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enlarging hfs+ partition


aaket504
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I just wanted to post what i did - I didn't see it posted (but it may be linked somwhere and i missed it).

 

I have already trashed my windows installation so it left me with two hard disks so having two hard disks is required unless you have an available partition.

 

From within OSX

 

I used disk utility from the programs to format a partitoin on my target drive then went to the termanal...

 

sudo asr -source /Volumes/tiger-x86 -target /Volumes/DIZZY2

 

Cloned it and no size restrictions that I see. DIZZY2 is a second partition on my first master/primary drive.

 

Then I blessed it.

 

Then I set it as boot disk and rebooted into OSX86 - worked like a charm.

 

Of course you may want to do it again to regain your space on the original drive - Just use disk utility.

 

 

This was OS 10.4.1 - Now if I can get into OSX without having huge blocks all over my screen when I'm not in safemode (845G/GV/etc) - Anyone have untouched kexts? PM me pls :-)

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

hi everyone! I have to ask you if you can help, I hope! I've installed successfully osx up to 10.4.7 on my intel based pc, no success only with the last 10.4.8 but it doesn't matter. I have a dedicated ide 40 gb hard drive and I don't remember if I had all size avalaible or only 6 gb, maybe all size because the hard drive is separated from windows xp one and I was able to boot with the file Chain0 put in C:\ folder.

Now I'm trying to partition the 40gb hard drive to have a new partiton for backup purpose, but in this case I can't boot with chain0. Is there any way to have a separated hard disk with part of it for osx system (for example 20gb with applications installed) and one other part ( remaining 20bg ) only for backup of images, documents, downloaded apps for mac etc...? I don't want to touch other hard drives in my pc and I'm not able to go beyond my limit, for now I've done a lot being a mac noob!!!

I apologize for my bad english and I thank you if can help me.

Bye.

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fabioxx, I read twice through what you wrote and I really don't get neither what you actually did nor what you are trying to achieve. Did you clone your HD? If so how did you clone it (with which tool)? Shall the first part of the 40 Gig HD be the bootable one with Mac OS x86 (not just Apps as you write)? Shall the second part be HFS+ formatted, too?

 

Please try and be more precise.

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ok, let me be more clear (it is difficult for me because of my very bad english!):

 

I have one ide hard disk (80 GB) with 2 partition, one for win xp s.o. and windows application, the other to store windows files such as images, music etc...(i.e. C:\ win s.o. and all application installed, D:\ documents, mp3 etc.. I browse them from windows).

 

then I have another ide hard disk (40 GB) connected to the same cable of the previous, in which I installed OSx86 using the whole space and I saw I had all the free left space avalaible (more or less 36 GB apart from the space occupied by osx86).

I'm not able to divide this second 40 GB hard disk in partition handled by osx86, if I try it, I can't boot no longer with the chain0 method, it gives me Chain booting error.

So I would like to partition this disk in two parts, one to install osx86 and applications and one to make backup of mac o.s. and to store documents, images etc..

Your last sentence is correct: I want a part of this disk bootable, the other HFS+ formatted, but I'm not able to do this till now. Maybe the chain0 boot method don't apply to this configuration, but I like this boot method more than other such as OS selector with a software.

I must partition the hard disk from dvd during installation? I have to format the boot partition whit which file system? journaled hfs? and the partition for backup, wich simple hfs? I must set the first partition bootable or active? but how? only selecting it as installation destination?

That's all.

Please forgive me for my bad written english and for the many questions and I hope you have understood.

Bye.

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Yes, now I have understood, there was some essential information missing in your first request. What you are trying to achieve should be very easy. An existing partition, even one that boots, can be shrunken (reduced in size) with Gparted (I can confirm that). Before that you need to disable journalling from within Mac OS if it is enabled, e.g. with a tool called Cocktail for Mac OS X (google for it). Thereafter, from within Gparted, you can create a FAT32 partition in the free space, which you can then format HFS+ (jounaled or not, doesn't matter) with Disk Utility Mac OS X (can be from your installed Mac OS X, does not need to be from your install DVD).

 

If your install does not boot anymore (why ever) do as follows:

 

- with the partitioning tool of your choice (no matter if from Windows, DOS partition, DOS boot disk) delete the existing (HFS/ AF) partitions on your 40 Gig HD and create two new FAT32 partitions with the sizes you desire. BOTH PARTITIONS MUST BE PRIMARY, otherwise Disk Utility will f*** up later on !!

Make the first partition active!

 

- start your Mac OS x86 install DVD. In Disk Utility select that 40 Gig drive and format (erase tab) both FAT32 partitions with HFS+ one after each other, naming part 1 maybe Mac OS x86 and part 2 Data (or anything similar). Make sure you fromat the first partition (which you want to boot from) with the first option in the drop down menu (=NOT journaled) because you will want to backup that partition later on with Norton Ghost (or Acronis True Image) from within Windows, and backups of journaled partitions are MUCH bigger and take MUCH longer. If you do not want to

 

- after formating both partitons, quit Disk Utility and continue in the installer. For installation chose the first partiton (Mac OS x86). During installation the darwin bootloader will be written into the boot sector of that partiton (other than that the darwin boot loader just requires one config file in the boot volume).

 

- after installation you might be able to boot into Mac OS right away via chain0/ Darwin bootloader. If not here's two things you need to check:

 

a. is partition 1 on your 40 Gig still set to active? Some install DVDs change that flag. Check that with your partitioning program

 

b. If you have MacDrive installed edit Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist. Make sure it like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> 
 <!DOCTYPE plist (View Source for full doctype...)> 
- <plist version="1.0">
- <dict>
 <key>Quiet Boot</key> 
 <string>No</string> 
 <key>Timeout</key> 
 <string>10</string> 
 <key>Kernel</key> 
 <string>mach_kernel</string> 
 <key>Kernel Flags</key> 
 <string>-v</string> 
 <key>Boot Graphics</key> 
 <string>Yes</string> 
 </dict>
 </plist>

timeout and -v parameter are important so you can see where your install hangs and can also enter single user mode with the -s parameter

 

Some people reported that in order to get Mac OS x86 to boot on their iHacks they had to switch their secondary harddrive to another cable or from slave to master etc., so you might have to experiment with that, too.

 

So anyway, good luck, now you should have all the info .. :-)

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OkkeDoke. By the way, if you want to access your second partiton on hd2 with both Mac OS and Windows I suggests you do not format it HFS (because MacDrive has HUGE problems these days and tends to totally corrupt the HFS+ partition it writes to), but with Linux EXT2 or EXT3. Mac OS X can read/write to it without any problem, and there is a great pure kernel mode file system driver for Windows called Ext2 Installable File System for Windows (freeware). Read through the FAQ and decide yourself it you want to format your second partiton EXT2 (non-journaled) or EXT3 (journaled).

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Hi, I did it finally! The best way in my case was to format the dedicated hard drive from windows with diskpart utility. I had to use the command:

 

create partition primary id=af size=xxxxx

where xxxxx is for 20000, i.e. 20 Gbyte I decided the o.s. partition had to be; then I used the command

 

create partition primary id=af

without setting the size, it is automatically set (the non allocated left on the disk).

 

Last thing, I made active the first partition with the command ACTIVE of diskpart. Rebooted and installed from the DVD: in this phase only the o.s. partition must be reformatted (as you have suggested me, in non-journaled file system).

If I try to erase also the backup partition before starting the installation process, the map of partition is broken and disk utility merge the 2 partition again in one. So the second partition can be reformatted after, when mac osx86 is already functioning after the completion of installation.

I suggest using diskpart to partition a hard drive dedicated to mac o.s. + backup of mac stuff, all other utilities failed with me, probably because I'm not able to use them in the right way.

Now I'm running 10.4.8 but have also a .dmg backup of the system up to 10.4.7 in only 1,20 GB! Now I want to learn more on 10.4.8 because maybe is not the best for my hardware, but the problems hasn't come yet.

Thank you very much for the support and forgive me if my problem is not properly in-topic here.

Bye!

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Great it worked for you that way. Strange that DU f***s up your partition map if run from DVD but does the job correctly when run from the installed system. Please mind that restore in DU does NOT work on any of our boot DVDs if you want to restore your 1.2 Gig .dmg at some point in time. That is an error on Apple's side. Modbin has solved that bug in Disk Utility on his live DVD (which he is currently still working on).

 

For restoring you need to boot a parallel install of Mac OS and run Disk Utility from there (restore works fine from a second install).

 

Cheers,

Bugs.

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Oh no! I'm experiencing this right now, i'm unable to restore my .dmg image neither from the system running (obviously!?) nor from install dvd. At this point if I have to create another partition to install another osx, I will better reinstall the actual, now I do this with closed eyes! Thank you also for this precious info, you prevent me wasting a lot of time trying with restore of a backup image.

Bye!

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  • 3 weeks later...

what worked for me. Had osx partition on a 12Gb on teh internal HD and wanted to make it 20Gb.

I used Rsyncx in osx to sync my OS to an USB drive.

 

I used acronis disk director to delete my 12GB osx partition and resize my ntfs partitions (on the internal HD) to leave enough space for osx. If you don't have acronis you can use partition manager or partition magic or gparted (download the gparted livecd - google it). I then used diskpart to create a "af" partition (create partition primary id=af). I booted in my osx install from the USB drive (if ur puter doens't do it you have to enable in BIOS to allow boot from the USB before internal HD) and used diskutil to erase the partition created with diskpart. Voila! Now dskutil worked, wheather before kept failing since it could not read the partition table. The new volume is mounted on the desktop and all I have to do is rsync back OSX from USB to teh internal partition , disconnect teh USB and reboot, or change in BIOS to boot first from internal HD.

I am not using any boot manager to boot OSX or WInXp. My laptop boots by default in OSx, If I wnat to use XP I press F8 when boots and can choose xp partition from Darwin menu.

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