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Can I resize my backup partition without deleting everything?

Silly John Fatty

Silly John Fatty

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 6, 2012
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I know that I can reformat the whole external drive and delete partitions and recreate them, etc. now my question is, if I’d like to simply change it’s size, will I loose everything that is on that drive? That’s one info I can’t seem to find anywhere… I don’t dare to try, however.

I sadly found out that the partition that I created for time machine is too small. :(
 
Silly John Fatty

Silly John Fatty

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 6, 2012
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What does that mean?

Yeah I noticed that in disk utility it said that the selected partition will not be modified or something like this, but it confuses me. It obviously will be modified if I change it’s size, it just won’t be reformatted. Maybe that’s what they mean?
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

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Jan 23, 2005
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Dalton63841 said:
If the partition is in HFS+, then Disk Utility can resize it non-destructively.
Click to expand...

Sanchez25 said:
What does that mean?
Click to expand...

HFS+ is the Mac OS Extended option you see in Disk Util. The fact that you are using this disk for TM means it is already in this format, so you are fine.

Yeah I noticed that in disk utility it said that the selected partition will not be modified or something like this, but it confuses me. It obviously will be modified if I change it’s size, it just won’t be reformatted. Maybe that’s what they mean?
Click to expand...

Just follow this to resize. All that message means is the partition you are resizing will not be erased.
 
Silly John Fatty

Silly John Fatty

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 6, 2012
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I just checked the various partitions and drives (Macintosh HD and external hard drive) and it says the format is “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for all of them, I guess it’s the same and it should be fine then? :)

I’ll follow that link you gave me, so it’s 100% sure that if I resize my partition everything will stay the way it was except that I’ll have more space on that partition, right? Also, I need to make the “Main” partition (rest of the external hard drive that I use to store other random stuff) smaller, this isn’t a problem is it?

Cause I’ve read something about you being able to make them bigger but not smaller or something like this :confused:
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

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Jan 23, 2005
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California
Sanchez25 said:
I just checked the various partitions and drives (Macintosh HD and external hard drive) and it says the format is “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for all of them, I guess it’s the same and it should be fine then? :)
Click to expand...

Yep

I’ll follow that link you gave me, so it’s 100% sure that if I resize my partition everything will stay the way it was except that I’ll have more space on that partition, right? Also, I need to make the “Main” partition (rest of the external hard drive that I use to store other random stuff) smaller, this isn’t a problem is it?

Cause I’ve read something about you being able to make them bigger but not smaller or something like this :confused:
Click to expand...

You can make the partition larger or smaller without losing data. When making it smaller of course you don't want to make it smaller than the amount of data on the partition. But no, just resizing does not wipe data.

That said, it is always a good idea to backup just to be safe when tinkering around like this. :)
 
Silly John Fatty

Silly John Fatty

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 6, 2012
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460
Alright, thanks! :)

Well, that’s the problem: I can’t do a backup, my backup partition is too small! Kind of stupid, eh? :p
 
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