i'm creating my partitions with disk utility, but i hit a snag when choosing a partition scheme...apparently i cannot choose a different scheme for each partition.
so when i format the drive with GUID, the FAT32 partition is not even recognized by windows XP. but when i format the drive with master boot record (MBR), the HFS+ partition is not bootable...
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Nov 15, 2008
How do you set up, step by step, Time Machine? I want to create a partition on my external HDD (40GB in size, 120GB capacity) and have it back up to that partition. Is it possible? I only use around <30GB so I figure 10GB extra space is more than enough.
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Oct 30, 2009
I am looking at getting an airport extreme along with an external hard drive. My idea is to use the external hard drive as network storage along with a time machine drive for my MacBook Pro. Is it possible to partition the external drive with one partition being for network storage and the other for time machine?
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Jun 25, 2012
How do I partition my external hard drive without losing the data already on it? I've been using it with Time Machine on my old computer, but want to use it as a regular drag-and-drop type back up on my new computer. Is there any way to basically split the hard drive so I can still access the Time Machine backups on my old computer, but also be able to use it with my new mac?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Aug 25, 2014
I wish to change partition scheme, sizes, in an external drive. All the partitions are MacOS extended (Journaled) and they map, according to the layout in Disk Utility, as follows: Partion 1, 2, 3,4 where 1 is at the top and 4, the bottom. I want to make partition 2 larger, so I decreased partition 1 by half. Now the layout is 1 a, 1b, 2,3,4., where 1b is now free space. Disk Utility will not allow me to increase the size of partition 2 by dragging the corner. Which of the following options (if any) will allow me to increase the size of partition 2, without erasing the data, using Disk Utility:Select partition 2 and manually writing a new value in the size box, equal to the present partition’s size plus the free space?If I delete partition 1 completely, will I then be able to increase the size of partition 2?If I delete partitions 1, 3, and 4, will I then be allowed to increase the size of partion 2?Is there another option?
(Actually, partition 3 is an eDrive, a data recovery utility created by TechTool Pro 7, so I don’t really know how it’s formatted.)
SeagateHD 1.5TB USB drive.
Info:
Time Capsule 802.11n (2nd Gen), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), MacBook Pro, iBook Dual USB
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