I think you cannot change the starting point of a partition. so you need to add a new one after the last one, shrinking that to make room.

It's true that you can't move the start of an existing partition. However, you can create new partitions in gaps you create between or after the existing partitions. A new partition doesn't have to be at the end if the biggest gap you can create is somewhere in the middle.

It's easy to experiment to see what's possible. You can Revert any changes you make to the partition map, and nothing actually happens as long as you don't hit Apply.

I have ried this on my external and all worked fine. However I don't think I'd risk it if there were un-losable data on it.

well - I'll be experimenting later today since I have back ups on both my external drives

My 320GB drive has 3 partitions - SuperDuper , TM and a , at presently , unused one . This is the external Drive that will come on holiday with me.

My 500GB just has 2 partitions - SuperDuper and TM This is the stay-at-home external - so as there is masses of room on it I'll experiment on this one

Maybe two successes will give MacFriar enough confidence.

he has confidence - just didn't have the time

To back up his MacBook and iMac to DVD disks would take between 12 and 25 DVDs and he did not have that number at home . And just think how long it would take to do that lot

He does have a lot of stuff that he uses for work - and couldn't risk any catastrophes .

Once things are back to 'normal [ hehehehehe] I'm sure he will get things straight so he doesn't get in this situation again.

Oh - and I gather that neither of his externals are partitioned .

Folk laugh at my back ups - but if one external Drive goes - I still have the other so all is not lost.

Edited by goldenoldie (Thu 19-Mar-09 15:33:46)

In reply to a post by goldenoldie:

Folk laugh at my back ups.....

With apologies to Confucious, "He who laughs at anothers back up will fall from tree and break head."

He could have also created a 100GB fixed size disk image and used that for time machine.

True - but that's being wise AFTER the event.

He was backed up - all his work related stuff was OK - it's just that there were things on the Hard Drive that he didn't want to lose , and he hadn't time to change his systems for this

I'm not sure if I misunderstand the situation, but creating a disk image wouldn't have involved changing the external hard drive in any way - just creating a file on it. True it would have taken an hour or so to create the backup.

How do I partition the external HD for a back up? Time machine wants to completely wipe the drive off. That is crazy since it is a 250GB drive and my HD is only 80GB.

Sorry to resurrect this, but I've just implemented TM for the first time and on the both the drives (two computers) it is being used it did not want to wipe the drive (I did a lot of faffing to make sure important files were safe only to find it was largely unnecessary).

TM created a folder with the backups in.