Parition without losing data possible?

[2012Tony2012]

My main hard drive is very large and I wanted to partition it, but without losing Yosemite data on it...possible?

 

[Intell]

In most cases it is possible. You can partition your drive using Disk Utility.

 

[2012Tony2012]

In most cases it is possible. You can partition your drive using Disk Utility.

So you mean it may lose all my data?

 

[Intell]

Disk Utility will warn you if it is unable to partition the drive without erasing it. In most cases, it does not have to be erased.

 

[Alimar]

My main hard drive is very large and I wanted to partition it, but without losing Yosemite data on it...possible?

It will work, if done correctly, without erasing any data. Just don't make the new partition so large that you leave little space for future Yosemite partition storage (leave enough room for installs, virtual memory, files, etc.). Also, don't make your new partition too small. Good rule: take half of what you have left. It is harder to reconstitute space afterwards. Deleting an unwanted partition later... or enlarging it... can be a huge pain in the arse. Been there...

 

[simonsi]

I did this the other day, DU is pretty good at confirming if no partition data will be erased as a result.

In my example I shrank a single 1TB partition on a 1TB drive to 900GB and then created a new 100GB partition in the resulting space, with no data loss.

 

[2012Tony2012]

Worked well, cheers

 

[Truefan31]

Can u use disk utility to take away a partition without losing data

 

[simonsi]

Can u use disk utility to take away a partition without losing data

Yes if you copy any data on the partition off first, or there is no data on it in the first place. If you remove a partition then you lose any data on that partition if you don't have a copy.

If there is data on a partition you can shrink it to the size of the data, or expand it into free space on the disk that isn't part of a partition.