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Disk Utility - can i partition a drive already with data?
- Thread starter bozeefus
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You do realise if you partition it to OS journaled no PC will ever be able to use it, only other Macs and Linux machines.
Anyway to answer your question, if you want to make the WHOLE hard drive OS Journaled the only way to convert it without loosing any data is to copy all the data to your own hard drive then perform the formatting in disk utility, then copy the data back.
If you mean you only want to make a portion of it OS Journaled and leave the rest FAT for Windows then just go to disk utility, select it and then press Partition, choose the new partition size and format that partition to OS journaled. Be careful to select the right one when formatting.
Anyway to answer your question, if you want to make the WHOLE hard drive OS Journaled the only way to convert it without loosing any data is to copy all the data to your own hard drive then perform the formatting in disk utility, then copy the data back.
If you mean you only want to make a portion of it OS Journaled and leave the rest FAT for Windows then just go to disk utility, select it and then press Partition, choose the new partition size and format that partition to OS journaled. Be careful to select the right one when formatting.
thank you for the warning as well as answering my question
i plan on making only a small portion of it os extended. it's just for the rare instances when i have to transfer files from mac to mac that are over 4 gb
thank you for the warning as well as answering my question
i plan on making only a small portion of it os extended. it's just for the rare instances when i have to transfer files from mac to mac that are over 4 gb
A better solution, which most Mac users do is to format external hard drives in the new Windows NTFS format, both Mac's and Windows can read and write to NTFS with unlimited file sizes, you just have to install MacFUSE and NTFS-3G on Macs to enable NTFS support first. (both free, and dont take up any room on your system, made by Google) Links included, just click the names
You dont have to install this on your Windows machines obviously as NTFS is native to Windows
Enjoy
ah! very interesting. i did not know an easier solution exists. thank you for the heads up. now i just have to copy my files to someplace else for now...
thank you for the heads up. now i just have to copy my files to someplace else for now...A better solution, which most Mac users do is to format external hard drives in the new Windows NTFS format, both Mac's and Windows can read and write to NTFS with unlimited file sizes, you just have to install MacFUSE and NTFS-3G on Macs to enable NTFS support first. (both free, and dont take up any room on your system, made by Google) Links included, just click the names
You dont have to isntall this on your Windows machines obviously as NTFS is native to Windows
Enjoy