Shrink Mac OS 9 Partition?

[thevividyoshi]

Hi, this is my first actual thread here, so I am sorry if I posted this in the wrong place.
Basically, in my PowerMac G4, I have two drives; a 128gb SSD with Mac OS 9 on it, and a 20GB hard disk with Mac OS X Tiger (and Leopard, but I am leaving that out this time.)

I have a Zip drive coming, which I want to install to be able to transfer files between my Macs easier. However, for this to work, I need to take out the 20gb drive. I still want to have Tiger AND Mac OS 9 installed, but I don't want to clutter up a single partition with both installs.

Is there a way to resize the Mac OS 9 partition on the SSD, without formatting it, so I can fit another partition with Tiger? I was going to use Disk Utility off of the existing HD, but it says it is going to format the volumes, which is NOT what I want to do.

Thanks in advance!

 

[bunnspecial]

Unfortunately not.

What you're asking about is called Live Partitioning, and it can be done using the GUID partitioning map. No PowerPC Mac is capable of booting off GUID volumes, while all Intel Macs can.

The only way to do what you're asking is indeed to clone everything to another disk, then wipe and reformat the current drive HFS+/APM and clone back to it.

 

[AphoticD]

Unfortunately not.

What you're asking about is called Live Partitioning, and it can be done using the GUID partitioning map. No PowerPC Mac is capable of booting off GUID volumes, while all Intel Macs can.

The only way to do what you're asking is indeed to clone everything to another disk, then wipe and reformat the current drive HFS+/APM and clone back to it.

Doesn't Disk Utility in Leopard do live partitioning for Apple Partition Maps? If you have a Leopard install disc, I would try booting from it and resizing the partitions.

Just make sure you backup everything first in case clicking "Apply" just wipes the disk clean..

There are other options. If you're confident with getting a Linux Live disc to boot on your G4 you *should* be able to use GParted to achieve the results. But erasing and reinstalling is likely to be far quicker and easier if you have no experience with Linux.

 

[thevividyoshi]

I will try to boot Leopard and see if I can do live partitioning from there.

I have a Linux Live CD to boot it (but it's slowww...), and I think GParted could probably resize it, but the last time I resized a Mac partition with GParted, it became completely unusable. I think I'll just re-install OS 9, this time in a dual-partition setup.

Thank you all for your help!

 

[swamprock]

I will try to boot Leopard and see if I can do live partitioning from there.

I have a Linux Live CD to boot it (but it's slowww...), and I think GParted could probably resize it, but the last time I resized a Mac partition with GParted, it became completely unusable. I think I'll just re-install OS 9, this time in a dual-partition setup.

Thank you all for your help!

If you have a lot of stuff installed in OS 9, I think that you can just drag the entire contents of your drive to a backup drive, then drag it all back once you repartition. You'll probably have to re-bless the System suitcase in OS 9, though, which you can do from your OS X partition. You can boot from your OS 9 install CD and re-bless it as well.

I'd want to drag all of the hidden files as well, and IIRC there's a way to see hidden files/folders in OS 9 although it escapes me at the moment how to do that.

 

[thevividyoshi]

If you have a lot of stuff installed in OS 9, I think that you can just drag the entire contents of your drive to a backup drive, then drag it all back once you repartition. You'll probably have to re-bless the System suitcase in OS 9, though, which you can do from your OS X partition. You can boot from your OS 9 install CD and re-bless it as well.

I never thought about doing it like that. I thought Mac OS 9 has some kind of boot flag in the partition, like MBR. I'll give that a try!

 

[swamprock]

I never thought about doing it like that. I thought Mac OS 9 has some kind of boot flag in the partition, like MBR. I'll give that a try!

OS 9... the pinnacle of Mac non-security

 

[AphoticD]

OS 9... the pinnacle of Mac non-security

Yes, OS 9 was easy. Drag and drop backups, no permissions or hidden boot files to worry about. Cloning a system was just a matter of copying the files across.
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I'd want to drag all of the hidden files as well, and IIRC there's a way to see hidden files/folders in OS 9 although it escapes me at the moment how to do that.

The hidden files on the root of the volume were typically Desktop DB, Trash, Desktop Folder and the volume Icon file. So you shouldn't need to worry about it. Just save your custom volume icon (if any), move everything from the desktop into a new folder on the drive (named something appropriate like "Cleanup later" ) and then drag the folders across. The Desktop DB will be rebuilt on first boot.

 

[swamprock]

The hidden files on the root of the volume were typically Desktop DB, Trash, Desktop Folder and the volume Icon file. So you shouldn't need to worry about it. Just save your custom volume icon (if any), move everything from the desktop into a new folder on the drive (named something appropriate like "Cleanup later" ) and then drag the folders across. The Desktop DB will be rebuilt on first boot.

For the most part, yes. There are some apps that use hidden license and pref files, though, that I was referring to...

 

[thevividyoshi]

I moved the contents of the SSD to the hard disk, partitioned out the disk via Disk Utility, and moved the files back. Restarted, and it booted up and worked perfectly! Thank you for the advice!

 

[AphoticD]

I moved the contents of the SSD to the hard disk, partitioned out the disk via Disk Utility, and moved the files back. Restarted, and it booted up and worked perfectly! Thank you for the advice!

Nicely done. And you're welcome.

I'm curious about the use of a zip drive. Can you still buy working media? And do your old disks still hold their data OK? I know floppies have been tricky to salvage from the destruction of time.

I have an Apple branded zip drive from a B&W tucked in a box somewhere which could work in one of my G4 towers, but no face plate (or media) to match.

This is an interesting tidbit from the Zip drive Wikipedia page:

Legacy
Zip drives are still used today by retro-computing enthusiasts as a means to transfer large amounts (compared to the retro hardware) of data between modern and older computer systems. The Commodore-Amiga, Atari ST, Apple II, and "old world" Macintosh communities often use drives with the SCSI interface prevalent on those platforms. They have also found a small niche in the music production community, as SCSI-compatible Zip drives can be used with vintage samplers and keyboards of the 1990s.

I imagine this would be the case if we're talking about older Macs with SCSI which don't support Ethernet or AppleTalk.

 

[thevividyoshi]

I'm curious about the use of a zip drive. Can you still buy working media? And do your old disks still hold their data OK? I know floppies have been tricky to salvage from the destruction of time.

I found a seller on eBay that sells the Zip disks for super cheap ($0.99 per disk, plus $2.95 for shipping). They are recycled, but I'd imagine they aren't going to have any problems. As far as the reliability of zip disks over time, they use magnetic material within the disks, just like floppies. I've only had two zip disks fail, and that is because they were inserted into a broken drive (resulting in the "Click of Death").

I imagine this would be the case if we're talking about older Macs with SCSI which don't support Ethernet or AppleTalk.

I am going to use zip disks for many purposes, one of which is making installation disks for my Macintosh SE (System 6.0.8) and my PowerBook 520 (System 7.5), which also contain my software. I also have a few disks with music and some old documents, which I would like to read on the original systems.

 

[AphoticD]

Nice. You could fit a very functional System 7.5.x with a full software suite on even a 100MB zip disk and it would likely run just as quickly as the internal HDD on some old Macs.

 

[Intell]

APM drives can do live partitioning, so long as the OS 9 drivers are not installed on them. Live partitioning was introduced in 10.4.6(?) to go with Boot Camp.

 

[eyoungren]

I'm curious about the use of a zip drive.

I hate ZIP drives.

I had a USB 250 once and went to access my files on my TiBook. Double-click to open one and the drive bombs. Get it all working again and the disk is EMPTY! Data recovery software found nothing either!

Lost a bunch of important files. After that (2004 or so) I never trusted ZIP disks for anything more than temporary transfer storage.

 

[weckart]

One other potential option for live partitioning on APM volumes, including those with OS 9 drivers on them, is a third party utility called iPartition which came on a bootable disk. There was another called VolumeWorks from Subrosasoft, which I have not personally used, that also claimed to do the same.

The problem is getting hold of either since both seem to be deprecated or even retired.

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/20301/volumeworks

https://coriolis-systems.com/support/2015/3/which-version-ipartition-do-i-need-os-x-10x

I have found a download link for VolumeWorks

Whether you still can license it is another issue.

 

[ziggy29]

I hate ZIP drives.

I had a USB 250 once and went to access my files on my TiBook. Double-click to open one and the drive bombs. Get it all working again and the disk is EMPTY! Data recovery software found nothing either!

Lost a bunch of important files. After that (2004 or so) I never trusted ZIP disks for anything more than temporary transfer storage.

I well remember the reports of the "click of death". It never hit me personally and I think they eventually fixed it, but yeah, it was real. Zip drives are still occasionally useful depending on what I am doing but I'd never trust anything critical to them. In reality these days I usually use a portable FW drive to move stuff around between my PPC Macs. Even my old 7600 with a Sonnet Tango card has no problem with it in OS 8.6 and above.