Problems expanding a Snow Leopard partition

[Jim1954]

I have a 2011 iMac with 500GB HD that came with Lion, I needed Snow Leopard for an old app so divided hard drive into half of each OS. I now realize I need more space for Snow Leopard but there is that common problem many have run into of Lion not letting you expand another partition that has an older OS no matter how you boot up. It seems there must be some workaround though.

I can reduce Lion partition to make a lot of empty space, so first I just tried expanding into that empty space and couldn't, then thought maybe it needed Snow Leopard on that empty space, it still won't let me. I can enter number and click apply and it acts like it's working but nothing changes.

Trying to avoid the possible Terminal command option, not experienced enough with that. How in the world can I expand that partition? It shouldn't be this hard!

Thanks

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You could use an external HDD, properly formatted*, to clone Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion onto and then boot from one of the OSs on the external HDD and repartition, thus deleting, the internal HDD via Disk Utility.
Then after you have set the correct sizes, you clone everything back.
CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper! can help with the cloning.

* How to format a new HDD to install Mac OS X onto (or make a bootable copy onto)​

 

[Jim1954]

Thanks, I do have some external drives I can use. Couldn't I just copy the Lion, delete it on internal hd and then expand Snow Leopard? Then I would copy Lion back to the internal.

If I don't have to, I prefer not to copy the Snow Leopard side since I have a lot of huge video files on it for work, I assume the copies could take quite long to transfer? I have almost nothing on Lion. How long do these copies usually take?

Thanks

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Thanks, I do have some external drives I can use. Couldn't I just copy the Lion, delete it on internal hd and then expand Snow Leopard? Then I would copy Lion back to the internal.

If I don't have to, I prefer not to copy the Snow Leopard side since I have a lot of huge video files on it for work, I assume the copies could take quite long to transfer? I have almost nothing on Lion. How long do these copies usually take?

Thanks

If Lion is your second partition, that might work.

The transfer speed depends on the interface for the HDDs you use. USB will be slower than Firewire 400, Firewire 400 will be slower than Firewire 800.

100 GB via CarbonCopyCloner and USB should take less than 2 hours, via Firewire 800 it should take less than one hour, but since you will clone a lot of small files too, it might actually take longer, as copying 10 files 10 GB in size is faster than copying 100.000 files 1 MB in size.

 

[Jim1954]

If Lion is your second partition, that might work.

The transfer speed depends on the interface for the HDDs you use. USB will be slower than Firewire 400, Firewire 400 will be slower than Firewire 800.

100 GB via CarbonCopyCloner and USB should take less than 2 hours, via Firewire 800 it should take less than one hour, but since you will clone a lot of small files too, it might actually take longer, as copying 10 files 10 GB in size is faster than copying 100.000 files 1 MB in size.

Thanks for all the info, appreciate it. Once Lion is deleted and that empty space is just a deleted open hard drive, why is there no possibility that the Snow Leopard partition (which is 2nd) can be expanded? Just wondering, this seems to be a very strange way to make a partition utility.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Thanks for all the info, appreciate it. Once Lion is deleted and that empty space is just a deleted open hard drive, why is there no possibility that the Snow Leopard partition (which is 2nd) can be expanded? Just wondering, this seems to be a very strange way to make a partition utility.

Since Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is on the second partition, and the second partition is written to, the second partition can't be expanded "negatively", meaning "adding free space before the data that is on the second partition". I can't explain it any better right now.
If Lion would be on the second partition, you could just remove it and expand the first partition, but you can't do it the way you want.

 

[paronga]

Since Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is on the second partition, and the second partition is written to, the second partition can't be expanded "negatively", meaning "adding free space before the data that is on the second partition". I can't explain it any better right now.
If Lion would be on the second partition, you could just remove it and expand the first partition, but you can't do it the way you want.

it's quite simple.

you can only resize from the end of a partition.
you cant move the starting point of a partition.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

it's quite simple.

you can only resize from the end of a partition.
you cant move the starting point of a partition.

Thanks. I was not thinking clearly back then when I wrote my reply. Ah, the drunken past of thoughts.

A spinach cat for you.

 

[paronga]

Thanks. I was not thinking clearly back then when I wrote my reply. Ah, the drunken past of thoughts.

A spinach cat for you.

spinach cat? ^_^

it took me forever to understand the problem i was having one day when i was trying to repartition my computer. But then i had a moment of understanding!

also, you avatar is trying to play tricks on me!

 

[Jim1954]

As an alternative I was thinking of just dragging and dropping everything from partition #2 (snow leopard) to #3 empty snow leopard partition. Then deleting #2 and expanding #3. Would that transferring go too slow? I would do it at a point where I don't have anything extra to move except Final Cut Pro. Maybe will just go ahead and try it sometime today, maybe it will give me a time estimate. Thanks.