partitioning problem

hi there,

i have a current model macbook pro 13.3" running osx 10.6.2. it is my first mac and it is a great machine! however the standard 250gb hard drive is a little on the small side for me, so i purchased a 500gb hard drive as an upgrade.

to get my data from the old 250gb drive to the new 500gb drive i used a borrowed diskjockey pro which copies the data across sector by sector to make an exact image - very easy! after using this tool i installed the 500gb hard drive and the machine booted up first time and works just like it did before.

unfortunately, when i try to create a new partition in OSX's disk utility to take advantage of the extra space i get an error. it says 'partition failed with the error: the chosen file size is not valid for the chosen filesystem'. if i try to resize the existing partition to use up all of the available space i get a different error. it says 'partition failed with the error: mediakit reports partition (map) too small'.

so at the moment i can't figure out a way of using the extra 250gb of space!

it seems that this might be because of the way i copied the drive - because it copied everything off the 250gb drive sector by sector the partition table on the 500gb drive must think it is a 250gb drive?? indeed in the support section of the diskjockey website they say that it can be a problem and they offer a pretty straightforward method for fixing this with a windows machine... but nothing for a mac. grr, frustrating! but so easy to fix on a windows machine.

sooooo.. can anyone help me please?? how do i fix up the partition table on this mac!?

 

It looks as if that DiskJockey can mount disks to the OS as well as copying them. Will it allow you to boot OSX from your old 250GB drive? If it does I would boot from the previous and wipe the 500GB drive of all partitions, then create the disk partitions on the 500GB manually in Disk Utility and use SuperDuper! to copy the date over.

 

you my cheesey friend are a legend! i will try that now, thankyou so much for your help!! con mucho gusto!!

 

Best of luck. Let me know how you get on

 

i can't get it to boot from the old 250gb drive

ive connected the drive to diskjockey, and diskjockey to the mac visa usb, and OSX (booted from 500gb drive) can mount the 250gb drive. but if i try to boot from it (changing boot disk preference in system preferences, or holding down option when booting) it ends up booting from 500gb disk.. i guess it tries to boot from the 250gb, fails, and then boots from the 500gb.

sadface really good idea tho!

 

ended up swapping the drives around.. put the 250gb back inside the macbook, connected the diskjockey with the 500gb to the macbook via usb

wiped the 500gb, set up new partition, used CCC to copy drive image onto the 500gb. then put the 500gb back inside the macbook and the 250gb on a shelf.

everything worked peachy except i had to recover the drive with the OSX boot CD to get it to boot properly. i guess CCC didn't copy the boot sector over ok.

anyway, all works now. many thanks for your help mate! would not have got there without your suggestion of usb. thanks!

 

Excellent stuff. Well done. Glad to have been of some help. Enjoy the extra space