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How to resize an osx86 partition ? Solutions ?


manmal
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Hi,

i am running a hackintosh and i would like to know if it's possible to resize a partition without losing anything.

 

I installed osx on a small partition. System is working fine and i installed a lot of stuff . I don't want to start from scratch with everything and i would just need to increase osx disk size (now it's 60 gb and i want it on a 200 gb partition without changing anything else).

 

I have read something about bootcamp commands , but i don't even know if bootcamp works on hackintoshes and if i lose everything trying to use it...

 

Any solution to this problem (resizing osx86 partition without formatting and installing from scratch to a bigger partition) ?

 

Thanks,

Mal

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I'm almost certain that it's impossible to resize your OSx86 without having to reinstall due to the hard drive using MBR instead of GUID like the real Intel Macs use. Also, Boot Camp can't run on Hackintoshes due to the lack of EFI.

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hi,

thanks for your replies.

 

Do you think partition magic for pc handles resize of foreign partition like mac osx one ? I doubt that ... i may try with another osx86 partition... but i doubt so , as i said

 

Does anyone know any other solution to resize a hackintosh hd ?

 

Mal

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There is no software as of now for hackintoshes to handle the OSX partition. The safe option you have is to create a partition from windows and format and set ID=af then erase it in osx and you will have a new osx partition of the size you wanted. you can copy your present partition to that but it will not boot. there are posts in here that will explain you (and is not easy) how you can make it bootable. It did not work for me.

I practically use osx from an external hard drive but i am also stuck with the original partition size i set for the system about 12 Gb.

Software for mac can't deal with the MBR/fdisk style f partition table that our hardisks have and pc software can't deal with hfs+ format. Until maybe gparted will support hfs+ maybe there is nothing we can do. check for "enlarge hfs+" in this forum you will find various methods.

 

partition magic and copy partions. mabey try that?

Copying partitions will give you a partition of the same size and on top of that not bootable. If you set it active your puter boots osx by default. And if you press F8 at boot you get the option from darwin bootloader to boot windows. That is if you want to have another partition of the same size.

 

No pc or mac software will do the job because intel macs have GUID partition tables and pcs have MBR partition tables. PC software was not intended to deal with hfs+ and so, it doesn't, and mac soft was not made to deal with MBR. You get the picture. We are stuck, unless open source community will add support for hfs+ partitions in software like parted (either qt or g flavors).

 

look also here:

http://www.profit42.com/index.php/2006/10/...ndows-computer/

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You can use GNU parted with the new HFS+ resize patch. Just download the patched tarball from the link for the patch, since I don't think this patch has already been included in the ebuild (ebuild has hfs resizing though).

Then boot from a CD (not sure, but current gentoo live cds might already include that patch) and get the patched version of parted.

Once in parted "resize" is the command you are looking for.

 

$ parted
[...]
resize PartitionNumber StartMB EndMB

e.g.

 

resize 10 100 2000

resizes partition No. 10 to start at 100 MB from beginning to disk and end at 2 GB.

 

Oh, and I can't guarantee that you won't screw up your MP3 collection... Always backup :!: - you know the drill. Which, on a sidenote, makes this whole partition resizing thing kind of unnecessary IMHO. Since you are backing up your files anyway, why not get nice and shiny newly formatted partitions? :gun:

Have fun,

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  • 3 weeks later...

hi , any news about this subject ?

 

I think many ppl may be interested in resizing osx86 partitions .

 

To Adam : i am sorry but i am understanding very little of what you are writing . Any weblink for the softwares , patches, things you mentioned ? You just gave names and even googling for a while i cannot find more than the gentoo live cd (though i don't know which one to download) and i can't find a binary for parted ... could you please provide us some web links ? I only found this one : http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=1...ighlight=parted but as you can see it's very old and surely it does not work for x86 intel macs !

 

To bgg71 : your link does not work ... it gives me an error .

 

Thanks!

Mal

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  • 2 weeks later...

hi Dino,

it's very interesting , but it allows to "shrink" partition only (= reduce partition size). How to INCREASE partition size ? If i try to use a biggger number using such procedure it gives me an error . It works perfectly for smaller partition sizes .

 

Is there a working solution to INCREASE partition size for osx86 machines?

 

Thanks !

Mal

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  • 2 weeks later...

After initially installing the "deadmoo" image the HD showed only a very small partition (7gb or so). I simply installed a second hard drive (40gb), then used Disk Utility to partition the 2nd drive followed by a "Restore" of drive 1 to drive 2. Use Disk Utility - Repair permisions and Verification before and after operations just to be sure the integrity of all the drives are ok. The trick is to use System Preferences - Startup Disk to change startup from drive 1 to drive 2. Next, reboot! You are now on drive 2. You should be able to use Disk Utility to grab the button on the bottom of drive one to resize part. Finally, repeat the Restore - this time from drive 2 back to drive 1 and reset the Startup Disk. Worked for me!

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