Alright, so I've been trying very hard to try and get my main partition to take up the whole hard drive after deleting Debian (needed more space). But in Disk Utility, I can't move my partition up; strangely, the free space seems disconnected from the main partition (unless this is how it's supposed to look and I've just forgotten). I've tried booting into the Leopard installer and doing it from there; yet it still didn't work. I've tried using a Lubuntu live CD and using GParted (and even parted) to try and move the partition but I get the error "Sorry, HFS+ cannot be resized that way yet.". Hell, I've even tried grabbing a SATA to USB adapter; plugging in a hard drive, making a bootable backup of the internal hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, booting off that, format the internal hard drive, and make another Carbon Copy Cloner backup to the internal hard drive again; but I can't do that either because my Powerbook refuses to boot off of USB for some strange (and frustrating) reason, and it doesn't matter if I'm trying OpenFirmware or holding down the option key at startup. I'm lost here. What can I do? I've also included a picture of the partition map from Disk Utility; maybe some of you guys can see something wrong with it or something. Thanks.
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How to move main "Macintosh HD" partition up and fill up entirety of SSD?
- Thread starter hellothere231
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Here's the best method, I think:
Backup your SSD to another drive.
Change the partition scheme so there is just one partition, then click the Apply button.
When that completes, you will have only one partition, freshly erased.
Restore the backup to your SSD.
You could do what you are trying now, if the partition that you want to remove is BELOW the one you want to keep.
But, the partition scheme won't allow removing a partition higher in the list. All you can do is erase it, but you can't merge the space with a partition under it without erasing both.
Backup your SSD to another drive.
Change the partition scheme so there is just one partition, then click the Apply button.
When that completes, you will have only one partition, freshly erased.
Restore the backup to your SSD.
You could do what you are trying now, if the partition that you want to remove is BELOW the one you want to keep.
But, the partition scheme won't allow removing a partition higher in the list. All you can do is erase it, but you can't merge the space with a partition under it without erasing both.
Should I try a different cloning tool this time (such as dd?) I already have a clone of my SSD on an HDD where I used Carbon Copy Cloner, but since that's a file-level clone, I don't know if it would work the same.
But if I did that, wouldn't it not be able to boot once I copied the files back? That's why I've been thinking of using dd; it's a bit-perfect copy.You could just copy the files manually.
It would work manually as long as you show hidden files first. Open Terminal and paste/type this:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
Then type:
killall Finder
The Finder will now show hidden files. You are ready to copy! Just be sure to not copy ".Spotlight-V100", ".fseventsd", ".Trashes", or ".DS_Store". It won't make a difference if you don't copy them and you will get errors if you try to.
It has worked for me in the past. If you're worried about permissions, fix them with Disk Utility.
So dd is a less than suitable option for disk clones then? Again, I already have a CCC copy of the internal hard drive, but I'm not sure if it's going to be bootable once I restore it back to the SSD (and I really don't want to screw up in that regard
)I speak from experience when I say that does not work. Finder errors out rather quickly when copying some of the hidden and locked directories. It does work for classic Mac OS though.
So dd is a less than suitable option for disk clones then? Again, I already have a CCC copy of the internal hard drive, but I'm not sure if it's going to be bootable once I restore it back to the SSD (and I really don't want to screw up in that regard
dd will work, but it's overkill and can be slower than CCC. CCC is almost always bootable when cloned across drives.
Alrighty then. Going to go boot into my Leopard disk and restore the backup (using Disk Utility); wish me luck.
If this were OS9 and not OS X you'd be right. But OS X, as @Intell mentions, uses permissions and ACLs.
When you initiate a file copy you are attaching YOUR user account permissions at the destination, not the permissions that are pertinent to the file(s) being copied. Altering permissions affects things.
Disk Utility only repairs permissions for things it has receipts on. And yes, it has reciepts for the base system, but dealing with messed up permissions using DU after a file copy can be a trial in itself.
Finally, there are some files that take elevated permissions to copy (even above System Admin accounts). Only acting as root will allow that and generally using the root user for this type of thing is bad practice.
Repairing permissions copied by the root user can also be a nightmare in and of itself.
Operation was a success; restore worked fine! Typing this from the Powerbook G4 right now, and I can now use all the available disk space. Rather silly that there is no way to just move the partition IMO, but maybe that's just how HFS+ works (not really an expert).
That's what CCC and SuperDuper does, is make boot-able copies, never failed me yet and I've used them both for years now.So dd is a less than suitable option for disk clones then? Again, I already have a CCC copy of the internal hard drive, but I'm not sure if it's going to be bootable once I restore it back to the SSD (and I really don't want to screw up in that regard