Disc Utility Partitioning Question

First you need to shrink Backup partition to create empty space and then you should be able to extend the Media partition to allocate the available free space.

I suspect you will have to copy the data to another external, reformat the current, and re-copy.

Pretty sure you can expand a partiton backwards..ie expand "media" into space formerly used by "backup"

It appears old-wiz is right. According to this: http://pondini.org/OSX/DU4.html

You can expand a partition, but only by moving the "bottom" of it down in the diagram, into empty space. You cannot move the "top" of a partition.

I thought you could expand Media partition once you shrink the Backup partition. One option is to do what old-wiz suggested, copy the data from your disk and then copy it back. I assume you do not have to delete both partitions. Just Media partition, shrink Backup to the size you wish and then create new Media partition and copy back data. Other solution is to use third-party tool such as iPartition to do what you need. I am not much familiar with (free) tools for Mac. In any case, before doing anything make sure to make a backup of your drive first.

Good luck!

Suggestion:

1. Copy the contents of the second (lower) partition to another drive

2. Re-initialize the drive, and set up with partition sizes desired.

3. Re-create your backup on the first (upper) partition (CarbonCopyCloner would be a good choice). Aside: you should make the partition size for the backup large enough to accomodate "future growth".

4. Re-copy the contents of the lower partition.

This will work if nothing else does.