Formatting, and iTunes Libraries, and Bears, oh my!

[terriyaki]

OK, my question is two fold.

First. I'd like to move my music collection from an external drive onto my iMac's internal drive. I use iTunes, though, and wasn't so sure what that would do to my iTunes music library. I don't want to have to delete my library and start a brand new one because I have a lot of ratings that I'd like to retain. So, how would I go about doing this without having to start a new library? Or would I even have to start a new library?

Second. I'd like to partition my iMac's internal drive but I would like to do it without having to reinstall Leopard. Is there a way for me to partition it 'on the fly'? Could I just configure it all in Disk Utility or would I need to put my iMac in Target Firewire Disk mode and have another Mac partition it? And would I need to reinstall Leopard if I did either of those things or would Leopard stay intact?

I'm currently running 10.5.1 with all of the latest software updates on a 20" 2.4Ghz C2D iMac. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Fleetwood Mac]

Moving you iTunes should be no problem. Just copy the library xml and the audio files in to the Music directory in your home folder. Then hold down option on your keyboard and select the library xml you moved to your internal drive as the library.

The partitioning question depends on why your partitioning and what filesystem you plan to use. BootCamp does exactly what you want for Windows installations, but I suppose you could just use it to make the partition and change the filesystem later for your purposes. Disk Utility is also said to have some "on the fly" capability, but it sounds limited.

 

[terriyaki]

I want to partition my internal drive so that I can separate the OS from my data incase any problems ever arise where I would need to reinstall Leopard. Rather than having to back up the data before reinstalling, I'd just point the new fresh install of Leopard to the first partition without harming the data on the second partition. I don't really muck around with Boot Camp so I'd prefer to use Mac OS Extended Journaled for both partitions.

So, would I be able to do this right now within Disk Utility? Would I need to boot up in Target Firewire Disk mode and partition it with another Mac? Would I need to reinstall Leopard? I'd prefer it if I could partition my internal drive without having to reinstall Leopard.

Oh, and by the way thanks for the help with my iTunes question!

Edit: Or would it just be smarter for me to back everything up via Time Machine onto one of my external drives, partition my internal drive accordingly, and then install Leopard again using the Time Machine image?

 

[Fleetwood Mac]

I think its possible to partition using Disk Utility without needing to reinstall anything, although I haven't tried it. You may need to boot from you Leopard disc however.

I think DU works by moving the end of a partition and making room to enlarge others, or in your case creating new ones. It appears that there is little documentation available online, you should check the manual. I'd also make sure I was keeping good backups before going ahead with this kind of partitioning.

Just a warning; keeping your data and OS/Applications on separate partitions can be a bigger annoyance then time-saver on Macs. Hard drive failure occurs more often than does such a serious problem with OS X that files can not be recovered with ease. If you have a backup solution like an external hard drive or internet disk (and you should) its even more unnecessary.

 

[terriyaki]

Hmm you bring up a really good point actually.

Would it be possible to make a single Time Machine backup of my internal on my external drive and just turn Time Machine off afterwards? What I basically want is just one backup image stored on an external in case anything ever goes wrong with the internal. If anything does go wrong, I get the iMac serviced, get a new internal hard drive, stick in my Leopard install DVD and point it to the Time Machine backup stored on the external.

Is that a feasible option? I'd prefer that Time Machine make backup images sparingly since I'd like for the backup to take as little space as possible.

 

[Fleetwood Mac]

You could let Time Machine make its initial backup and turn it off. If you want to keep a single backup at a time you might do better using products like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper though.

They can even create bootable images.

Edit: SuperDuper isn't Leopard compatible yet. Not only is CCC, but its infinitely free-er too, so take a look: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

 

[terriyaki]

Nice, CCC seems to be a good alternative to Time Machine. I think I'll use a combination of both once I accumulate more data. Time Machine to perhaps back up my internal and CCC to back up the data of my externals.

Thanks for all of your help!