partion

[windels]

hello!

I am having a problem with partitioning my external harddrive. at the moment it is devided by three partitions. I want to make it 4. so I want to delete one and than create 2 partitions with the space that comes available. however, I can't delete the partition I want. when I try to, disk utility says the partition is too small to delete. however it is over 160 gb ( from the 500) . any ideas how I can solve this?

 

[patrick0brien]

-windels

Hmm. Interesting challenge.

One way would be to wipe the drive and repartition from scratch.

though I'm curious: why do you have need for logical partitioning? Let alone 4 ? You, of course, realize that 4 partitions mean a 1/4 lifetime right?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

You, of course, realize that 4 partitions mean a 1/4 lifetime right?

Where did you get this information from? That doesn't make sense to me, unless all 4 partitions are being used simultaneously.

To the OP: I'm assuming you have Leopard on your Mac. Are you sure you have the right partition selected?

 

[sushi]

You, of course, realize that 4 partitions mean a 1/4 lifetime right?

Huh?

Please explain.

 

[patrick0brien]

-sushi, wrldwzrd89

Well, you're right, it's based on assumption that all 4 partitions will be used often enough. And that was based on not knowing the actual use, fair enough.

But. The potential wear on the slider is up to %400. To me, I'd like to know the reasons for exposing oneself to this wear liability.

 

[plinden]

Nope, transferring X bytes to 4 partitions isn't going to reduce the lifetime of a drive to 1/4 of the lifetime when transferring the same X bytes to one partition.

The only objection I would have to partitioning is you find some partitions filling up faster than other. If you have a rational partitioning strategy, you don't want to save data willy-nilly on the drive, and so you effectively have less space available. It's better to have that free space as one block.

Edit:Anyway, assuming the original OP wants to continue with partitioning ... how are the partitions arranged? You can use OS X's Disk Utility to repartition drives, but you can only modify the last partition. So if you have partitions:

-------------
| A | B | C |
-------------

you can only modify (resize or delete) C, not A or B.

 

[patrick0brien]

Nope, transferring X bytes to 4 partitions isn't going to reduce the lifetime of a drive to 1/4 of the lifetime when transferring the same X bytes to one partition.

-plinden

Correct.

I felt I was safe in making that lifetime reduction caution because I felt that windels might actually use the 4 partitions. Which is what does it.

 

[windels]

to answer your questions:

1 partition for time machine
2 ntfs partion. cause all our other computers at home ar pc's
3 one partition for mac use only, as I find ntfs reads an writes slower
and on the fourth I would like to make a bootable leopard image incase I mess something up and become unable to boot.

if anyone has a better solution; be my guest. and my firts problem still stands. I rebooted my mac, unplugged the harddrive, and neither did work. also I would prefer not to format it because there's alot on the thing and I can't put it all on my other pc because I don't have enough room.

any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Unfortunately... Time Machine and NTFS cannot coexist on the same drive, because Time Machine doesn't like MBR partitioning schemes, which you need for a Windows machine to understand what's on the drive.

 

[windels]

Unfortunately... Time Machine and NTFS cannot coexist on the same drive, because Time Machine doesn't like MBR partitioning schemes, which you need for a Windows machine to understand what's on the drive.

I installed ntfs 3G and macfuse and I am perfectly able to wread and write to the ntfs part. the time machine is a mac partitioned piece on my external harddrive.