Help! resize a partition

[deevee]

hi there,

i hope someone can help me out there.

i have G3 imac SE with a 40Gb HD. Originally, it was set-up to have
3 partions of around 13.3 Gb each...which was made to accomdate
different operating systems.

Now, i only need to run OSX (Panther), so i want to re-size
the partitions to make a single 40Gb HD.

Is this possible? If so, how?

thanks,
David.

[thatwendigo]

Partitioning erases the disk that it's done on, which is why it's standard practice to do so before you install the OS. If you can manage it, use an external disc, a burner, an iPod, or whatever you can get ahold of to backup your personal data. Then you can partition the drive as necessary and reinstall on your single partition.

If there's a way around this, I'm not aware of it, and the Apple Help system explicitly states that partitioning will erase the disk.

[Flickta]

While there are apps allowing to partition your drive without erasing on Windows side, I haven't seen a Mac app able to do so . If anyone knows one, I'd like a link. Thanks.(But formatting an HD on a Mac is so fast and easy... One of my friends who was studying a new OS - Mac OS - incidentally erased the disk in a few seconds. He didn't know that initialize disk equals format disk on PC :))

[Nermal]

FWB had a tool that could resize partitions without erasing anything. But I have no idea whether it's OS X compatible.

[thijs]

GNU/parted has HFS support,
so the free way to do it is to download a gentoo livecd;
boot into linux
run parted
resize partitions

HFS got supported about a year ago so i guess its pretty stable, ...

-> http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/parted.html

goodluck!
--
Matthijs Dalhuijsen

[andrewm]

GNU/parted has HFS support,
so the free way to do it is to download a gentoo livecd;
boot into linux
run parted
resize partitions

HFS got supported about a year ago so i guess its pretty stable, ...

-> http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/parted.html


The page to which you link also lists the possible operations upon each file system: detect, create, resize, copy, or check. Although many systems support multiple operations, HFS appears to support nothing but "detect"—leaving the "resize" operation out in the dark.

The routine of copy, erase, and replace, whilst sometimes a bit of a hassle (and moderately expensive, should one need to purchase, for example, a large external FireWire Drive), would appear to be the best option in the case of those using the HFS and HFS+ file systems.

Cheers!