OS X :: Hard Disk Partition Strategy With Appropriate Size
Jun 11, 2009
I have a Mac mini with a 55 G internal hard drive with a 750 G One Touch Maxtor drive (actually just 698 G) attached via firewire. Later this month I'll be upgrading from Tiger to Leopard, and I'm assuming a clean install makes most sense. I'd like to partition the Maxtor drive to provide general storage as well as Time Machine backups. Although it's not vitally important, I could envision having a partition to handle Windows. Should I create three partitions: one for approx 55 G to handle the current contents of my internal drive for the upgrade; one for approx ?? G to handle potential Windows; and the remaining space to handle Time Machine.
- How large should a Windows partition be? There are some apps that would be useful to have, but highly unlikely it will be an important part of my routine. Should I be stingy? Can I get a Windows install in about 10 G? 20 G?
- Can I partition the Maxtor while it has data? Currently there is about 25 G of files. Many are expendable.
- Disk Utility seems to default to PPC settings, though the mini has an Intel processor. I'll want a GUID Partition Table for at least one partition, correct?
- Does it make sense to install Leopard on an external partition in case the internal drive ever fails? Or is that a waste of space for now? (One assumes I'd be able to rescue the machine via the install disks.)
- I suppose everyone's experience with Time Machine is different based on how they use their computers, but is there a rough guideline on how much space to devote to Time Machine?
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Sep 8, 2010
My new 2010 hexacore Mac will have 24G memory, an OWC Extreme Pro 120G SSD (positioned in the lower optical bay) and four 2TB WD RE4 drives. I'll use my old Synology 209 NAS (two 1TB WD Green Raid 1 drives) for TM backups over 1000Mbps Ethernet. Yes, I'll need to upgrade to a larger NAS very soon. This will be my first Mac Pro (have MBPs and iMac) and will be used for web design and development (mostly Adobe CS5 products).
The SSD will be used for boot and application files. I plan to use Disk Utility to create a 1+0 Raid array for data files. For a Scratch disk, should I:
1) create a partition on the 1+0 Raid Array for Scratch
2) partition a chunk of the SSD for Scratch
3) attach a spare external 2.5" WD drive via Firewire 800 for Scratch
Based on my reading, it seems that option 1 makes the most sense but I'm not entirely sure if you can partition a 1+0 array with Disk Utility. I'm pretty sure option 3 is quite silly but wanted to toss out the idea. Lastly, are there any generic recommendations on scratch volume sizing?
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Mar 25, 2012
Some time ago, I partitioned my Bay 1 drive (640GB) to two partitions, of equal size. Now, I find that on the system 'disk' partition, there is a lot of space I don't really need, and could use in the other partition. I find that I can shrink the system partition, but can't expand the second partition to use the extra space.
Info:
Mac Pro Quad-Core, Mac OS X (10.7), MacBook Pro 13", iPad,iPhone 4S
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Jun 21, 2010
I noticed that in disk utility in the install disk, you can drag to change a partition size. Does this erase data?
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Apr 24, 2012
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio FW800 external that has 5 partitions, connected to my 2011 iMac. I had help doing the partitions and don't really remember the reasoning, but one is just for my SuperDuper! backup, one is Miscellaneous, one for movie clips off my camcorder, one for misc scanned photo's and one for my genealogy research. I back up using Time Machine to a Time Capsule and also to this WD hard drive with SuperDuper!
Recently I'm getting a pop up message that "Mac OS X can't repair the disk "Genealogy"'. And it needs to be reformatted. It's become a read only disk. When I look in Disk Utility it shows all the partitions as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" EXCEPT for the one in question. I also noticed that there are a lot of files with "date created" being the same date in 1969! These files may be letters I've written or photo's I added to that partition within the last few years.
I think I have to completely reformat the entire external hard drive to repair this, but I want to make sure. Because it's going to be a major hassle backing it all up to another external (having to get one first) and then figuring out how to make the files that have turned "read only" in that one partition, back to their original state! Does this sound right, that I have to reformat the entire external hard drive? And how do I get the read-only files back to their original state.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Dec 31, 2009
I'm just curious as to what everyone's backup strategy for Windows is? I've been exploring the options of the Windows XP Backup utility, but I also like being able to have a entire disk image with Winclone. However there's no way to back up incrementally with Winclone. I'm sort of mum on both options, or would like to know if there's a better option? So what have the other Boot Camp participants been doing for a Windows backup?
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Mar 14, 2012
My Macintosh Hd is 187GB. It says used amount to be 174 GB. However when I add up all the componenets users 124.35GB+Library 8.91 GB+Applications 9.41GB+ System 5.36 GB= 148GB Approx What happened to the other 26 GB.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)
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Apr 2, 2012
My home folder shows a file size of 912 GB, yet the consumed space on my 1TB hard drive only shows 798 GB used. How can that be, given that the home folder is stored on the hard drive (HD)? I discovered the discrepancy when Time Machine wouldn't make backups anymore ... it said there wasn't enough space to even make an initial backup. When tracked individually, the home folder along with the other folders on my HD show a combined size that totally fills up my drive, yet when I checked the space on my HD it says there's approximately 200 GB free. I've run checks (Disk Utility) on both the HD and the external backup drive and they both checkout OK. I excluded almost all of my files from the Time Machine preferences, then it was able to make a succesful backup. Does that mean that the file sizes reported by Time Machine are correct (the drives completely full) and that there's something wrong with my internal HD?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 27"
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Dec 17, 2009
i read may post about this but still do not have a solid answer. Will 20GB partition be fine with my Macbook Air SSD drive ?
I only plan on installing a antivirus software and thats about it, maybe 1 program.
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Feb 23, 2009
I am trying to partition my current HardDrive so I can run a Macintosh on half of it. The other half will of coarse be windows. I've tried programs like BasiliskII and SoftMac, neither work.
I grabbed some spare 10.4 disks I had, and my computer refused to read them. So I got my hands on a different set of 10.4 install disks and my computer still refused to read them.
I am trying to do this because it's a project for my Computer Hardware class. I've spent way too much time on this without any progress.
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Sep 28, 2009
My intention is to partition an external HD in half allowing it to serve as a backup for a pc running windows xp, and the other half as a backup for a mac(10.5. I am using a Seagate external HD(new) that was initially partitioned on a windows xp computer.
The 1st half of the 1TB HD was formatted in NTFS format, and the second half was erased and (I thought) reformatted in HFS plus but when I attempt to use CCC(Carbon Copy) to copy the mac 1/2 of the hard drive, I get this message:
"You may have difficulty booting from this target volume, the underlying disk is not formatted with a partitioning scheme that Apple recommends for Intel Macs."
I have read the recommendations that the external HD need to be partitioned with APM or GPT, but I cannot seem to get to that option now for the mac side of the external HD.
In the Disk Utility, the external HD shows both sections of the partitioned drive(the xp section and the leopard). I do not want to reformat the entire drive(both sections) if at all possible.
I just want the Mac side of the ext drive to be properly prepared for CCC, and the windows side to remain as is.
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Nov 17, 2009
I want to partition my hard drive so I can run BootCamp, and my PowerBook is giving me the following message: The Disk Cannot be Partitioned because Some Files Cannot be Moved. So I'm assuming I need to format the whole thing and then partition with BootCamp. Totally open to other ideas, but, assuming I move forward with that, is the best was to save user settings, current Applications, data stored on the drive, etc. to create a disk image on an external drive? I've done that, but I'm sort of unclear on what I do with the disk image after I've wiped the drive and partitioned it up.
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Nov 30, 2014
On my Mac Pro I don't know how to delete a partition and make a new one on a hard disk.I used disc utility to initialize the partition, but it doesn't show any chance to delete or change the partition i created
Info:
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Nov 12, 2009
I was making a partition on my USB external drive in order to put a disk image of Snow Leopard on it, so I could boot off of it.
I added a 10GB partition to the drive, and clicked Apply. The following dialogue box came up:
Partitioning this disk will change some of the volumes. No volumes will be erased.
This volume will be added:
"Snow Leopard"
This volume will be resized:
"XXX HDD"
I clicked Partition, and it finished very quickly. I checked Finder, and the entire drive, BOTH partitions are completely empty.
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Feb 28, 2010
I would never opened a topic like this if I had not a similar experience with expanding 'dmg' in the past!
A truly bad experience! It is supposed that using 'disk utility' I can resize-expand-make bigger any dmg file. Every time I tried it, it was a totally fail process.The 'disk image' dmg did not resized at all.
I do not know why, it just happened to me many times.
Does anyone had similar experience? Any solution to this? So if I have a dmg that need to be bigger, I create a new one from scratch and I copy paste files from the old dmg.I need to do the same with hard disk partitions, using disk utility once again. I need to resize my hard disk partitions.Does this process works well as it should be, or it is a bad-implemented feature?
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Mar 31, 2010
I know it may sounds stupid to ask, I am thinking of partitioning my 500GB hard disk to 200GB and 300GB, with the 300GB holding the OS. Is it a good idea? Have anyone done it before? Any unwanted effects?
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Sep 12, 2014
I have partitioned my external Hard drive into three different partitions, each of different formats. Two partitions for backing up my macbooks and one to copy to and from my windows PC. I would just like to know if in any way is it possible for me to be able to re-partition one of the partitions, without affecting my Time machine partitions, in case the need be in future.
Info:
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
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Dec 31, 2010
I have just recently deleted my Bootcamp partition in Disk Utilities, and now im trying to increase the partition size of my Macintosh HD drive. When i go to the partition map and try to increase the size. The same error always appears. "Could not modify partition map because filesystem verification failed" I have attached an Image of what my partition map looks like right now.
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May 16, 2012
how do i partition my mac hard drive if my startup disk is full and i have more space
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Jun 20, 2014
When I try to partition my hard disk, Disk Utility tells me that the file system cannot be read.
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Sep 2, 2014
I've been running a Toshiba 1TB external drive on my Mac Pro tower and it's been working fine. But yesterday it wouldn't mount. I could see the drive in Disc Utility, but the partition wouldn't mount. I brought it into work where I'm running an iMac and it mounted just fine. Why would it stop working on one computer (where it was previously fine) yet work okay on another? And how do I get it working on the tower?
Info:
Mac Pro, iOS 7.1.2
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Oct 21, 2009
I changed my partition size firstly from (full disk size) about 160GB to 80GBs in order to create a new one which was another 80GBs after that I decided to just leave this 160GB and one partition, so I did what I decided, but now there is a problem. I did everything under Installation CD and than it shows in Disk Tool that the partition is 160GB on diagrams but under it it shows: total size 80GB... and the same is when I launching Snow Leopard. I'm clicking Macintosh HD and informations than it shows total size: 80GB, I tried to change again partition sizes but it does nothing, I cannot do anything under Mac OS and bootable installation disc. I'm completely stuck it shows, always and always that "Spliting in to partitions finished due an error - could not modficate partition's map".
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Jan 7, 2011
I have an external 750GB hard drive that I previously formatted as FAT 32 because I wanted to be able to plug it into Windows computers as well. I was not very thoughtful at the beginning and I just created one big 750GB partition. I currently have 450GB used and about 300GB free.
I would like to create a new partition in the free space without losing the data I have in the disk, and format the new partition as Mac OS Extended to use it for Time Machine backups. Presumably Disk Utility can do it, but when I go to the "Partition" tab it says "This partition cannot be modified" and the "+" sign below it is grayed.
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Sep 1, 2009
Ok so here it goes.
The situation I'm in is pretty akward and it's quite a long story but I'll try my best to explain everything.This afternoon I went to a friend's house to transfer some data to my external hard drive (MyBook Studio).Since my HD is formatted as HFS+ and my mate owns a Windows PC, I'd asked him to install MacDrive.
When we plugged in my HD, Windows just didn't detect it. We tried all sorts of things, including rebooting.. but nothing seemed to help. No matter what we did. The damn thing just didn't detect my hard drive. Not even with MacDrive.
I desperately wanted to transfer some data to my HD since I'd drove quite a while to get there. So after a bit of Google research we decided to create a partition. My HD has a capacity of 1 TB and only about half of it was being used.So we went on and created a NTFS partition of 400 GB. Now Windows could detect the partition we'd just made.
Everything went fine, we could now transfer some data to my HD.Nevertheless.. when I got home and connected my HD to my Macbook Pro, Finder could only see the partition which we formatted as NTFS. The other 600 GB, which we hadn't touched.. is nowhere to be found.
There's quite a lot of important data on there so I would really appreciate it if anyone could help me.
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Apr 18, 2010
The hard drive is a 1TB Western Digital my book I bought it in January I think. I tried to format it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when I got it but for some reason every time I try to erase the part thats named disk3s2 or partition the main one it stops a little before half way through. I don't think its the hard drives fault so I called apple about it one day and they helped a little but it didn't work. Thanks in advance if you can help me. Also a few times I waited about seven hours for it while I was at school and when I came home it didn't move.
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Jan 29, 2010
I have a 1/3 full external drive that is currently formatted for MAC OS External.
I want to partition the drive in half and use the 2nd partition for Windows FAT32.
However, when I try to do this with Disk Utility it does not give me the FAT32 option.
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Mar 18, 2012
How can i modify(delete,paste) the contents on the external hard disk that has an NTFS partition?
Info:
MacBook
Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Jun 3, 2014
Disk Utility Crashed whilst creating a Partition, and I now have ~100GB missing, which was the amount I had allocated to the new partition.
The new partition didn't get created, and I now have 100GB missing from the Hard drive. I have a 1TB hard drive, and when I go to Disk Utility, it says: Capacity : 999.35 GB (999,345,127,424 Bytes)Available : 586.1 GB (586,103,844,864 Bytes)Used : 310.52 GB (310,524,317,696 Bytes)
Which adds up to about ~900GB.
I tried Repairing Disk in Disk Utility, booting into Recovery Mode and Repairing Disk there, but neither made a difference.
Info:
MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)
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Jan 12, 2010
First some background info. I recently purchased a 1TB hard drive for my 13" MBP, and I am about to do a clean install of OSX 10.6 and Win7 64bit on separate partitions.
And I want to setup the partitions before I install using Disk Utility. The reason for this is because I'm under the assumption that when creating a NTFS partition its better for the disk to be blank so it can put the MFT(Master file table) and MFT Mirror wherever it wants instead of some random spot on the disk (that way disk writes will be faster). The MFT thing was true when converting a FAT32 disk to NTFS. Nativity formatted NTFS disks were always faster then ones converted from FAT32, because the MFT was spread out instead of at the start of the disk.
I'm worried that installing OSX and then using the bootcamp utility will cause the MFT on my NTFS partition to end up in a un-optimal place and disk Reads/Writes will be slower.
Ok, so here's my questions.
1.) Should I be using a GUID Partition Table or Master Boot Record(Remember OSX 10.6 and Win7)?
2.) Should I use Disk Utility to Create a the OSX partition and then leave the second partition as Free Space? / Or should I use a third party utility and make the OSX partition and the NTFS partition at the same time?
3.) If I do create the partitions Manualy, will bootcamp still work correctly?
4.) Should I Use Journaled or Case-Sensitive Journaled on my OSX partition?
I know all of the questions were stupid, but there isn't any info on the web about it.
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Sep 7, 2010
Got my first MacBook Pro about 2 months ago and I have been enjoying it to full effect, installing programs such as logic studio and photoshop cs5 on it. Recently, however, I decided that I would like to access some of my windows based programs when I am on the road and don't have my desktop pc with me. So I bought a fresh copy of 32-bit Windows 7 Ultimate and sat at my macbook, put the disc in and then loaded up Boot Camp. I went through the menu options, decided that I wanted a 50GB partition, leaving my Mac OS drive at 182 GB with 83GB to spare. However, when I started partitioning, after about a minute it stopped and this error message appeared: "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition. The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.".
I tried cleaning all my temporary files and deleting some files in my downloads that were quite large and I restarted my machine. The problem persisted. Is there a solution to this problem that does not involve doing all this rubbish with a fresh install of Mac OS? I don't have any method of backup apart from a couple of 4GB flash drives..
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