Reformat without loosing data

ast3r3xast3r3x
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
i need to change my HD setup because of the poor ability to see ahead



I have a 40GB HD with it partitioned into a 5GB drive and a 35GB drive (give or take with that space for the directories).



the 5GB drive is used for the system (originally for OS 9) when i set it up but didnt' knw how OS X worked so didn't know how useful it would be to have a BIG drive for the system with application and user files.



So a friend has a 200GB FW drive he just got.



How I temp backup the 5GB partition with the system information on it and the 35GB partition onto the 200GB FW drive while i reformat the HD into one drive at 40GB?



i need to use the same system folder and keep all the users, cuz there is alot of prefs and stuff that have been set up

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    ibrowseibrowse Posts: 1,749member
    I don't know if it works with FireWire drives or not, but I imagine it does, but I heard that Carbon Copy Cloner works good.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iBrowse

    I don't know if it works with FireWire drives or not, but I imagine it does, but I heard that Carbon Copy Cloner works good.



    yeah i've heard, i was just wondering if others have used this and how well it works for them



    will there be permission problems?
  • Reply 3 of 8
    kwondokwondo Posts: 217member
    Friend asked me the same question. My answer was thay you should simply select the 5 Gig partition icon as well as the 35 remaining drive icon and do a drag and drop to the new 200 GiG drive. Isn't that basically a "carbon cloner" without needing to update changes daily as in Carbon Cloner for backup mirroring? \
  • Reply 4 of 8
    tulkastulkas Posts: 3,757member
    I bought a new internal drive for my sawtooth a while back. The existing drive had 5 partitions. With the 2 drive setup I wanted 3 partions on one and 1 partition on the other. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy all of the existing drive over to the new one, reformatted and repartitioned the old drive. Since I wanted the new drive to contain OSX, I just copied the data from the other partions over and it worked fine. This was a year ago, so my memeory is a little fuzzy on exactly what I did, but I remember CCC was great.



    It's better than just copying OSX stuff over to a new partition or drive because it was designed with permissions etc specifically in mind. I think if you goto their site it will have answers to you questions.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    Pah...why reformat?



    I have a tray loading iMac, so my system must be on a partition that is within the first 8GB of the drive. So essentially what I did was hack my drive in half and install X on the first partition (6GB) I created.



    Now, I knew this would be a problem, as I've got 71GB in the form of the other slice of the drive, but all my Documents and what not would default to the first, smaller partition. So, I copied the contents of my user folder over to the bigger partition, and in NetInfo Manager, opened up my user and changed the home directory to "/Volumes/volumename/username/". This set my home directory as being located on the big volume. Next, I created a symbolic link to the directory on the big partition on the smaller partition, with the name being my username, in the Users folder. Aliases wont cut it, BTW.



    I suppose if you wanted to move your Applications folder over to the bigger drive, you could copy it all over, then create another symbolic link with the name being Applications in the root of the smaller partition that links to a folder on the other drive.



    No need for repartitioning, just a bit of NetInfo editing.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    whaaaaa?



    haha seems complicated, plush i'd rather have one 40GB partition, i dotn see my drive going down hill anytime soon
  • Reply 7 of 8
    mrmistermrmister Posts: 1,095member
    kwondo--that won't work.



    Carbon Copy Cloner. It will work. Just read the manual first so that you know what you are doing.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mrmister

    kwondo--that won't work.



    Carbon Copy Cloner. It will work. Just read the manual first so that you know what you are doing.



    haha thanks for telling me
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