Can I resize my backup partition without deleting everything?

[Silly John Fatty]

I know that I can reformat the whole external drive and delete partitions and recreate them, etc. now my question is, if I’d like to simply change it’s size, will I loose everything that is on that drive? That’s one info I can’t seem to find anywhere… I don’t dare to try, however.

I sadly found out that the partition that I created for time machine is too small.

 

[Dalton63841]

If the partition is in HFS+, then Disk Utility can resize it non-destructively.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

What does that mean?

Yeah I noticed that in disk utility it said that the selected partition will not be modified or something like this, but it confuses me. It obviously will be modified if I change it’s size, it just won’t be reformatted. Maybe that’s what they mean?

 

[Weaselboy]

If the partition is in HFS+, then Disk Utility can resize it non-destructively.

What does that mean?

HFS+ is the Mac OS Extended option you see in Disk Util. The fact that you are using this disk for TM means it is already in this format, so you are fine.

Yeah I noticed that in disk utility it said that the selected partition will not be modified or something like this, but it confuses me. It obviously will be modified if I change it’s size, it just won’t be reformatted. Maybe that’s what they mean?

Just follow this to resize. All that message means is the partition you are resizing will not be erased.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

I just checked the various partitions and drives (Macintosh HD and external hard drive) and it says the format is “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for all of them, I guess it’s the same and it should be fine then?

I’ll follow that link you gave me, so it’s 100% sure that if I resize my partition everything will stay the way it was except that I’ll have more space on that partition, right? Also, I need to make the “Main” partition (rest of the external hard drive that I use to store other random stuff) smaller, this isn’t a problem is it?

Cause I’ve read something about you being able to make them bigger but not smaller or something like this

 

[Weaselboy]

I just checked the various partitions and drives (Macintosh HD and external hard drive) and it says the format is “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for all of them, I guess it’s the same and it should be fine then?

Yep

I’ll follow that link you gave me, so it’s 100% sure that if I resize my partition everything will stay the way it was except that I’ll have more space on that partition, right? Also, I need to make the “Main” partition (rest of the external hard drive that I use to store other random stuff) smaller, this isn’t a problem is it?

Cause I’ve read something about you being able to make them bigger but not smaller or something like this

You can make the partition larger or smaller without losing data. When making it smaller of course you don't want to make it smaller than the amount of data on the partition. But no, just resizing does not wipe data.

That said, it is always a good idea to backup just to be safe when tinkering around like this.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

Alright, thanks!

Well, that’s the problem: I can’t do a backup, my backup partition is too small! Kind of stupid, eh?