ghw9132 Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 I'm trying to turn my former windows partition into a second mac partition in order to play around with 10.4.3. However with everything i've tried i can only seem to make it ntfs or fat32 (using windows xp recovery console). How can i make it HFS without losing my main mac partition? Disk utility says it will destroy all data on it. Basically i'm looking for possibly a linux live distro (or similar boot cd) to format ntfs to hfs. Any help is appreciated. Thanks Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc_guru Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 ... How can i make it HFS without losing my main mac partition? Disk utility says it will destroy all data on it... Have you tried Partition Magic 8 ?. Maybe this utility can help you, of course you need run this application on Win XP. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26262 Share on other sites More sharing options...
domino Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Use a partition manager, designate it a partition size and make it primary/FAT32. Go back into osx and use the Disk Utility. I reckon you know what to do after that. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26264 Share on other sites More sharing options...
thrunner Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Basically i'm looking for possibly a linux live distro (or similar boot cd) to format ntfs to hfs Diskpart in WinXP does type AF (HFS+), just boot up with WinXP recovery and use diskpart http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;300415 Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26268 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghw9132 Posted November 4, 2005 Author Share Posted November 4, 2005 Thank you for the responses... Diskpart in WinXP does type AF (HFS+), just boot up with WinXP recovery and use diskpart http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;300415 I have used diskpart in the past, and got a "diskpart>" prompt, however when i run it off my XP recovery console, it runs like fdisk, with a user interface and i can only create raw, fat32, or ntfs Have you tried Partition Magic 8 ?. Maybe this utility can help you, of course you need run this application on Win XP. The partition in question was my windows partition, so i can't run partition magic Use a partition manager, designate it a partition size and make it primary/FAT32. Go back into osx and use the Disk Utility. I reckon you know what to do after that. As stated in my post, Disk Utility will wipe the other partition on the drive Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26334 Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc_guru Posted November 4, 2005 Share Posted November 4, 2005 ghw9132, you need a disk utility for Mac, isn't it ?. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26340 Share on other sites More sharing options...
van Posted November 4, 2005 Share Posted November 4, 2005 When you boot on Tiger x86 DVD Instal and you see the install screen. Click on Utilities-->Disk Utility Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26357 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghw9132 Posted November 4, 2005 Author Share Posted November 4, 2005 When you boot on Tiger x86 DVD Instal and you see the install screen. Click on Utilities-->Disk Utility As i've stated previously, using Disk Utility will erase the data on my other partition. I'm looking for a non-destructive way Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26434 Share on other sites More sharing options...
domino Posted November 5, 2005 Share Posted November 5, 2005 Now that is really strange, because that is THE ONLY way I initialize all my HFS partitions before and after installing OSx. Strange indeed... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26499 Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuruu Posted November 5, 2005 Share Posted November 5, 2005 let's see if i can explain this a bit better.... using disk utility... I am going to assume you have a black of allocated space you would like to use. For disk utility to work without redoing the whole partition table there needs to be a partition there. FAT32 or ext3 of AF type.... Unfortunately NTFS wil not work. Disk Utility won't touch it. We are going to take your fat32 partition and format it with HFS+, but not change the size or the partition table structure. If you want to do that there are a dozen other apps you could d/l, Now, in Disk Utility select the partition you wish to make HFS+ on the left hand side. Then click on the erase tab, it will say MS-DOS FILE SYSTEM, click there and select mac os extended journaled. Hope this helps. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26500 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghw9132 Posted November 5, 2005 Author Share Posted November 5, 2005 Problem Solved. Thank you. When i initially tried running disk utility from the installer DVD, the partition was NTFS. Subsequent attempts I made with the partition as fat32 were made while running disk utility from my current installation of OSX. I couldn't erase the fat32 partition except when i booted from the DVD (greyed out). Now that it is HFS, it will let me. What happened to the "Good Ol' Days" when you could format a disk from the Finder. Anyway thanks again. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26543 Share on other sites More sharing options...
domino Posted November 5, 2005 Share Posted November 5, 2005 I would still try to play around with it some more. I can mount/unmount/erase/convert FAT32 on my current OSx install. Hell, my dvd doen't even allow me to boot from it. Is the FAT32 set to primary or logical extended partition and does it reside on the same disk as OSx? Maybe that is Disk Utility limitation. I have my FAT32 primary partition on the second physical hard disk. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26550 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghw9132 Posted November 5, 2005 Author Share Posted November 5, 2005 I would still try to play around with it some more. I can mount/unmount/erase/convert FAT32 on my current OSx install. Hell, my dvd doen't even allow me to boot from it. Is the FAT32 set to primary or logical extended partition and does it reside on the same disk as OSx? Maybe that is Disk Utility limitation. I have my FAT32 primary partition on the second physical hard disk. My partition is primary and on the same physical disk as my OSX partition. Just to clarify, i have formated the partition as HFS+ Journaled by using the disk utility on the dvd after making it fat32. When running the disk utility after booting to my OSX installation, the menu to choose the format (MS-DOS, HFS, etc.) was greyed out. Basically, if i ran disk utility after booting from my hard disk, i could not in any way alter the formats of any partition on my hard disk. However now that the partition is HFS, the menu is no longer greyed out and i can choose what format to erase it to. Not sure why it wouldn't work. It should only "lock" the partition table of the physical drive and the format of the boot partition. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26553 Share on other sites More sharing options...
domino Posted November 5, 2005 Share Posted November 5, 2005 I think we can conclude that OSx will not touch any partition on the disk that it resides in if it is not initialized prior to booting? Hell, anyway, you got your problem solved, and I have this thread cached for the future. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/4071-how-can-i-reformat-partition-non-destructively/#findComment-26555 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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