Can I de-partition an EHD but not destroy what is in the other partition?

[McNelton]

I have a 1TB EHD that is split into two partitions. Half for my Mac to back up to, the other had been for my wife to back up to.

Is there a way to delete her partition, while maintaining my half, so that I have 1TB instead of 500GB? We are finding other backup options for her, and I want to use the entire 1TB for my Mac, but don't want to lose the 1.5 years of Mac backups (499GB) on there.

(Also, System Information tells me the "Mac backup" partition has 213GB free of the 500GB, and TM tells me I need 316GB. I also recently upgraded my Mac's HD from 320 to 500. So I now need the full 1TB of backup space.)

Specs:
2010 MBP 500GB HD, 8GB ram, 2.4 GHz processor, Mavericks, ummmm... the EHD is a Fantom GreenDrive 1TB eSATA USB 2.0 External Hard Drive. Backup with Time Machine. Used Disk Utility to set it up.

 

[Fishrrman]

You could try this:
- Connect the drive
- Open Disk Utility
- Click on the drive's physical icon (a drive partitioned two ways will show 3 icons on the left in DU's list, the uppermost is the physical drive, the two lower icons represent logical partitions on the drive)
- Click the "Partition" tab (DU should show the "current" partition scheme)
- IF your wife's partition is the "lower" one shown, click on it ONE time to select it (MAKE SURE you have selected the right partition!)
- Now click the "-" button to the left of the "options" button.

This should delete the partition.
Does "your" partition (the upper one) expand to occupy the space where the now-deleted wife's partition was?

IMPORTANT:
If -your- partition is the lower one, this won't work.
Get back to us....

 

[Weaselboy]

Open Disk Util and go to the Partitions tab. Looks to see if your partition is on the top. If it is, just select the lower (wife's) partition then click the minus to remove it. Now grab the lower right of your partition and drag it down to fill in the empty space created by removing the other partition. This page will help.

Now if you partition is on the bottom and the wife's on top, it is not as easy. If yours is on the bottom, go to the erase tab and erase her top partition to Mac OS Extended. Then go to the restore tab in Disk Uitl and drag you partition into source and her now empty top partition as destination and click restore. That will copy your data up to the top partition. Now use the same steps as above to delete the bottom partition and resize the top.

 

[McNelton]

Mine is the top partition. Its 'extended journaled' and hers is MS-DOS (FAT).

It says:

"You can't resize the partitions on this disk because it uses the Master Boot Record partition scheme."

and "This partition can't be modified."

Thoughts?

 

[MCAsan]

Use a drive large enough to hold your backup data and plus Disk Utility to copy the data on your partition.. Then you can use Disk Utilty to reformat the former dual backup drive and put one new partition on it. Then copy over the data from the temporary drive.

 

[Weaselboy]

Mine is the top partition. Its 'extended journaled' and hers is MS-DOS (FAT).

It says:

"You can't resize the partitions on this disk because it uses the Master Boot Record partition scheme."

and "This partition can't be modified."

Thoughts?

So you got hers removed okay and now yours won't resize? If it is MBR it won't. This is odd that it is in MBR scheme. It sounds like you originally had the drive in FAT32 (MBR) then added the OS X partition and it stayed at the previous MBR.

Bottom line now is it can't be resized, you the only way out is to move the data off then repartition to GUID and move the data back if it is important to you.

 

[McNelton]

Couldn't get hers removed.

I bought a second 1TB hard drive (so eventually I intend to use one for TM and the other for weekly clonings). It sounds like it might not work, but what I'd like to do is copy my current 500GB partition onto the new 1TB and then have the new one be my TM backup drive.

 

[Weaselboy]

Couldn't get hers removed.

I bought a second 1TB hard drive (so eventually I intend to use one for TM and the other for weekly clonings). It sounds like it might not work, but what I'd like to do is copy my current 500GB partition onto the new 1TB and then have the new one be my TM backup drive.

Sure... that will work. Just make two partitions on the new drive and use one to copy your partition and the other for TM. Of course this means you have both your backups on one drive with no second fail safe.