How to re-partition TimeMachine hard drive?

[DaveF]

I've got a 500 GB external hard drive on a Dual G5. I initially partitioned it for 400 GB and 100 GB. The 100 GB served as a SuperDuper backup clone. I then upgraded the system from 10.3 to 10.5 and got Time Machine running on the 400 GB partition.

So now, I have a 100 GB partition of no particular use -- I'm not using SuperDuper! right now. I'm uncertain how -- if possible -- I should re-partition the external drive. Or if I should leave well enough alone.

The G5's internal hard drive is 100 GB with about 50 GB used. I could buy SuperDuper and use it do to incremental, exact copies to the 100 GB partition. That would be pretty good for a while. And leave TM to use the 400 GB partition.

But I was wondering if I can repartition the drive back to a full 500 GB for sole TM use, without destroying the current TM data?

Any suggestions or technical tips are welcome.

Thanks!

 

[tersono]

Leopard's disk utility will re-partition drives on the fly without damaging the data already on there. Just click on the drive itself inside DU (not the individual volumes) and first do a disk repair, to ensure you have no problems. Then go to the partition tab and delete the unused partition.

You can then drag the main partition out to cover the whole drive. Click 'apply' and wait a few seconds for it to happen.

 

[DaveF]

Leopard's disk utility will re-partition drives on the fly without damaging the data already on there. Just click on the drive itself inside DU (not the individual volumes) and first do a disk repair, to ensure you have no problems. Then go to the partition tab and delete the unused partition.

You can then drag the main partition out to cover the whole drive. Click 'apply' and wait a few seconds for it to happen.

Thanks. Last I'd heard, it could not safely re-partition a live drive.