iPartition — Intelligent Partitioning for Mac OS X

[MacBytes]

Category: 3rd Party Software
Link: iPartition — Intelligent Partitioning for Mac OS X (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20040706235042)
Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by Mudbug

[eric_n_dfw]

Why has it taken so long for a Mac "Partition Magic" like tool to come out?

There's been many times I could have used this!

(I Just hope it works!)

[applemacdude]

Haha...This reminds me of the Norton Partioner back when I had a IIvx....

[stoid]

This seems to be a rather useful tool. Why doesn't Apple include this capability in the OS? From what I hear, you can partition a Windows drive without having to wipe the disk. What makes Macs so special?

[eric_n_dfw]

This seems to be a rather useful tool. Why doesn't Apple include this capability in the OS? From what I hear, you can partition a Windows drive without having to wipe the disk. What makes Macs so special?Are you sure? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure Partition Magic or Partition Commander are needed to do non-destructive partitioning on x86 machines. (There's probably other tools for Windows/DOS/Linux, but those two are the "big names")

[solvs]

Are you sure? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure Partition Magic or Partition Commander are needed to do non-destructive partitioning on x86 machines.
Nope, with PM I can change the partition without reformating. The only reason I used it on my Win2000 machine was because when I got a new 200 GB HD, the Windows formatting tool kept crashing whenever I tried to do it. NTFS and Fat32. :p PM worked great.

Also, my friends had a Compaq, and it automatically partitioned their HD when they used the restore disk. It was only 30 GB, so I made it 1 partition. My Mom's Sony did the same thing.

Nice to see the Mac get something like this, but to be honest I'll probably never have to use it.

[autrefois]

This software destroyed one of my partitions because it unexpectedly quit while it was repartitioning. Can't seem to restore the data with TechTool 4 or Disk Utility.

I backed up all of my data beforehand fortunately, but I wanted to warn people. If you want to try it out, make sure everything is backed up.

I can't say if it's a fluke or not since I just bought it a couple hours ago and was doing my first repartitioning.

I'll post back with more info later after I get this mess worked out.

[autrefois]

I am typing this on my restored laptop (thank goodness for Carbon Copy Cloner!).

I think the iPartition may be buggy because it's in its initial release. I will contact the creators about this.

If you've already partitioned your Mac, iPartition shows you the current partitions and allows you to create new ones, and/or resize or delete old ones. You have different views you can choose from.

I was having a very hard time adjusting partition size via their pie chart view, the one they recommend for average users, and the application hung one time when I was trying to resize in the inspector (a warning sign I should have heeded).

After you set partition size(s), you click on "commit", which actually does the changes to the partition(s).

I was trying to reduce the size of one partition and making my main partition larger. It took quite a long time, 30-45 minutes for it to work on the first partition. It was in the middle of doing the 2nd partition when the program crashed, so I guess technically it was 1 for 2.

The second partition wouldn't show up in the Finder or in TechTool Pro: only Disk Utility could see it. And as I figured, it couldn't repair it. So I restored using CCC.

Just thought I'd spell out what happened in case people are considering buying it.

[eric_n_dfw]

Nope, with PM I can change the partition without reformating. That's what I said. (assuming PM = Partition Magic)

[eric_n_dfw]

Clarifying my earlier comment: I don't think you can do this from Windows without thrid party tools. (Stoid's comment sounded to me like like they thought Windows came with such functionality built in)

[sjk]

Thanks for posting that "impressively calm considering what just happened" warning report, autrefois. I'm quite interested in iPartition and appreciate the accurate explanation of your experience with it, unfortunate as it was. :(

Of course it's no help now, but had you run any TechTool Pro tools on the drive before running iPartition? Since don't have TTP4 I'd hope to remember to run DiskWarrier to check for and repair any errors before running iPartition.

I'd be curious to hear what feedback you get from Coriolis Systems, if you want to share that later. I sent them some comments after testing the demo yesterday but haven't gotten a response yet. [edit: got feedback this morning. no, I wasn't impatient for it. :)]

This has potential to be a useful utility, and more affordable than VolumeWorks (and VersionTracker has its share of horror reports with that, too). Unfortunately this type of utility seems to misbehave in certain situations, which is what I've read about Partition Magic on Windows.

[bousozoku]

This seems to be a rather useful tool. Why doesn't Apple include this capability in the OS? From what I hear, you can partition a Windows drive without having to wipe the disk. What makes Macs so special?

Apple includes similar capabilities to what is in Windows.

The disk format is somewhat complex, which is probably why no one prior to this has created a utility that didn't wipe data. FAT16/FAT32 are quite straightforward/simplistic.

I remember a utility (pdisk?) that came on the CD-ROM with mklinux which would let you manage partitions in Mac OS but I don't remember whether it wiped data or not.

In any case, this new utility is appreciated. The only other time I've seen this for Mac OS X is the eDrive for TechTool Pro 4.

[Coriolis Sys]

Thanks for posting that "impressively calm considering what just happened" warning report, autrefois. I'm quite interested in iPartition and appreciate the accurate explanation of your experience with it, unfortunate as it was. :(

Yes, we are pretty grateful for the balanced nature of the post also.

Unfortunately this type of utility seems to misbehave in certain situations, which is what I've read about Partition Magic on Windows.

We do tell our customers to make sure that they have backed-up their data before using our software. Whilst we do make every effort to test our software so that it does not malfunction in this manner, and are disappointed when one of our customers does experience a problem, any company that sells a product of this nature would be lying if it claimed to be certain that you would not lose data under any circumstances.

The way we view our product is as a simple means of repartitioning the disk that works in 99% of cases. In the unusual event that iPartition fails to resize a partition, and based on feedback received from customers so far, it is unusual, the user is certainly no worse off than they would have been had they not had iPartition (since they would have been forced to reformat their disk to change their partition layout).

Having said that, we are normally prepared to provide assistance to our customers if they do suffer problems as a result of using our software; depending on the circumstances, this assistance may even extend to helping to rebuild their disk such that they will be able to recover files from it (we may be able to do this even if third-party disk repair tools have failed to do so).

We are also committed to fixing any issues that do occur, so we appreciate it if our customers let us know about problems as soon as they occur; not only is it possible that we can help (possibly even to the extent of repairing the partition), but it will allow us to make our product even more reliable in the future.

[ChrisH3677]

Just to clarify - there is no version of Windows for the desktop that includes non-destructive partitioning.

[cazlar]

I remember a utility (pdisk?) that came on the CD-ROM with mklinux which would let you manage partitions in Mac OS but I don't remember whether it wiped data or not.


Actually I was just researching this today so it seems like as good a place as any to ask. I originally had three partitions on my HD - my main Panther partition, one for my home directory, and another spare system that was still on Jaguar. I wiped the spare Jag install and installed Yellow Dog Linux on it to experiment, and was able to split that partition into three smaller ones (root/swap/???) during the install. (So I have a total of 5 partitions now, not including Apple derived ones like Apple_Bootstrap).

Now that I've played with Linux a bit, and decided OS X is more my style, I was wondering how I could reclaim my partitions back to HFS+, as Disk Utility sees them but can't erase them. Hopefully there is a way to incorporate the three smaller sub-partitions back into the original one, but I can deal with the loss if there isn't, as most of the space is on one of the three sub-partitions anyway.

I was looking at the pdisk man page (it seems to be available in OS X too, and is apparently an Apple version of ddisk?) and as far as I can tell it should be able to recombine the partitions and put it back the way it was before the Great Linux Experiment of '04. I presume any changes to a particular partition will wipe it, but hopfully it will not wipe any of the other partitions. Has anyone here ever had any experience using it though?

[eric_n_dfw]

As long as those 3 partitions (or Volumes in Disk Utility's terminoligy) are contiguous, you should be able to delete them and create one partition in the blank space left where they were. Not sure why disk utility isn't letting you delete them though.

If you are comfortable on the comand line, pdisk should be able to do it, but be careful with it. It's like using a table saw with the guard off and no safty goggles!

All I can say is, BACK UP YOUR DATA FIRST!

[cazlar]

As long as those 3 partitions (or Volumes in Disk Utility's terminoligy) are contiguous, you should be able to delete them and create one partition in the blank space left where they were. Not sure why disk utility isn't letting you delete them though.

That's good news. I'm not sure either why Disk Utility won't let me at them. it lists them as disk0s5, disk0s6, disk0s7, but they are greyed out and say "Not mounted" (which of course they aren't), with the erase button etc also greyed.

If you are comfortable on the comand line, pdisk should be able to do it, but be careful with it. It's like using a table saw with the guard off and no safty goggles!

All I can say is, BACK UP YOUR DATA FIRST!

Yep, I'll have to wait until I have time to do a full backup, but thanks for letting me know it is possible. Mucking around with partitions is always a bit harrowing, but especially so as I pushed my luck last time - the previously mentioned partitioning and install of YDL occurred while I was a bit drunk, with no recent backup - thank god it worked OK!

PS. I just thought of something, is it possible to use pdisk on the current boot disk or would I have to boot from something else?

[autrefois]

I wanted to quickly update everyone with the situation concerning my experience with iPartition.

I was surprised to find out this morning when I woke up that Coriolis had contacted me concerning my problem. I hadn't written them yet: I planned on writing to them this morning with detailed information on what had happened, but they had already seen my post here.

They were extremely nice and helpful about the situation, and it was the director of the company that contacted me. I just e-mailed them minutes ago with details, include the crash log I had copied before sending to Apple.

My experience may have just been an isolated incident. If any of you want to try out iPartition, just make sure you have your data backed up (it does say to do this in their documentation).

If I find out more information, I will post it here.

Here is the e-mail (I took my name out for privacy reasons):

Hi XXXXX,

We are very sorry to hear that you have had a problem with our software. We understand that you have restored the volume in question, so there is no opportunity for us to examine the volume to see what went wrong, which is a shame as we obviously do not want other customers to suffer the same fate.

We would have appreciated it if you had contacted us immediately when the problem occurred, however we are pleased to hear that you have successfully restored the data from that partition. We do recommend that users back-up their files before using our software---indeed, iPartition warns you that you should make sure you have backed-up before proceeding---although we have so far only had a couple of isolated cases where this has proved necessary.

We stand by our remarks (on our website) that it is unlikely that iPartition will malfunction in this manner, although resizing an HFS+ volume is a complicated operation with a large number of variables and anybody who claimed that it would be 100% safe would be lying, or at the very least misrepresenting the truth.

Nevertheless, we would very much appreciate any information you may have about what went wrong; in particular, you mention that the program crashed whilst resizing a partition, so we are hopeful that you may still have the crash log; if so, we would be very grateful if you could send us a copy.

Similarly, if you had any other problems whilst using the software, we would appreciate it if you could let us know (either by filing a bug report, or by sending us an e-mail).

[...]

Kind regards

[sjk]

I'm wondering if there are any specific examples of iPartition usage that are known to be riskier than others.

Would making a minimal number of changes, with program restarts in between, be "safer" than batching them together in one session?

Can running DiskWarrier or TechTools Pro beforehand make any difference?

Is there any other preparation that could be done to reduce the chance of "random" failures (not the obvious stuff, like protection against power failures)? Or is that too complex (at least from a user's perspective) to predict?

We don't have enough information to know if autrefois' problem with iPartition was caused by some precondition on his system/disk and the same thing would have worked fine with someone else's system/disk. But something caused it to crash and it would be helpful knowing if there's any precaution other iPartition users might take to avoid the same problem. Maybe it's insignificant, but something that appears to be uncommon at first can show up more often as usage increases.

[sjk]

For those interested, Modify partitions without wiping the entire disk (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20021119053614569) is a MacOSXHints discussion of that topic.

[bousozoku]

I'm wondering if there are any specific examples of iPartition usage that are known to be riskier than others.

Would making a minimal number of changes, with program restarts in between, be "safer" than batching them together in one session?

Can running DiskWarrier or TechTools Pro beforehand make any difference?

Is there any other preparation that could be done to reduce the chance of "random" failures (not the obvious stuff, like protection against power failures)? Or is that too complex (at least from a user's perspective) to predict?

We don't have enough information to know if autrefois' problem with iPartition was caused by some precondition on his system/disk and the same thing would have worked fine with someone else's system/disk. But something caused it to crash and it would be helpful knowing if there's any precaution other iPartition users might take to avoid the same problem. Maybe it's insignificant, but something that appears to be uncommon at first can show up more often as usage increases.

Making certain that the volume information is correct using DiskWarrior or TTP4 should be a requirement for doing something as important as this. Backing up data should be another. It also couldn't hurt to Repair Permissions--isn't that the panacea?

Since we don't know what happened to iPartition, it's difficult to speculate as to what else could be done. It's likely that it had a memory error that needs to be corrected.

[solvs]

That's what I said. (assuming PM = Partition Magic)
Oops, sorry. I mis-read you. I was at work. Not paying attention.

Plus I was using Windows. ;) It's all XP's fault.

[autrefois]

Thank you everyone for your posts about my problem.

Just a follow-up—According to Coriolis:

"looking at the crash log, it seems that the crash was in the AppKit (part of Cocoa) [...] We'll have a careful look to ascertain whether it's a bug in iPartition (it could well be), or a problem with the AppKit itself."

I'm really not sure what AppKit does, but I'm sure more experienced users do. They asked me to send a pmap (I assume "partition map"??) of my hard drive so they could investigate further. I'll let you know if I hear more news.

Regarding some other posts: I perform maintenance on my laptop regularly, so I don't believe that was the problem. Whenever I backup my data from my Powerbook to the PowerMac, which is almost always every week, I run the various TT Pro tests/maintenance and also repair permissions.

I did so this past Sunday, but not right before I backed things up and used iPartition Wednesday. I guess it's possible there was a permissions or other problem that popped up between Sunday and Wednesday.

I don't know if this info helps any, but I thought I would post it here.

[Coriolis Sys]

Just to be clear, autrefois' problem wasn't actually disk related; it was a GUI bug, either in the AppKit or in code that uses the AppKit, that unfortunately triggered whilst he was resizing his disk. The disk code was running fine in a separate thread, but unfortunately a crash in any thread of a program will take the entire program out.

On the more general topic of what is an appropriate thing to do before running iPartition, we would recommend checking your disk using Disk Utility or (probably better) one of the various third-party disk repair tools. We also obviously recommend that you back-up your data before using the program.

Repairing permissions won't have any effect on the actual structure of your disk, so probably isn't necessary.

[bousozoku]

Just to be clear, autrefois' problem wasn't actually disk related; it was a GUI bug, either in the AppKit or in code that uses the AppKit, that unfortunately triggered whilst he was resizing his disk. The disk code was running fine in a separate thread, but unfortunately a crash in any thread of a program will take the entire program out.

On the more general topic of what is an appropriate thing to do before running iPartition, we would recommend checking your disk using Disk Utility or (probably better) one of the various third-party disk repair tools. We also obviously recommend that you back-up your data before using the program.

Repairing permissions won't have any effect on the actual structure of your disk, so probably isn't necessary.

Perhaps, separating the code so that the part which alters the partitions run as a daemon would avoid similar situations and allow the disk to be re-partioned regardless of GUI errors. Since you'd be past the point of no return, you really wouldn't need the GUI and could have the daemon re-boot the machine in case of GUI failure.

Repairing permissions has gotten to the point, for me at least, that it's a joke. It's less likely to be an issue anymore. Did you note that I mentioned panacea? :D

[Coriolis Sys]

Perhaps, separating the code so that the part which alters the partitions run as a daemon would avoid similar situations and allow the disk to be re-partioned regardless of GUI errors. Since you'd be past the point of no return, you really wouldn't need the GUI and could have the daemon re-boot the machine in case of GUI failure.

Yes, it would be nice to split the application, although having said that, we are 100% certain that we have fixed the problem in question (it was our bug :-(), and we haven't seen any further GUI problems like this since.

[iMeowbot]

For what it's worth, I had need for this utility today, and version 1.06 worked flawlessly for me (third-party external FW drive, but an IBM DeathStar much like what Apple tend to ship OEM). Yay.

[sjk]

Out of curiosity, what changes did you make to the FW drive?

I noticed someone on VersionTracker recently claimed VolumeWorks is "much better than iPartition", without giving any reasons.

[iMeowbot]

What I needed today was to shrink a 120GB HFS+ bootable partition down to about 80, and set up the remainder as ext2 for a porting project. That's my only bootable Jagwire partition, and the install media is an hour away, so that little exercise was very, very useful to me =)

I'm not really sure what features iPartition would suppsedly be missing. It manipulates partitions, there are only so many ways that can be done :D

The only "complaint" I might have is that the interface is so blatantly obvious that I ended up looking in the help, assuming that it had to be trickier than it looked.

[bousozoku]

Yes, it would be nice to split the application, although having said that, we are 100% certain that we have fixed the problem in question (it was our bug :-(), and we haven't seen any further GUI problems like this since.

It's good to hear that your bug problem is solved. Hopefully, you'll have plenty of customers to exercise your software. There have been times when I needed it but isn't a current thing.

iMeowbot:

That's too funny. You want it more complicated? :D

[iMeowbot]

That's too funny. You want it more complicated? :D
Absolutely! What's the deal with dragging handles on a pie chart and being finished? Partitioning programs are supposed to employ mysterious undocumented commands, and use terminology and device names that don't match what any other part of the OS uses. They're hard to use, that's how you know they do real work ;)

[sjk]

You can always fuddle around with pdisk, with its interesting man page containing this helpful comment:

-h Prints a rather lame set of help messages for the pdisk program.

:)

And fdisk, if that actually works on OS X.

What I want(ed) to do is shrink a media partition and add the reclaimed space, plus whatever extra the original Disk Utility partitioning wasted, to a boot partition. But I'll probably wait until I get another system and rethink/redo partitioning (again).

[bousozoku]

You can always fuddle around with pdisk, with its interesting man page containing this helpful comment:

-h Prints a rather lame set of help messages for the pdisk program.

:)

And fdisk, if that actually works on OS X.

What I want(ed) to do is shrink a media partition and add the reclaimed space, plus whatever extra the original Disk Utility partitioning wasted, to a boot partition. But I'll probably wait until I get another system and rethink/redo partitioning (again).

I've successfully used a lot of cryptic tools and read a lot of other developers' undocumentation, but pdisk really wins the award. After trying to use it to create partions for mkLinux years ago, I gave up.