Will Resizing Partitions Erase Data?

Discussion in 'macOS' started by T3hPreacher, Sep 19, 2009.

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  1. T3hPreacher, Sep 19, 2009

    T3hPreacher macrumors member

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2008
    #1
    Hello,

    I have a 700 GB external HD with a 349 GB MacOSX Extended (Journaled) partition, and a 349 GB FAT32 Partition.

    I need to shrink the FAT32 partition to make room for another smallish HFS+ partition so that I can back up my virtual machine (around 30 GB). My question is whether resizing the FAT32 partition in Disk Utility will harm the data in either of my existing partitions. I understand Leopard to have an on-the-fly partitioning ability, but I wasn't sure whether this applied only to certain file systems.

    I am running OSX 10.5.8.

    Thanks.
     
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  2. GGJstudios, Sep 19, 2009

    GGJstudios macrumors Westmere

    GGJstudios

    Joined:
    May 16, 2008
    #2
    If you want to increase the size of a partition, it can be done without erasing data. Decreasing it will most likely erase some or all the data. It's a good idea to back up before re-partitioning. For more information, click Help in Disk Utility. It will tell you the conditions where partitions can be resized without damaging data.
     
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  3. T3hPreacher, Sep 19, 2009

    T3hPreacher thread starter macrumors member

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    Jan 7, 2008
    #3
    Thanks for the tip. I plan to back up my data from that drive now. If I moved that data from the FAT32 into my Time Machine partition, would it mess with Time Machine any?
     
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  4. T3hPreacher, Sep 19, 2009

    T3hPreacher thread starter macrumors member

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    Jan 7, 2008
    #4
    Nevermind, I got it sorted. Thanks for your help.
     
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