Partitioning Help

[therumble]

I am in the process of working out a Snow Leopard install and have come across a disk partitioning issue. I chose to go with a fresh install because I thought it would be nice to start over and, in doing so, I created a new partition for Snow Leopard to be installed on. However, in Disk Utility, my now-deleted Leopard install appeared "above" Snow Leopard, and I have been unable to determine how to extend the Snow Leopard disk space "up" into what was previously the Leopard install. Partitions can be moved downward into free space but apparently not upward in the same way.

I also tried iPartition to see if it could do the job but eventually learned that no real changes can be made to the boot disk.

Here is an illustration of my problem:

Any and all help is appreciated! Thank you!

 

[BlueRevolution]

Nope, partitions can't be moved up. I suggest that you:

1. Create a new partition (partition 2) to fill the unused space at the beginning of your drive.
2. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone Macintosh HD onto partition 2. You can do this while running from Macintosh HD.
3. Reboot to partition 2.
4. Use Disk Utility to delete Macintosh HD and resize partition 2 to fill the drive.

 

[therumble]

Worked like a charm! But... After dragging the partition down into the free space and applying the changes, it gives me this error:

Google was no help. Any thoughts?

 

[BlueRevolution]

Try verifying the partition (First Aid -> Verify Disk). If you get any errors, reboot to the Snow Leopard disk and repair in Disk Utility.

 

[therumble]

That worked marvelously! Partition verification found a minor volume header error, so I booted into the Snow Leopard disk, repaired the disk, and was able to extend the partition all the way down.

Thank you for all your help, BlueRevolution! You are awesome!

 

[busterbraun]

How Can I Resize Volumes Partitions with Disk Utility in Snow Leopard ?

I recently replaced Leopard 10.5 with a clean installation (not an upgrade) of Snow Leopard on my Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook (aluminum, 2GB RAM).

Under Leopard 10.5 I was able to use Disk Utility (DU to dynamically re-size existing volumes on USB hard drives. But under Snow Leopard (SL) 10.6 10A432 I am unable to do so. While I am able to replace all existing partitions on a USB drive with a new set of partitions and resize them prior to their creation by dragging the slider bars, once created, DU will not let me dynamically resize the new partitions. Doing so was easy with DU under 10.5. For example, after I re-partitioned a USB drive with DU under SL and created 2 partitions, I was able to make the top partition smaller by dragging the bottom edge upward from the lower right corner, but there seems to be no way (and no slider bars) to adjust the size of the lower partition to use the space freed by having made the upper partition smaller. In fact, although the upper partition reports a smaller size, when clicked on, the border around the upper partition still includes the range defined by its initial, larger size. There also seems to be now way (no slider bars) at the top edge of partitions that would allow them to be expanded/contracted from the top down.

Has anyone else encountered these issues? Any thoughts/suggestions as to how to resolve them? Are these known issues? I have searched but not come across it as yet.