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Mac Help Needed- HD Partitioning for Backup

Discussion in 'Off Topic [BG]' started by MaskedJackal, Aug 1, 2009.

  1. Aug 1, 2009 #1
    MaskedJackal

    MaskedJackal

    Jun 19, 2005
    Towson, MD/Seattle, WA
    Presently, my 1 TB external hard drive is unformatted. I have a lot of music and other files on there. I want to make a partition that's properly formatted so I can use Time Machine to back everything up, but I don't want to erase the rest of the drive? Can anyone help? TIA, of course.
     
  2. Aug 1, 2009 #2
    NJL

    NJL

    Apr 12, 2002
    San Antonio
    this thread is interesting...

    :)
     
  3. Aug 1, 2009 #3
    MaskedJackal

    MaskedJackal

    Jun 19, 2005
    Towson, MD/Seattle, WA
    Just wanting to install Windows XP on the internal HD. Thus, external backup.
     
  4. Aug 1, 2009 #4
    Sterling_Bass

    Sterling_Bass

    Jul 7, 2005
    Central New Jersey
    Have you tried connecting it to the Mac? The external should give you options for partitioning the drive as you desire. If your drive only lets you do that upon initial set up, you might have to store the information on the Mac and redo the drive before reloading the drive with whatever was on it initially.
     
  5. Aug 1, 2009 #5
    NJL

    NJL

    Apr 12, 2002
    San Antonio
    that just made it even more interesting :D

    have you tried macrumors.com? the fanboi's there usually have an answer for everything :)

    my latest drama with my MBP 13" is that i'm doing and A and I right now - i used migration assistant when i bought it to get info from my old MB running Tiger, to the MBP running Leopard.. my old MB probably had some corrupted files that seemed to not let the MBP run perfectly.. i didn't really have to A and I it, but it already seems to run better :D right now, i'm DL'ing the updates for it..
     
  6. Aug 1, 2009 #6
    burk48237

    burk48237 Supporting Member

    Nov 22, 2004
    Oak Park, MI

    I'd like to hear more about this one, my Macbook Pro (refurb) 13" just shipped today from Mac and I'll be migrating over from a Macbook. My current Macbook has been running a bit slower then usual and I'm wondering if I have some corrupted files.
     
  7. Aug 1, 2009 #7
    NJL

    NJL

    Apr 12, 2002
    San Antonio
    on your current MB, is it Tiger or Leopard?
     
  8. Aug 1, 2009 #8
    burk48237

    burk48237 Supporting Member

    Nov 22, 2004
    Oak Park, MI
    Tiger. I love it, but I just made the leap to a Nikon D300 and the 12mp files are real space eaters. The pro I ordered has twice the hard drive space and the 2.63 chip. Even though I only edit photo files and don't store them there the D300 files killed me.

    The biggest issue I've noticed is Safari hasn't run as good lately. I'm thinking about running a clean-up program before I migrate. I'm going to deactivate Photo Shop, Capture NX, and Office before I migrate. I'm also going to have apple wipe it (it still has apple care) before I sell it.
     
  9. Aug 2, 2009 #9
    NJL

    NJL

    Apr 12, 2002
    San Antonio
    i would try to start from scratch on the new box if you can.. you can transfer files via a fw cable, too
     
  10. Aug 2, 2009 #10
    Alcyon

    Alcyon

    Jan 15, 2008
    Vancouver, BC
    In terms of cleanup programs you should check out OnyX and Anacron; they both run unix cron scrips that will clean out old caches and will greatly improve the speed of your mac for free.

    For the drive, you will have to copy the files on the drive somewhere else before partitioning it. To partition it I'd use Disk Utility to reformat it as a Mac OS X Journaled drive and then use Boot Camp Assistant to partition it; I think that would work. Otherwise, Applecare will know how to do it.