Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Partitioning Hard Drive
- Thread starter sou1 so1di3r
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
OK well since the partition resizing mechanism will not let you shrink a partition smaller than the amount of data currently being used by it, and that TM only adds to the data so should not be subject to fragmentation, my question would be have you turned off Time Machine temporarily before trying to shrink that partition? I have a feeling that if TM is still on at that time the system will have the TM partition marked as active and will not allow the resizing of it.
Of course my other question is whether it is your intention to add a third partition to that drive- as without removing the second partition and re-adding it you won't be able to integrate the space freed up from the TM partition to it. Just curious!
Of course my other question is whether it is your intention to add a third partition to that drive- as without removing the second partition and re-adding it you won't be able to integrate the space freed up from the TM partition to it. Just curious!
I'll do this. Edit: Any freeware out there that does this? Poor college kid
OK well since the partition resizing mechanism will not let you shrink a partition smaller than the amount of data currently being used by it, and that TM only adds to the data so should not be subject to fragmentation, my question would be have you turned off Time Machine temporarily before trying to shrink that partition? I have a feeling that if TM is still on at that time the system will have the TM partition marked as active and will not allow the resizing of it.
Of course my other question is whether it is your intention to add a third partition to that drive- as without removing the second partition and re-adding it you won't be able to integrate the space freed up from the TM partition to it. Just curious!
I just want to give less space to my Time Machine and then let more space for my HD movies and such on the "external space"
And yes, I tried turning off Time Machine temporarily and it still failed.
I'll do this. Edit: Any freeware out there that does this? Poor college kid
I just want to give less space to my Time Machine and then let more space for my HD movies and such on the "external space"
And yes, I tried turning off Time Machine temporarily and it still failed.
OK well one more thought then as a workaround: Time Machine stores all its files within a single folder so there is nothing at all preventing you from storing other files in your Time Machine partition as it stands right now, eliminating the need to resize partitions at all. A lot of people do not even partition the drive they want to use for Time Machine to start with, just going ahead and storing data files on the single partition on a drive alongside the TM folder.
As far as free defrag programs, I don't think so- with the exception of cloning the data to another drive, formatting the original and restoring the data which does result in a defrag in the end.
Yeah I guess that would work... just kinda annoying. I don't understand why it won't work.
All you need to do is "unmount" (eject) the drive(s). As for de-fragmenting, disk utility will compress the data and take care of that for you.
It should be clear however that a partition that has X gigabytes in it can not be resized to less then X gigabytes. Time Machine will fill any size disk or partition you give it so I doubt you will be able to make the TM partitin smaller, not if it is full.
Disk drives now are so cheap. I just bought a 1TB drive for $100. There is little point mess with this. Just give TM the entire drive and buy another drive for your other data.
It should be clear however that a partition that has X gigabytes in it can not be resized to less then X gigabytes. Time Machine will fill any size disk or partition you give it so I doubt you will be able to make the TM partitin smaller, not if it is full.
Disk drives now are so cheap. I just bought a 1TB drive for $100. There is little point mess with this. Just give TM the entire drive and buy another drive for your other data.
