Can't re size partition in disk utility.

[Patrick J]

I having trouble resizing an external harddrive of mine. It is a 500gb Lacie drive, and inside it has two partitions: time machine (250gb) and my stuff (250gb). I want to make time machine 150gb and make My Stuff occupy the remaining space.

However, when I enter Disk utility, there is no dot between the partitions that I can drag. When I pull the corner, the disk gets smaller, but after resizing there is still a blue rectangle outlining where the old disk was.

The partition "time machine" is used for time machine backups, but I have deactivated backups in Preferences, and Time Machine is currently "off".

I have included an image for clarification.

How can I resize the partitions the way I want them?

 

[BlueRevolution]

Unfortunately, the only way I've found to fix that problem when I've seen it has been to reformat the drive. It isn't always the case, though. I just resized my boot drive and partition from 500 GB to 160 GB and moved/resized my media partition to fill the rest of the 1.5 TB drive, no small feat since you can't adjust the start point of a partition, the partition was 1 TB when I started, and my biggest external drive is 250 GB. Anyway, I was able to make the partitions bigger with no problem at all, but I've also encountered your problem on other drives. That's a bit peripheral to your question, though. Suffice it to say that you're not alone and you have my sympathy.

 

[Patrick J]

Thanks for your post. I can't find any answer on the internet either, so I am backing up now to a disk, to format and repartition; unfortunately I will lose all my history of time machine backups, but is that really so important?

 

[BlueRevolution]

It's not that important to me personally since I only use Time Machine as a simple backup rather than a versioning system — if I delete something it's because I want it gone; I don't even use the trash — but I know that some people around here get quite upset about the prospect of losing their Time Machine history. There's certainly no technical reason to avoid wiping your backup and starting fresh, aside from the remote possibility that your system drive will fail during the process.

 

[Patrick J]

It's not that important to me personally since I only use Time Machine as a simple backup rather than a versioning system — if I delete something it's because I want it gone; I don't even use the trash — but I know that some people around here get quite upset about the prospect of losing their Time Machine history. There's certainly no technical reason to avoid wiping your backup and starting fresh, aside from the remote possibility that your system drive will fail during the process.

I am in the same boat as you, although it was nice knowing that I could back up my Mac to any point in it's past. But I suppose eventually those save points would be written over by newer data. Ah well