Partitioning a Drive

[Washac]

Hello

Maybe a totaly stupid question, but I need to ask it.

I am reorganizing my drives and files and have need to partition a 2TB drive.

I want this drive to be two 1TB partitions, problem is this drive has files on it and I know that if do the partition I loose the files.

Is there anyway that a drive can be partitioned that contains files.

My problem is I have no where to store all the files.

 

[Loa]

Hello,

First: you *can* probably partition a volume without destroying the data. Try and do it with Disk Utility and it will let you know if you can. It could take hours or days to do it though.

On the other hand, if you have absolutely NO back-up whatsoever for this data, you're asking for trouble. Even if you don't repartition. Disks fail, data gets corrupted.

My advice before even thinking of partitioning, you should get a back-up drive.

First things first.

Loa

 

[DustinT]

Just resize your existing partition to 1TB. Once you've done that successfully you'll have a ton of free space, just create a new partition with that. Check google for details, its pretty easy to do.

 

[minifridge1138]

Just resize your existing partition to 1TB. Once you've done that successfully you'll have a ton of free space, just create a new partition with that. Check google for details, its pretty easy to do.

That will only work the OP has less than 1 TB worth of data.
If that is the case, then yes, resize and use the new free space to create a new partition.

If you have more than 1 TB of data, you'll need to get some sort of external storage / backup to hold the files so you can modify the partitons.

 

[Washac]

That will only work the OP has less than 1 TB worth of data.
If that is the case, then yes, resize and use the new free space to create a new partition.

If you have more than 1 TB of data, you'll need to get some sort of external storage / backup to hold the files so you can modify the partitons.

Hello

Yes the drive now has less than 1TB of files, so I can do it as the poster suggested ?

 

[minifridge1138]

Yes, you should be able to.
Just resize the existing partition down to 1 TB.
It will take a while to move all of the data.
Then turn the free space into a new partition.

You will probably get 1partition of 1tb and another of .99 tb.
Various reasons why.