HOWTO: Resize your HFS+ partition for free

[closet geek]

Just thought I'd share my success.

You may have been pondering buying tools such as iPartition or VolumeWorks to shrink your OS X partition enabling you to install Ubuntu. There is no need to spend your hard earned $$$ as 'parted' can do this for you for free.

Getting started:

You must login to OS X and disable Journaling on your hard drive. To do this, launch Disk Utility, select your drive and click File -> Disable Journaling. It should be noted that I had some issues with this: Disk Utility claimed my file system was Journaled but at the same time wouldn't allow me to disable it. The work around is to launch a shell and type:

cd /Volumes/

then type:

ls

this will show you all the Volumes on your computer, make sure you note the name of the Volume you want disable Journaling on. In my case it was called "Macintosh HD".

Run this command:

sudo diskutil enableJournal Macintosh\ HD/

of course replacing Macintosh HD with your Volume name. Bear in mind that the above is not a typo, it is supposed to read "enableJournal" even though we are trying to disable Journaling, this is due to a bug (in at least my Tiger install) that labelled the Volume as Journaled when it wasn't. After you have run the above run:

sudo diskutil disableJournal Macintosh\ HD/

verify that it says Journaling has been disabled.

Now reboot your Mac ensuring you have your Breezy install CD in the CD drive. Just after you computer starts to boot up (e.g. before you even see the grey screen with the Apple on it) make sure you hold down the "c" key. This will make your Mac boot from the Breezy CD.

Follow all of the Breezy install steps up until the partitioner. Instead of clicking "Continue" hit "Go Back" this should take you to a screen with a small list of options. From here you want to select "Go to a Shell".

Once the shell has started type: "parted", from here I can't give you exact instructions as these steps might vary slightly depending on your setup but for me I then typed:

print

this showed me my list of partitions, locate the partition you want to resize (it should be obvious) and note down the "Minor" number. Then in parted type:

resize MINOR_NUMBER_HERE START_BLOCK_SIZE_FROM_PRINT_OUTPUT NEW_END_BLOCK_SIZE

I do apologise if this step makes no sense, but it should be clear from the "print" command what I mean by my caps'ed underscored commands. My final resize command ended up looking like this:

resize 3 128.032 37237.821

at which point I hit enter and was rewarded by a warning message that went something along the lines of:

I have detected an HFS+ system with some strange characteristics, in theory I can still shrink this but it's still experimental, please email me if it all goes wrong

I hit "I" to ignore this message and let parted try and shrink my HFS+ partition. Literally within 2 seconds I was back at a parted prompt. Having experienced how long it takes PartitionMagic to shrink an NTFS partition I was assuming the worse! However hitting the "print" command again showed me parted (at least) thought it had resized my partition successfully.

Hit "q" then type "exit" to return to the installer where you should then return to the partition tool hopefully now with some free space you can install your Breezy on. All worked like a charm for me, I'm now dual booting Tiger and Breezy.

Hope this helps, sorry if I ramble.

cg

[ssam]

glad to see you figured this out. I hope you did a back up before you tried it.

you might want to put this in the wiki. thats the best place for storing howtos. and maybe also post it in the howtos section on the forum, and put a pointer to it in your last post (just so that if anyone searches for iPartition they can find this.)

[closet geek]

Originally Posted by ssam glad to see you figured this out. I hope you did a back up before you tried it. you might want to put this in the wiki. thats the best place for storing howtos. and maybe also post it in the howtos section on the forum, and put a pointer to it in your last post (just so that if anyone searches for iPartition they can find this.)

All good suggestions!

Andrew

[ristosu]

Nice photo.

That's around 37 GB, your HFS+ partition? May I ask, how much RAM do you have? The reason for asking: I tried to shrink an HFS partition running from liveCD, and received Out of memory error.

[Down8ve]

A few notes to make tris more clea.

in Dapper, you choose "Execute a shell" instead of "Go to a Shell".

In parted entering "p" is the same as "print".

The numbers you enter at the resize command are Partition number, Start and ther End size you want. Mine was:

P
NUMBER START END AND SO ON...
10 135MB 40GB HFS+

So my resize command was:

resize 10 135MB 20GB

which reduced my 40GB Mac OSX partition to 20GB. It did think about it for a while, probably due to my 333mhz G3.

DS|M

[zxee]

Nice work! I have sort of the reverse issue I created three different partitions when I installed ubuntu 5.04 on a G3 500Mhz imac.The three partiton sizes and uses are: partition1 5GB OSX, P2 3GB OS9, P3 20GB Ubuntu At some point I may try 5.10 I know however that my scanner is not supported and I never could get acel for the imac video. No complaints though-and I use linux exclusively on my homebuilt sempron. I wonder if someone can point me to a painless way to resize or even eliminate the ubuntu partition and reclaim the space for hfs+ OSX? Or will I need to invest in ipartition? Thanks in advance.
(And sorry if this is the wrong way to post this. The 5.04 PPC forum seems a little unused-and this thread looked like a good bet)

[macheadPDX]

Originally Posted by closet geek Just thought I'd share my success. You may have been pondering buying tools such as iPartition or VolumeWorks to shrink your OS X partition enabling you to install Ubuntu. There is no need to spend your hard earned $$$ as 'parted' can do this for you for free. Getting started: You must login to OS X and disable Journaling on your hard drive. To do this, launch Disk Utility, select your drive and click File -> Disable Journaling. It should be noted that I had some issues with this: Disk Utility claimed my file system was Journaled but at the same time wouldn't allow me to disable it. The work around is to launch a shell and type: cd /Volumes/ then type: ls this will show you all the Volumes on your computer, make sure you note the name of the Volume you want disable Journaling on. In my case it was called "Macintosh HD". Run this command: sudo diskutil enableJournal Macintosh\ HD/ of course replacing Macintosh HD with your Volume name. Bear in mind that the above is not a typo, it is supposed to read "enableJournal" even though we are trying to disable Journaling, this is due to a bug (in at least my Tiger install) that labelled the Volume as Journaled when it wasn't. After you have run the above run: sudo diskutil disableJournal Macintosh\ HD/ verify that it says Journaling has been disabled. Now reboot your Mac ensuring you have your Breezy install CD in the CD drive. Just after you computer starts to boot up (e.g. before you even see the grey screen with the Apple on it) make sure you hold down the "c" key. This will make your Mac boot from the Breezy CD. Follow all of the Breezy install steps up until the partitioner. Instead of clicking "Continue" hit "Go Back" this should take you to a screen with a small list of options. From here you want to select "Go to a Shell". Once the shell has started type: "parted", from here I can't give you exact instructions as these steps might vary slightly depending on your setup but for me I then typed: print this showed me my list of partitions, locate the partition you want to resize (it should be obvious) and note down the "Minor" number. Then in parted type: resize MINOR_NUMBER_HERE START_BLOCK_SIZE_FROM_PRINT_OUTPUT NEW_END_BLOCK_SIZE I do apologise if this step makes no sense, but it should be clear from the "print" command what I mean by my caps'ed underscored commands. My final resize command ended up looking like this: resize 3 128.032 37237.821 at which point I hit enter and was rewarded by a warning message that went something along the lines of: I hit "I" to ignore this message and let parted try and shrink my HFS+ partition. Literally within 2 seconds I was back at a parted prompt. Having experienced how long it takes PartitionMagic to shrink an NTFS partition I was assuming the worse! However hitting the "print" command again showed me parted (at least) thought it had resized my partition successfully. Hit "q" then type "exit" to return to the installer where you should then return to the partition tool hopefully now with some free space you can install your Breezy on. All worked like a charm for me, I'm now dual booting Tiger and Breezy. Hope this helps, sorry if I ramble. cg

Hello,

This is an awesome how-to... I just have a couple of questions before I dive in... At what point in this process it is safe to cancel and get back to where you started without hosing OSX? When you dual boot, how does it look like when you turn-on your Mac? Does it give you a boot menu?

Sorry, this is all new to me. Any insight is much appreciated.

Thanks a bunch!

[elwood_j_blues]

Originally Posted by macheadPDX When you dual boot, how does it look like when you turn-on your Mac? Does it give you a boot menu?

Exactly.

(Please, never ever full quote again! You should only cite what's important for what you are going to say!)

[elwood_j_blues]

For me, it worked too. Thanks for the howto. You should definitely add it to the wiki.

Anyhow, please mention there that it is a quite dangerous process. It worked for us two but for somebody else, it might just crunch the partition with all the data on it.

Happy holidays!

[macheadPDX]

Originally Posted by elwood_j_blues Exactly.

Sorry, but what did you mean by this?

Originally Posted by elwood_j_blues (Please, never ever full quote again! You should only cite what's important for what you are going to say!)

Point taken! Thank you! I'll keep this in mind...