I have a 2TB hard drive which has two partitions on it. I would like to delete one and use the remaining space for the other partition, on which has my Time Machine back up on it. Can this be done without having to reformat the other partition?
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John Santini
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Can I Delete a Partion Off an External Hard Drive Without Having To Reformat the Hard Drive
Comments: 2 Responses to “Can I Delete a Partion Off an External Hard Drive Without Having To Reformat the Hard Drive”
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Most likely, yes. You can do this in Disk Utility with most drives as long as they are using the latest formatting (Mac Extended).
You simply run Disk Utility, then carefully use the interface to remove the unneeded partition and give the space to the other.
I'd give you a step-by-step, but I would need to create a drive that was like yours in order to see the options.
Normally, I would caution you to backup everything on there before putting the drive through such a drastic change. But if the only data is a Time Machine backup, then there isn't much danger. Worst case is that you lose the backup and simply start it up again from scratch.
Link to this article online (written by Maria Langer and published by Peachpit Press) for how to remove a partition from an external hard drive:
http://bit.ly/4fAJh6