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Nondestructively Resizing Volumes

macgeekery.com — "The recent release of 10.4.6 brought about a new feature required for Boot Camp to do its magic - nondestructively resizing volumes. Apple updated the diskutil tool by adding the resizeVolume verb. Let's have a little fun, shall we?"

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  • Levin, on 10/24/2007, -25/+1No Kevin, we shall not. But I'll still digg it.
  • schappim, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8This also works on PPC based hardware, allowing you to install say: Yellow Dog, Fedora, Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server on the one PPC Machine...
  • dotwaffle, on 10/24/2007, -13/+4Can I digg it? Yes, I can!
  • geofferensis, on 10/24/2007, -6/+2How cool is that? Very cool.
  • sammykrupa, on 10/24/2007, -9/+2Ha! Not even Windows has that!!
    • Refrag, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Windows doesn't have a lot of stuff that Mac OS X has. Vista won't have a lot of stuff Mac OS X has.
    • jasqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Because it isn't that useful of a feature for Windows to adjust partition sizes during an install for users. And as with most non-majority features, there are already lots of tools that abound that allow you to do this on an x86 machine with IDE or SCSI hard drives, thus filling niche needs with a niche market. It's just sad that Mac heads have had to wait this long for something like this to even exist. YAY for the switch to the vastly superior x86 architecture.

      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=resize+partition
  • champs, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I guess you've never used Dynamic Disk volumes in Windows. They can be resized, spanned, and/or mirrored.
  • CatcherInTheWhy, on 10/24/2007, -13/+3This is retarded, there has been third party software (like Partition Magic) that non-destructively resize volumes in Windows for years now. I don't know if such software was available for the mac, but this is retarded and NOT news. Kevin, I am disappointed. People call you a fanboy and I always defend you but this is just too fanboy.
    • stmiller, on 10/24/2007, -2/+9Considering the recent windows/osx dual boot stuff, people ARE interested in knowing how to do this on a mac. Right now.
    • CatcherInTheWhy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3That's fine, but this article (and several comments) are portraying this as if it is some great new technology that Apple has, which is ridiculous.
    • kwojniak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The difference here is that it's built-in to Mac OS X for free, unlike the expensive Partition Magic (Windows) or iPartition (Mac OS X).
    • jasqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3Expensive partition magic? God you must be poor...

      http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html
    • ZachPruckowski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If you buy a Mac, and want to run Windows, you have to shell out big bucks for it ($200). Avoiding extra costs on an application you'll use like twice is just nice.
  • Nick_Circosta, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3The firmware update is what does the magic for bootcamp, nothing else, infact as long as you update the firmware you can just boot of the XP disc the normal way and ditch OS X all togethter

    not that i would want to , Mac 4 Eva
  • pudquick, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Dugg. Some extra tidbits for the inquisitive Mac-heads:
    - Yes, this verb *requires* GPT, as seen from the help text: "resizeVolume is only supported on GPT media with a Journaled HFS+ filesystem."
    - Currently, Intel Macs can boot off of GPT partitioned disks .. and also APM disks (if you're smart enough to get the Intel version of OS X onto one somehow (hint: Google for: intel mac gpt block copy))
    - However, PPC Macs will *not* boot off of GPT partitioned disks ... but they can read/write to them (if they're running OS 10.4.2 or later). They can also read/write to GPT partitioned disk images.
    - Similar to the 'resizeVolume' verb, the hdiutil command has had a 'resize' verb for use with disk *images* (.dmg files) for a considerably long time. This command does not, however, defrag the disk prior to resize.
    - And in response to CatcherInTheWhy's uninformed comment: OS X has had a non-destructive (but commercial, just like Partition Magic) resize tool available out there called 'VolumeWorks' by SubRosaSoft. It's just that not many Mac users know about it. And yes, it does work with PPC .. but this new verb in diskutil is *100% free and built in* for Intel Mac users. That's pretty f*cking fantastic IMHO.
  • terssi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Been there, done that with Drive Genius (commercial Mac OS X product):

    "Drive Genius features advanced tools for resizing and moving of volumes without reformatting"

    http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius_info.php
    • stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes, we are all aware of the many commercial products that do this. (The one you mention is $100). Now you can do it for FREE with OS X's disk utility.
  • steveohan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0can you use the command line to merge two partitions into one? if so...how?

    i currently have two OSX partitions (intel mac) and i want to merge them into one so i can run bootcamp.

    any help is appreciated!
    • idonthack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah, I think it's called "copy". Another one called "move" might work too.
    • jrbrubaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm looking to do the same thing myself, for the same reason. You can't just move the data off the partition because boot camp will not work at all unless your HD is a single volume. I've already got the 2nd partition emptied, I just want to know how to merge the space back to my primary volume without having to reformat or lose data.

      Any thoughts?
  • m99stump, on 07/29/2008, -0/+2When I first tried, I had to totally format my disk again before it could successfully make a Windows partition.
  • supernova17, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Kevin said he was having problems with Boot Camp on his new MacBook Pro. I'm glad he found the solution.

    Bring it on Alex! Falcon Northwest will lose to Apple...
  • notorious., on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The ability to do this isn't entirely new.

    I remember talking to the Micromat guys at Macworld a few years ago when this came out. Pretty neat stuff

    http://micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=54
  • bedouin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yellow Dog Linux is able to non-destructively resize partitions on PPC hardware; iPartition is another solution as well.
  • billdcat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Just use Drive Genius.
  •  

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