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Time Machine, Partion, and an External Hard Drive

Hipnomac

Hipnomac

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 14, 2007
148
0
Chicago
Is it possible to partition a External Hard Drive that already has information on it.

I have a new mac, and want to use time machine with it, but dont want to re-write over the existing information.

Its a 500gb, and only about 100 is currently being used. So i have more than enough to back my entire Harddrive on the new mac.

Please let me know options, and thanks in advance.
 
Use the disk utility app to partition it, it does what's called non destructive partitioning, which you can probably tell what that means from the name, but just in case, it wont wipe your data, just go into it, select your external hard drive, and select 2 partitions, then let it partition away, it may take some time, and then setup time machine on this new partition.

For what it's worth though, backup that 100GB of data first, just incase something goes wrong, you never can be too careful...
 
I'm pretty sure you can not partition a disc without erasing everything, I think you can use the drive as it is though, until it fills up...

Think the best thing to do is try and find a drive to back up onto then partition.
 
many thanks!

Schtumple said:
Use the disk utility app to partition it, it does what's called non destructive partitioning, which you can probably tell what that means from the name, but just in case, it wont wipe your data, just go into it, select your external hard drive, and select 2 partitions, then let it partition away, it may take some time, and then setup time machine on this new partition.

For what it's worth though, backup that 100GB of data first, just incase something goes wrong, you never can be too careful...
Click to expand...
 
Oh just thought, if the external drive isn't in HFS+ formatting I don't think you can do the non destructive partitioning, the drive needs to be in HFS+ otherwise it will destroy the old information.

If it's formatted as FAT32 or NTFS you need to put your data onto your mac, then format it as 2 partitions of HFS+ then transfer the data back.
 
Thanks for this.

I do believe is still FAT32, so I guess Ill just have to temp store it on my new mac, then partition.


Schtumple said:
Oh just thought, if the external drive isn't in HFS+ formatting I don't think you can do the non destructive partitioning, the drive needs to be in HFS+ otherwise it will destroy the old information.

If it's formatted as FAT32 or NTFS you need to put your data onto your mac, then format it as 2 partitions of HFS+ then transfer the data back.
Click to expand...
 
Orionexp said:
Drive Genius 2 lets you: "repartition your hard drive 'on-the-fly' (no need to reformat the hard drive) allowing you to add, delete, hide or expand partitions live." http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php
Click to expand...

Just to make darn sure that this would not work on a PC formatted disk, I just reformatted a spare disk to simulate a PC drive (FAT32 format, MBR partition scheme) and as Schtumple mentioned above, no joy in Drive Genius.

Drive Genius will not even let you select the drive to even SEE the partitions that are currently on it.

Tried again after changing the partition map to Apple's GUID scheme and left the partition as FAT32, and again no success- this time DG allowed the drive to be selected, but then popped up the message
Disks that have Windows or MSDOS partitions cannot be repartitioned in Drive Genius
Click to expand...
So now we know for sure this is not a solution unfortunately with real world testing. :(
 
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