Will partioning delete data

A

andywj

Registered
Hi there,

Just wanted to caveat this post by saying im quite a mac newbie, I did try searching the forums first but couldn't find anything directly relating to this.

I've got a new 500Gb USB HD for back ups that i've been using for the last couple of weeks. I currently have about 150gb worth of data backed up on there but now want to split the drive into 2 drives, 300gb + 200Gb. I've been looking into the Disk Utility and seen that I can "split" drives but before I do that I was wondering if doing this would wipe any of my data?

Is this possible? Are there better tools?

Cheers

Andy J
 
*EDIT* Doh! After writing this, I see macbri slid in a response :P Oh well - here for redundancy.

As a standard rule of thumb, partitioning will automatically erase the data. This is true because 99% of the time the software you are using does two or more steps when you change the partition

1) Writes new partition table
2) Creates new file systems within new partitions so you can use them

In its purest sense, changing partition data should not touch anything other than the partition table ... but of course the partition would be useless if there was no coherent file system within. That's why most applications automatically do the second step for you.

So - as a simple answer to your question:

Back up your data, create the partitions, then copy it back.
If that is not an option, try one of these programs:

iPartition: http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php
VolumeWorks: http://www.subrosasoft.com/

These applications create a partition table, then create the file system around the data (moving it when necessary). Programs such as these may cause any number of side effects depending on their quality.

Hope that helps :)
 
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