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Partitioning hard drive mac without erasing

Partition Internal Drive

Removing a Boot Camp partition that is part of a Fusion Drive and resizing the remaining partition should be performed with the Boot Camp Assistant and not Disk Utility. Originally, the idea was to store three libraries, each on their own partition: After a while, it become apparent that the home videos library needed more room, due to all the movies you enjoy making, and the iTunes library was much larger than needed, while the photo library partition was about the right size, though still having plenty of free space.

To make room for a bigger Home Videos partition, use the Finder to copy the data in the iTunes partition to the Photos partition. You can now remove the iTunes partition to allow you to enlarge the Home Videos partition to meet your expected needs. Once the Home Videos partition has been enlarged, you can reclaim some of the space for the smaller iTunes partition you also need. This somewhat complex example turns out to be a good model for the type of resizing commonly performed.

Use Disk Utility to Add, Delete, and Resize Existing Volumes

It also includes many of the resizing rules, and requires moving data around, deleting partitions, expanding partitions, and recreating a previous partition that is smaller than it used to be. Select the disk not the individual volumes in order for the Partition button to become available. In the Disk Utility sidebar, select the disk associated with the three partitions. Select the iTunes partition by clicking once within it. The partition should be highlighted, and the Partition information panel will contain data about the selected partition. To make room for a larger Home Videos partition, the iTunes partition will need to be deleted.

With the partition selected, click the minus button - to delete the partition.

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The rules require the partition behind the one you wish to enlarge to be deleted to allow for the enlargement of the partition. The partition map will display the anticipated results; in this case, the iTunes partition is removed, and its space is assigned to the Home Videos partition. With the iTunes partition removed, the Home Videos partition increases to take over the freed up space. Or, you could resize the now larger Home Videos partition to make it a bit smaller, and create an additional but smaller partition for the iTunes Library.


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Select the Home Videos partition, and then change the value in the Size field to a new smaller value. In my example, the Home Videos partition ended up being GB, but GB would be more than large enough, and would leave enough space left over for the iTunes partition. Your numbers may vary, depending on the sizes of your drive and partitions.


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Enter GB in the Size field, and then hit the tab key for the Partition map to show the expected results. Reducing the size of Home Videos partition caused a new untitled partition to be created just behind the Home Videos partition. The rules state that when you reduce the size of a partition, a new partition is created with the space you freed up.

Partitioning an External Drive without Erasing | MacRumors Forums

Notice you now have an Untitled partition you can use for iTunes, and you also have a resize control small white circle on the partition map that you can use to adjust the size of the new Untitled partition, and the Home Videos partition. Giving the new untitled partition the name iTunes is the last step in our resizing example. A sheet will drop down to show you the status of the partition resizing being applied. When complete, click the Done button.

There are quite a few additional capabilities supported in the underlying file system, and much more to come in the APFS Apple File System that is believed to be the core filing system in the next major version of the Mac OS.

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Sierra download. Phil — Your advice is good but I'm wanting to upgrade the vast majority of my drive to High Sierra. Dec 29, 2: In that case, you will need to download the Sierra installer from the Mac App Store, and then make a bootable USB drive to install in on the new partition. Dec 29, 5: If you are currently running Sierra, did you try the link I posted earlier? When the installer downloads, and opens, choose the new partition. Can I partition drive without erasing it? More Less. Communities Contact Support.

Partitioning an External Drive without Erasing

Sign in. Browse Search. Ask a question. User profile for user: Mac OS X Speciality level out of ten: Question marked as Solved User profile for user: Phil Phil You can partition off free space without erasing the entire drive. Partition a physical disk using Disk Utility With that said however, its always highly recommended to backup your data, when modifying the hard drive the data lives on.

Computer Information : How to Partition a Hard Drive Without Data Loss

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