Why can’t I resize my Mac Drive?

Many times Disk Utility shows error like (disk can’t be partitioned, disk couldn’t mount, disk partition failed etc.) while partitioning Mac hard drive. Users try to partition Macintosh drive by booting into safe mode, booting into single user mode along with commands but often gets no results. If you are facing the same type of Mac drive partitioning issues then scroll down to see different cases with their solutions and enjoy working with Mac. 

Case 1: Unable to Resize

Suppose there is Mac drive with two partitions. One partition has OS X 10.7 and another OS X 10.8. Over a period of time, if partition2 (i.e. partition installed with OS X 10.8) needs to get resized (making partition larger in size) but Disk Utility is not allowing so even there is empty space available after partition2.

• The reason behind this situation is Disk Utility allows for partitioning Mac drive from the end corner point rather the starting point. If this type of the situation made you stuck in mid of the way then try to boot Mac system into Recovery HD partition (by pressing and holding command–R together at startup time and release the keys once you hear chimes sound) and use Disk Utility to resize disk partition. Please make a backup copy (bootable clone of Mac drive or an image) of complete Mac system before proceeding further.                                                                                                                                                                                                               
• If the above solution doesn’t work for resizing Mac drive partition2 then try to make an image of this partition firstly either with Time Machine or third party Mac drive cloning software.  Then delete partition2. Now, create a new partition with GUID file type and restore the complete data back from that image created earlier. Open Disk Utility, click on the image and point it to newly created partition.

3:08 AM - By Stuart Bell 1

How to Resolve POSIX error during Mac HDD Partitioning?

Simple Mac operations never ask for any expertise. Some unavoidable circumstances check our patience in fighting the difficulties against completing those easy tasks. If you are using Mac for more than a year then you must have tried partitioning & formatting Mac hard drive, external drive or a USB flash media and faced different unknown errors. There is an impression that many of us like to use hard drives on both (Mac and Windows) platforms and format drive with the exFAT file system. Please keep in mind, if you want a USB drive to be accessible on both platform then format the drive on PC platform rather Mac because OS X system makes USB drive unreadable while erasing with exFAT type. 

There is a simple and standardized way to format and partition Mac. Please don’t partition a volume if that is in use. Although partitioning & formatting drive can be done manually with these easy steps mentioned below:

2:15 AM - By Stuart Bell 2

Alternative of Disk utility to partition Mac drive & volumes

Being a tech savvy, I have an impression that partitioning Mac drive is not a difficult task. The easy steps of selecting Mac drive and clicking on plus (+) & minus (-) button can create a new partition and delete an existing one. Although, the steps are simple enough to follow, but few of unknown situations like “can't partition hard drive”, “drive could not be mounted” or “file system verification error” etc. restrict Mac users to partition or resize a drive. Sometimes, these circumstances become headache and unavoidable for tech geeks.

Want Disk Utility alternative for formatting, partitioning and resizing Mac hard drive? We recommend this partition manager utility.

They try to resolve the issue with Disk Utility or via Terminal but all in vain. In such cases, limelight of the third party tools comes into existence to give a relief within few clicks. With an easy to use sensible GUI interface make the entire task easy to flow. There are many reliable and efficient tools available for partitioning and resizing Mac drive carrying its own merits and demerits. All you need to choose the best one and maintain a successful backup before initiating the partitioning process.

How to find out a Good Mac Partition Manager?

It's very easy to manage Mac drive with third party software but on the other hand, it becomes very difficult to analyze the available efficient tools and choose the best Mac Partition Manager.

“Couldn’t modify partition map because file system verification failed.”

While partitioning drive, you must have encountered this error and used Terminal' tricks by being into the Single User mode to resolve this issue. But for novices, it is difficult to use Terminal area. Mac partitioning tools do all these quickly and accomplish the drive management tasks within few clicks without much technical knowledge.

There is reliable and excellent software, which I used for partitioning my Mac drive without causing any data loss.

Stellar Partition Manager software works well in creating new partitions, deleting/formatting/resizing an existing volume. It is compatible with OS X Mavericks and other earlier versions till OS X 10.3.

If I call this software more comfortable than Disk Utility then it will not be wrong because creating a new partition with the scattered spaces among existing volumes onto Mac drive is easier than Disk Utility. All a user need to do is to select the free spaces and click on '+' (plus) button in the software interface.

Stellar Partition Manager software GUI Interface

• Rollback

Moreover, this utility works well on partitioning boot volume and provides a great feature 'Rollback'; undo the last action, if anything done wrong and not to move ahead.

• Resize Mac Boot Volume

This software performs well on boot volume partitioning apart from other volumes. If a user want to resize boot partition then it is possible by creating a bootable DVD. All it needs to follow 2 or 3 instructions and insert a CD/DVD to get a Mac bootable DVD. Moreover, it asks for backing up all the data before initiating this operation; in case of any wrong action.

• Hide/Reveal Feature

Another stunning feature 'Hide/Reveal' which is very beneficial to protect important data from unauthenticated users. You can hide any important volume and later on can unhide the same. One thing to remember about this feature is that the unmounted volume will be mounted again with this software only rather Disk Utility. 

• Bootable CD/DVD

Bootable DVD contains all the essential system files necessary to boot the system externally. If the process of resizing boot volume is taking place then Bootable DVD boots the system and performs all the operations on the behalf of boot volume. If you have an inaccessible Mac system then with the help of bootable DVD, you get booting done.

By and large, Stellar Partition Manager software manages Mac drive partitions more efficiently than Disk Utility along with an easy to use GUI Interface.

2:15 AM - By Stuart Bell 2

How to Solve Errors while Mac Drive Partitioning?

Do we need to manage our Mac partitions? Yes, with respect to the requirement, almost every Mac user needs to manage his/her Mac partitions from time to time. Sometimes, you need to create new volumes in the hard drive, whereas some other time, unwanted Mac volumes need to be deleted. Apart from creation and deletion of volumes, there are some other similar requirements, such as formatting of partitions, increase or decrease partition size etc. For all these purposes, Mac has provided a built-in utility, 'Disk Utility’. But, many non-technical novice Mac users don't find 'Disk Utility' easy to use and want more interactive third party Mac partition manager utilities.

When you buy a new hard drive for your Mac, it usually comes as a raw drive in which you have to make different partitions to store different categories of data separately. Drive partition formatting is one of the common operations which removes unwanted data from a partition.

Drive Partitioning Error : Partition failed

You can delete such unwanted partitions so that the created space can be utilized somewhere else. Apart from this, there are times, when the Mac partitions become corrupted to such an extent that every operation to format the volumes also fail. In such cases, you do not have any other option left, except deleting the partitions.

At times, while trying to store all the data of a similar category in one particular volume, the volume runs short of space and you need to increase its size. To create extra space, we find unwanted space in volume to trim up to an optimum level.

For all such partition related tasks, including creation, deletion, formatting and resizing of Mac partitions, Apple has suggested 'Disk Utility'. Backing up data before initiating these tasks is necessary. In case of drive failure, it will be so easy to regain the lost data from the backup copy created earlier before initiating the Mac drive partitioning process. You can create data backup from any Mac drive cloning tool.

In current software market, there are many such partition manager utilities available to manage Mac partitions effectively. Stellar Partition Manager is one such reliable Mac utility with the useful options of creating, deleting, formatting and resizing any Mac volume along with boot volume. The software also provides another set of interesting options to hide/reveal any partition, which can help in protecting confidential data from unauthorized access. Above all, the software is completely risk-free and compatible with Mavericks and other lower versions till OS X 10.3.9.

Drive Partitioning Error : Alert in verifying system files

Many Mac users take boot drive partitioning a very difficult task and stay away with the fear of data loss. But, this utility also works well on partitioning/resizing boot volume with data still on it. In case of making dual boot system, new partition can be created and different OS can be installed. For this it asks for creating a bootable DVD before initiating partition management process.

Here are many cases, where Disk Utility fails to create partition, delete or format drive volume. Even this software can partition an external drive without loosing any existing data. All you need to just connect an external drive with your Mac machine and run Stellar Partition Manager software. Select the external drive in left pane. Click on 'Add' button. Mention the name & size of the partition you want to create. This tool takes care of the rest of the tasks and lets you relax.

Although, Disk Utility allows to perform all these Mac drive partitioning tasks but few errors like 'no disk space', 'failed to partition' or  'couldn't unmount disk' force Mac user to move towards an efficient and reliable third party software.

1:58 AM - By Stuart Bell 1

Alternative of iPartition

Partitioning Refers to dividing Mac drive into different volumes so that, user could keep their data separately to easy access. Mac OS X has an inbuilt utility to partition Mac drive i.e Disk Utility. This tool can format, create, delete, resize Mac partition. But, there are some limitations of this tool as Mac users can not hide/ reveal parititions by using this tool or Disk Utility does not have very user friendly interrface. So, there are many third party tool available in market, among which iPartition is very famous.

Ipartition is a very famous tool to take care of Mac partitions but, there are many people who wants to find out more aditional features in partitioning tool with the basic one. So, they search for an Alternative of iPartition.

Stellar Partition Manager is the best alternative of iPartition. However iPartition has many awesome features, here are some of them:-

1. Create Mac partition with iPartition:- This tool helps to create , delete, resize, format Mac partition, it works internal and external Mac drive without destroying your data. Run iPartition on your Mac -> Select the drive to divide into multiple volume -> choose the file system formatting and name of partition -> click ok.

This process would take couple of minutes to create partition. Mac users can change the size of a partition that’s currently full of data.

Create partition with Stellar Partition Manager:- If you want to create partition other than bootvolume, you need to go 'Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility'. After that choose the drive and click 'Partition' tab. Choose the volume name, size, partition scheme (GUID Partition Table/Apple Partition Map/Master Boot Record) as per requirement, clock ok to start process.

It will take hardly few seconds to create partition. If you want to create bootvolume partition then you will have to create bootable DVD before going further.

2. Delete Mac partition with iPartition:- Select the partition which you want to delete , press the delete button on your keyboard. This process will help you to delete your Mac partition.

Delete partition with Stellar Partitioning tool:- Select the volume which you would like to delete from the left panel and press delete button.

Deleting Mac volume with Stellar tool is quite better because of faster execution time than iPartition.

3. Resize Mac Partition with iPartition:- It is very easy, you need to simply drag the partition, which you want to decrease/increase is size. See the below image.

Resize Mac partition with Stellar Partition Manager:- With the period of time , some of your Mac volume gets full because of loads of data and need to increase the size of volume. Stellar Partition Manager helps you to simply drag/drop the volume to resize it.

Note:- When you resize partition with Disk Utility, free space remains between two partition after resizing but, stellar partition manager optimize free space. It keeps separate free space and partitions.

You can hide/reveal Mac partition with stellar Partitioning tool but, iPartition does not provide this facility.

4. Format Mac partition with iPartition:- Sometime you want to erase your Mac data to remove all unwanted data or you find that your volume is badly corrupted , your all data becomes unused. In such cases, you need to format volume. You can do formatting with iPartition easily and assign new file format to this partition.

Formatting Mac volume with Stellar Partition Manager :- Run this tool -> choose the volume which you want to format -> This process will get added in 'Task to do' list. Click the 'Start' button on the tool bar to begin formatting.

Formatting with Stellar Partition tool less time taking as compare to iPartition.

Wrap up:- I would like to suggest Mac users to go with Stellar Partition Manager because of it's price is very cheap. You can buy it $39 and you will have to pay $48.78 for iPartition. You can find all features of iPartition in Stellar Partition tool . Although, you can not resize bootcamp partition with Stellar partitioning tool but very soon it will added into comming version.

iPartition’s simplicity and ease of use is very impressive but, sometimes, disk management becomes complicated matter by using this tool. Stellar Partition Manager is is powerful enough to impress those who manage their Mac with this tool. It has also great user interface and easy to use functionalities.

2:20 AM - By Stuart Bell 0