Apple Users

Stinky The Clown

(67,798 posts) Sun Mar 3, 2013, 07:24 PM Mar 2013

Of Portable Drives and Partitions

I have a 500GB LaCie "Rugged" portable hard drive with Firewire 800. Good drive, by the way.

Anyway . . . . it came with a MacOS and a Windows FAT32 partitions. I have no need of the FAT32 partition. It is just taking up space. There is no data on it.

Is there any reason to keep it? Can I delete it and recover the space dedicated to it? If I can, how do I do it? Do I need to reformat as one partition? I can easily move the data to another drive if I need to, and then move it back when done.

Thanks!

13 replies

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Of Portable Drives and Partitions (Original Post) Stinky The Clown Mar 2013 OP

Since you have it, back up the most important 500GB in you life, then bury it. NYC_SKP Mar 2013 #1

I have a portable lacie. The partitioning instructions came in the manual. I would robinlynne Mar 2013 #2

I'm taking a wild guess here, based on long past experience NV Whino Mar 2013 #3

Repartition options fpublic Mar 2013 #4

This message was self-deleted by its author guyton Mar 2013 #5

I'm thinking of zapping my Bootcamp partition. I have Vista on it, but it looks like the new OS X davidwparker Mar 2013 #13

^ Like he says, you can do it on-the-fly, but I never do sir pball Mar 2013 #6

Actually, Disk Utility will not allow a dynamic change to this drive. Stinky The Clown Mar 2013 #7

It's apparently formatted to boot Windows sir pball Mar 2013 #8

Thanks! That clarifies it. Stinky The Clown Mar 2013 #9

Then trash it ASAP...FAT32 is outdated anyway. sir pball Mar 2013 #10

Can a Mac read NTFS? Stinky The Clown Mar 2013 #11

Read natively, write with utilities sir pball Mar 2013 #12

NYC_SKP

(68,644 posts)

1. Since you have it, back up the most important 500GB in you life, then bury it.

Reply to Stinky The Clown (Original post)

Sun Mar 3, 2013, 07:29 PM

Mar 2013

I had a 2TB drive and two laptops stolen in September.

Data was backed up on multiple firewire drives, no loss of date despite the theft.

eom

robinlynne

(15,481 posts)

2. I have a portable lacie. The partitioning instructions came in the manual. I would

Reply to Stinky The Clown (Original post)

Sun Mar 3, 2013, 07:34 PM

Mar 2013

google for and fine the manual. (Remember, they used to come on paper...)

NV Whino

(20,886 posts)

3. I'm taking a wild guess here, based on long past experience

Reply to Stinky The Clown (Original post)

Sun Mar 3, 2013, 08:06 PM

Mar 2013

It used to be in the olden days that you had to reformat the entire drive in order to reformat one partition. I haven't partitioned anything in a long while so that may have changed by now.

fpublic

(58 posts)

4. Repartition options

Reply to Stinky The Clown (Original post)

Sun Mar 3, 2013, 10:48 PM

Mar 2013

The Disk Utility that comes free with MacOS will do the reformat for you. You will lose any data that you don't backup elsewhere in this process. Disk Utility should be found in your Utilities folder in the Applications folder. There are several options for formatting that can't be adequately explained here. If the Help documents for Disk Utility are not enough, there'll be plenty of info at the usual sites, e.g. MacWorld or CNET.

There is commercial software that will shuffle current data around as it repartitions into a single partition without deleting. ( TechTool Pro costs $100 http://www.micromat.com/techtoolpro) BUT YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD STILL BACKUP to be safe so you might as well stick with Disk Utility.

Response to Stinky The Clown (Original post)

guyton This message was self-deleted by its author.

davidwparker

(5,397 posts)

13. I'm thinking of zapping my Bootcamp partition. I have Vista on it, but it looks like the new OS X

Reply to guyton (Reply #5)

Sun Mar 31, 2013, 03:13 AM

Mar 2013

that I have isn't supported.

I got VMWare Fusion and have put my Windows operating system in it. I could do a clean installation of Windows 7 on the Bootcamp partition and VMWare will work with it there. But, I'm leaning towards getting rid of the Bootcamp partition, expanding the Mac drive over it, and just using VMWare.

sir pball

(4,741 posts)

6. ^ Like he says, you can do it on-the-fly, but I never do

Reply to Stinky The Clown (Original post)

Wed Mar 6, 2013, 02:07 PM

Mar 2013

Maybe its just because I'm old enough to remember when there were hacks to resize partitions live and they could go horribly horribly wrong, but I always backup and erase a drive on which I'm changing the partitions. It's just a little extra peace of mind for me, if you can do it easily I'd say there's no good reason not to.

Stinky The Clown

(67,798 posts)

7. Actually, Disk Utility will not allow a dynamic change to this drive.

Reply to sir pball (Reply #6)

Wed Mar 6, 2013, 03:27 PM

Mar 2013

I can erase and partition any way I wish (including just one partition)

As to resizing, that's grayed out with the following message:

You can't resize the partitions on this disk because it uses to Master Boot Record partition scheme

I don't really know what that means, but perhaps it is because one partition is Mac OS Extended (journaled) and the other partition is FAT 32?

I any case, I may just leave it be.

sir pball

(4,741 posts)

8. It's apparently formatted to boot Windows

Reply to Stinky The Clown (Reply #7)

Thu Mar 7, 2013, 02:21 PM

Mar 2013

MBR is the boot-sector format that Microsoft uses. If you have any use for a Windows install you can leave it, but if not why keep the FAT32 partition at all?

Stinky The Clown

(67,798 posts)

9. Thanks! That clarifies it.

Reply to sir pball (Reply #8)

Thu Mar 7, 2013, 03:42 PM

Mar 2013

I have no need to keep a Windows anything. The closest I get is to run a CAD program under Parallels on a different machine.

sir pball

(4,741 posts)

10. Then trash it ASAP...FAT32 is outdated anyway.

Reply to Stinky The Clown (Reply #9)

Fri Mar 8, 2013, 01:27 PM

Mar 2013

I have no idea why it would have even shipped with FAT32; it's been all NTFS since Win2K. Hell, you can't have a file larger than 2GB on there..

Stinky The Clown

(67,798 posts)

11. Can a Mac read NTFS?

Reply to sir pball (Reply #10)

Fri Mar 8, 2013, 02:01 PM

Mar 2013

sir pball

(4,741 posts)

12. Read natively, write with utilities

Reply to Stinky The Clown (Reply #11)

Sat Mar 9, 2013, 01:24 AM

Mar 2013

If you need an interchange for Mac/Win, you can either get Tuxera NTFS or just format it as exFAT - it's a modern Microsoft FS that's natively supported by both Win and OS X.

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