0

I have a 4TB HGST external Hard Drive. The first partition is for backing up my Windows system, which is 3.5TB, and there is ~500GB "free space" to let OSX create it's own HFS+ partition for Time Machine.

The issue is, OSX refuses to create any partition. The only thing it will let me do is erase my disk to re-partition it, which makes no sense, there is free space for it to create the partition just fine...

Image of Disk Utility

As seen in the image above, all options are greyed out for the free space, I can't use the "+" button to make a new volume, and changing the partition layout box makes it want to completely erase the drive and create new partitions (not what I want).

How do I create a HFS+ Partition in the 500GB free space, since OSX is refusing to do so itself?

Improve this question
5
  • I'm pretty sure it's because the drive is MBR, not GUID. You might have to do it from Terminal - see if apple.stackexchange.com/questions/79480/… makes any sense
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 24, 2015 at 16:24
  • It doesn't like the fact that this is an MBR disk. You could create and exFAT partition on the Windows system that you can use with the Mac or you could backup all the data to a different HDD and then change the drive from MBR to GPT.
    – Techpumpkin_WD
    Commented Sep 25, 2015 at 14:36
  • @Techpumpkin_WD ExFAT could work, but how reliable is it for Time Machine? The idea is I want to use the partition for Time Machine and would like for my backups to NOT get corrupted (considering ExFAT has no journaling I don't know how it could be reliable...).
    – Someguy123
    Commented Sep 25, 2015 at 16:13
  • Time Machine cannot be set up on ExFat, it must be HFS+ [or Xsan]
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 26, 2015 at 13:52
  • As said ExFAT won't work with Time Machine, I guess the only option you have left is too change the HDD to the GPT style.
    – Techpumpkin_WD
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 12:17

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.