Partitioning Utility for Mac OS X?

[jino]

Is there a way to create new partitions from free space in Panther? A
way that doesn't include reformatting. Something like Partition Magic
for Windows? Thanks.

[gonz]

Originally posted by jino
Is there a way to create new partitions from free space in Panther? A
way that doesn't include reformatting. Something like Partition Magic
for Windows? Thanks.

Hi Jino -- FWB Partition Toolkit claims to be able to do what you ask, but the bad news is it only works under OS 9.1 to 9.2.2. If you have a Mac that is still capable of booting to OS 9.x (current generation Macs no longer can), you might want to try it out. Never tried it myself, though.

Another utility that will do what you ask under OS X is the command-line tool pdisk, specifically its partition map editor. I don't need to stress that you should back up your data and seriously know what you're doing before using this.

But if you ask my advice, I wouldn't trust any partitioning without first reformatting. Fiddling with a partition map and resizing a partition on the fly can be very bad juju. I recommend that you back up your current partitions to an external volume using Carbon Copy Cloner, reformat and repartition, then clone your system and apps back to the hard drive. Much safer, at sigurado pa.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

[jino]

Yowch. Thanks Sir Gonz!