resize partition

[Kaizen]

We made a clone of a 250gb drive to a 500gb drive using a hardware disk imager of an os x drive. The clone fixed the problem flawlessly, but we need to capture the unused space in the drive. When I plug the drive into our bench mac and try and resize it in disk utility, it says it will do it, but it fails without error. Any suggestions to what might be going wrong or better suggestions to make the partition larger?

 

[phaZed]

I would suggest popping into a Linux distro and using GParted. At the very least I would expect GParted to produce a useful error code.

 

[Kaizen]

I would suggest popping into a Linux distro and using GParted. At the very least I would expect GParted to produce a useful error code.

Thanks that is a great suggestion.


Another thought came to mind. We could use disk utility to make an image backup, then restore the image to the drive. I will have to research that when I get finished with my lunch break.

 

[Markverhyden]

1. Have you made sure it boots to the OS ok?

2. Are the two versions of OS X similar?

3. Have you run Repair Disk and Repair Disk Permissions from the Disk Utility?

4. Do you have something like Disk Warrior you can run on the drive?

5. There is a program, not free, called iPartition but I have never tried it. Some seem to find that it will repartition the drive easier than Dive Utility. You are aware that to resize the drive with the OS it must not be the drive you booted from?

 

[Larry Sabo]

If you were using a Windows PC, I'd recommend AOMEI Partition Assistant (free for personal and commercial use). I use it all the time for this very task.

For a change, last night I tried EASEUS Partition Master to re-size and slide some partitions on my system and it hung during one of the processes after rebooting to make the changes. Tried again using AOMEI and everything completed tickety-boo without re-booting (probably because the system partition had already been resized). And it's very fast.

 

[Kaizen]

1. Have you made sure it boots to the OS ok?

2. Are the two versions of OS X similar?

3. Have you run Repair Disk and Repair Disk Permissions from the Disk Utility?

4. Do you have something like Disk Warrior you can run on the drive?

5. There is a program, not free, called iPartition but I have never tried it. Some seem to find that it will repartition the drive easier than Dive Utility. You are aware that to resize the drive with the OS it must not be the drive you booted from?

The cloned disk works beautifully. All of the issues were rectified during the clone process. The only issue was not having access to the rest of the drive

The versions of his OS and my work station may be different(i'm at home and not sure as of the minute). That assumed disk utility would work either way(that may be false)

I was considering disk warrior to have around.

I am aware to resize it can't be running. That is the reason I tried to resize it on my mac mini work station


Our current plan which we are in the process of doing is to use disk utility to make a complete image, then restore it to the drive. I was hoping the defaults are to use the complete drive.

 

[Markverhyden]

The cloned disk works beautifully. All of the issues were rectified during the clone process. The only issue was not having access to the rest of the drive

The versions of his OS and my work station may be different(i'm at home and not sure as of the minute). That assumed disk utility would work either way(that may be false)

I was considering disk warrior to have around.

I am aware to resize it can't be running. That is the reason I tried to resize it on my mac mini work station


Our current plan which we are in the process of doing is to use disk utility to make a complete image, then restore it to the drive. I was hoping the defaults are to use the complete drive.

Knowing the OS version(s) is important. The problem with using the Drive Utility image is that, from my experience, it restores the image to the same size partition.

At any rate I would just use CCC to make a copy to a second drive. Then repartition the drive you are trying to work with, with one partition. Then use CCC to put it back.

Alternatively you can use TM to make a TM backup to a second drive, repartition the first drive and use TM to put it back. If you running 10.7 or greater you can boot into recovery mode, command + R, then restore from TM. If prior to 10.7 you can use the boot disk for the version of OS you are working with.

The CLI diskutil is much more powerful than the GUI. There is a mergePartition option. Here is a link to a discussion on how to do that. Should be much quicker than the copy out and back options above.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/76008/how-to-resize-macintosh-hd

 

[Kaizen]

Thanks for everyone's help. I did not have a chance to try all of the great ideas you mentioned. We will keep those filed away for the future

We solved the issue by making an image using disk utility on our mac mini work station. then when we restored the image to the drive, it automatically used the whole space

Just to be on the safe side, we will check and fix permissions.

 

[donaldkepler]

There is another Mac drive partitioning tool, which I have used in resizing my boot drive is Stellar Partition Manager. Thought this is user friendly and consistent supportive with OS X 10.9. though this utility is not free but the free demo version can be tried.