Partitioning my main drive..

[amc382]

Hi everyone... I was wondering if I could ask another question.

So right now I have a macbook with a 160gig drive (HFS+ file format of course). It's been in a single partition since I bought it, meaning both Mac OSX/applications and my data are all bunched together.

Is there any way to split it into 2 partitions without going through the hassle of reformatting and reinstalling? Thanks to anyone with the answer...

 

[sushi]

Out of curiosity, why do you want to partition your HD?

 

[imaketouchtheme]

Yes you do need to reformat your HDD, which, in turn, would completely erase everything on it. You could back up your hard drive with an external drive, then reformat with the partitions that you want.

Hope that helps!

 

[amc382]

Actually...

Yes you do need to reformat your HDD, which, in turn, would completely erase everything on it. You could back up your hard drive with an external drive, then reformat with the partitions that you want.

Hope that helps!

I think I may have figured it out. It seems that Disk Utility will do it. Correct me if I'm wrong, imaketouchtheme?

That leads to another question... how big should the partitions be? It looks like Mac OS X plus the libraries plus my applications comes in at around 17 gigs... so giving the system partition 40 seems like good measure. Does anyone here have a different recommendation?

Thanks!

 

[imaketouchtheme]

I think I may have figured it out. It seems that Disk Utility will do it. Correct me if I'm wrong, imaketouchtheme?

That leads to another question... how big should the partitions be? It looks like Mac OS X plus the libraries plus my applications comes in at around 17 gigs... so giving the system partition 40 seems like good measure. Does anyone here have a different recommendation?

Thanks!

I'm pretty sure that it will erase your HDD, even with Disk Utility, when making partitions. I had a similar issue, but I wanted to install Tiger and Leopard, and it made me erase my HDD. I would say around 35 to 40 GB would be about right for the partition.

 

[sushi]

Does anyone here have a different recommendation?

Let me be more direct. Why are you going to partition your HD? What is the purpose of partitioning?

FWIW, with Tiger, if you use Disk Utility from the Install CD to partition your HD, it will destroy the information on your HD when you partition it. When you attempt to do this you will receive the following waring:

"Partitioning a disk will destroy all information on the volume of the disk."

Then it will list the HD that you are going to partition.

There is a program called iPartition, that will partition your HD, but it costs $49.