iPartition question..

Hi my friends. Hopefully someone can advise here.
I have a1TB Seagate external HD, formatted to Mac OS Extended (not journaled), that I use for MKV and BR movie files, and is usually read by my WDTV media player no problem.
Now, I have just upgraded to a Netgear NTV550, and it will not read it at all, and I have been advised it's something to do with the way Disk Uitility formats the drive because it creates an small EFI pertition at the start, which the NTV won't read.
Th eodd thing is that I have a flash drive formatted on the same iMac, in the same way, and it reads that??!!
Anyway, it's been suggested that I use iPartition to reformat the drive. Now I believe that it can do this without losing any data at all, which I find hard to believe, but want to know if it's true or possible. I have 900GB+ f movie files on there and nowhere that I can back them all up.
Given the cost of iPartion I'm tempted to just buy another HD, but I'm still curious as to whether it can do what it claims.
Sorry for the long winded post and thanks in advance.

BTW, If anyone knows of another, cheaper way, I'm all ears.

I'm assuming you've been on their web site and read over what exactly iPartition is capable of doing? LINK

iPartition can resize partitions and move them about without losing data but it doesn't say that it can reformat a drive without data loss.

The only utility that I know of which can change the format of a drive without data loss is Partition Magic but it doesn't work with EFI.

In order to get rid of that EFI (200 MB) partition, you will have to erase the drive in DU and reformat it using the MBR partition scheme versus the GUID. But that only works with FAT-32.

Thanks for the reply, yes I did read the web page, and find this confusing then:

"Even better, if you have a disk you partitioned for use with a Mac, and want to access it from a PC—or maybe you bought an external drive pre-formatted for use with a PC and now want to boot your Mac from it—iPartition can convert the partition tables for you, keeping all your data intact"

Now, could I use it to create 2 partitions on the drive (as I have a little space to move some stuff off temporarily) and still keep my data, or am I stuck because the drive is one big partition at the moment?

Fat 32 is of no use sadly, many of the files are way over 4gb in size.

Next question then I guess, is for this to work (new drive, or reformatted) I need it to be read write on the iMac and readable by the Netgear, so I wonder what my options are.

iPartition can convert the partition tables for you, keeping all your data intact"

Click to expand...

That part is not very clear. Converting partition tables is not the same as reformatting, however, the way they state it, one can gather that are they're changing the format also. I would email them to find out for sure.

Now, could I use it to create 2 partitions on the drive (as I have a little space to move some stuff off temporarily) and still keep my data, or am I stuck because the drive is one big partition at the moment?

Click to expand...

Yes, with iPartition you can create additional partitions without data loss but it will require resizing and the moving of the original partition boundary first. It will again do that without data loss.

Next question then I guess, is for this to work (new drive, or reformatted) I need it to be read write on the iMac and readable by the Netgear, so I wonder what my options are.

Click to expand...

That's going to be a challenge. I'm not sure you can do it without that small 200 MB EFI partition being created. If you have an old drive laying around that you don't mind messing over, do some experimenting with Disk Utility to see if you can eliminate creating the EFI partition.

Thanks again.
Out of interest, is there any other software (so not Disk Utility) that I can use to format a drive without creating this EFI partition too?
HFS+ will be fine, as the Mac and the Netgear will read it.

Also, just curious as to why the flash drive works? Surely it has the same EFI partition?
That said, when I plug it in it does show it's full 8GB as being available.

I don't know of any other software. I just took a look at Linux FDisk and while it will work on Unix systems, it doesn't say anything at all about HFS.

As for your 8 GB flash drive, are you sure it has the EFI partition on it? One way to find out is to plug it into a Windows system and open Disk Manager to see if it shows the small 200 MB partition.

chscag said:

I don't know of any other software. I just took a look at Linux FDisk and while it will work on Unix systems, it doesn't say anything at all about HFS.

As for your 8 GB flash drive, are you sure it has the EFI partition on it? One way to find out is to plug it into a Windows system and open Disk Manager to see if it shows the small 200 MB partition.

Click to expand...

I don't think it does, but don't understand why, as I formatted it in DU on my iMac, the same as the Seagate.
I'll have to open it in Parallels.
Actually, there's an idea. Could I format a drive using Windows via Parallels?
I imagine yes, but I haven't ever tried.

Yes, but the drawback is that the Disk Manager program in Windows will only do NTFS and FAT-32. Finding another program that will do HFS is not easy.

Wait... This might be the answer: Take a look at this LINK as it talks about using GParted (Linux).

Let me know if this works. I have a copy of GParted somewhere around in my collection of CDs.

Well actually I think NTFS would be fine, in which case that may be a solution, though I still have the issue of keeping my data at the moment.
I've been thinking though, does the EFI part of the partition only appear if you format on an Intel Mac?
I ask because I now have a feeling I formatted the flash drive on my Powerbook G4, so PPC, and that would explain why there is no EFI partition if this is the case.
Also, if I'm right I'll just get a new drive and format it on here (on the PB now ).
iPartition is still of interest though, and I will mail them tomorrow. I'm also mailing Netgear, as their manual says that it will work with Mac formatted drives, which clearly isn't right.
Thanks for all of your input so far.

You're correct. The EFI partition will only be created on an Intel Mac not PPC so that might be your answer. Got to get to work now... will get back to you later. Let me know what you found out.

Thanks. Will play tomorrow and report back.

Quick update. I cleared and reformatted (on my Powerbook) a small portable HDD today, added files back, and still no luck with it being recognised by the NTV, so back to the drawing board. This is a real pain.
I'm waiting for a reply from the iPartition guys.
I am thinking I'm going to have to use Parallels and NTFS though.

Thanks for the update. Keep us posted as I'm kind of interested in the solution myself. I'd also like to know exactly what iPartition is capable of.

Kevriano said:

I don't think it does, but don't understand why, as I formatted it in DU on my iMac, the same as the Seagate.
I'll have to open it in Parallels.
Actually, there's an idea. Could I format a drive using Windows via Parallels?
I imagine yes, but I haven't ever tried.

Click to expand...

Actually, if you install Tuxera NTFS, you will be able to format a drive in NTFS with Disk Utility. It has a 15 day free trial, after which it runs in "low performance" mode (i.e. slow read/write).
http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

I would hope it works a lot better than their open source NTFS 3G product especially since it's priced at $34.61. I understand it does more but after buggy sessions with 3G, I'm not sure I would trust it?

I certainly will report back. I think I'm going to bite the bullet with iPartition, as it is cheaper than a new HD (Just!) and may be of other use. I will try and change the drive format with data intact, as I have it all backed up.

chscag said:

I would hope it works a lot better than their open source NTFS 3G product especially since it's priced at $34.61. I understand it does more but after buggy sessions with 3G, I'm not sure I would trust it?

Click to expand...

Yah, I would hope it'd work better. The problem in my mind with some open source type software is that you have to reverse engineer tech and devise work-arounds for procedures that others have patents for. I have no doubt that NTFS-3G suffers as a result of this (it is well-known to be very slow at the least), but the commercial version should be another matter entirely. Their page says they've licensed the NTFS tech from Microsoft for the commercial driver, work together with them, blah blah etc etc. I would think that in having direct access to the owner of NTFS, that it'd work as well as possible. Still, if it did work perfect and was bug-free, there'd be no need for updates and bug fixes, and I'm a few point updates behind the current version.

Just coming back to update you with my findings for iPartiton.
To address my original intention of being able to change format while keeping data intact, the answer is yes and no. This was a somewhat bold claim anyway. What it can do is change it if, for example, you have a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition, that you simply want to change to non Journaled for whatever reason. What it can't do is completely change it to NTFS for example. Still quite clever though. It will also change partiton sizes for you, so if you have 2 partitions of equal size on a drive, and you want to alter it to a 75/25 split for example, you can.
As it stands what I needed to do in the end was reformat the drive I wanted to use to NTFS, which iPartition did very quickly.
Now, while I was testing I had a play around with a few things to see what else was possible.
Say for example you have a Mac formatted drive that you want to create another partition on, you can, and in any format you want, provided there is free space of course. So I have a 500GB Mac OS Extended format drive with 90 GB spare, and I could make a new partition on that drive in Fat, NTFS or a myriad of other formats and not destroy any data in the process, which I think is pretty smart to be fair. Also, with this option, you could effectively reformat an entire drive without losing data I guess, though it may be a bit of pain depending how full it is, but you could move things from the old to the new partition, and then eventually replace the old one entirely with the new (this I may well test out soon).
Overall I am pretty impressed with it, and it offers a lot of other features like creating bootable dvd's or partitions that I haven't tried (no need to, or no time yet). These things aren't mentioned on the web site for the product, but are in the help manual.

I hope that this is of use to some of you, and maybe it needs a separate topic, but over to mods to decide that.

Thanks for the feedback. It appears iPartition has the same ability to work with partitions as the Windows version of Partition Magic. As you experiment and find out more, keep us updated.

Will do indeed. I may have to make a special post for the program in the end.