Frequently Asked Questions: iPartition
1. How safe is iPartition?
We should start by saying that we strongly recommend that you back-up any valuable data before using any disk utility, and we are unable to accept any responsibility if you disregard this advice (which is re-iterated in the iPartition User’s Guide). Please understand that, even assuming that our software contains no bugs whatsoever, a large number of factors entirely beyond our control can cause loss of data, including power failures, lightning strikes, hardware failure, logic glitches or random bit errors, kernel bugs, interference from third-party software (virus killers, system hacks and the like), and even the actions of other people.
However, with that out of the way, we are reasonably confident that, in normal operation, iPartition is very unlikely to damage your data; we have taken care writing the critical areas of code such that they will abort rather than damaging the filesystem structure, and we expend considerable time and effort testing the software to ensure that that is the case. It is always possible that there is something that we have missed, which is another reason that we tell you to back-up your files before using our software, and there will always be scenarios which, for one reason or another, we have been unable to test, but we have tried to design our software to adopt reasonable behaviour in such circumstances.
We have tested our code against both in-house tools and against Apple’s fsck_hfs program, the utility behind Disk Utility, as well as against the validation checks built in to the Mac OS itself. We have also tested against Alsoft DiskWarrior and Symantec Norton Utilities to ensure that there are no errors in our code that are not picked-up by Apple’s fsck_hfs.
It is probably also worth saying that, during testing, the majority of bugs that were fixed were actually due to over-zealous consistency checks causing partition resizing to abort, rather than problems that would result in a corrupted volume.
In short, we believe we have a solid product and that our customers will be happy with its performance in the field.
Furthermore, iPartition has the ability to recover from power failures (in certain circumstances only). We think this feature is fairly unique for partitioning software. Read more here.
2. Can iPartition work on the same physical disk from which the system has booted?
No. Due to the way that OS X works, it is not possible to manipulate the boot disk to the extent that iPartition would need to. Like most other Mac OS utility software, you will require another Mac—so that you can use FireWire target-disk mode—or another boot disk of some description.
3. How do I run iPartition from another boot disk?
For users on Lion or later, iPartition comes with the ability to create a recovery partition that you can run iPartition from. To do that, you simply select Create Boot Disk… from the iPartition menu and follow the instructions. You will need an external drive or a small USB flash drive will suffice. For users on earlier versions of OS X, you can create a bootable DVD instead (via the same menu option).
Alternatively, you can install OS X on an external drive. To do that, run the OS X installer, select your external drive when prompted and proceed accordingly.
You can find more information regarding this in the Quick Start Guide which is available via iPartition’s help menu.
And if you get stuck, contact our support team who will be happy to help.
4. Is there a demo version of iPartition?
Yes! You can download it and try it out for yourself; note that the demo version is missing the all-important “Go” button — in its place, you will find a “Buy Now” button that will bring you back to this site.
5. Why do iPartition and <insert name of other utility> display different sizes for the same partition?
Normally because the two programs are actually displaying the sizes of different things, or because they are using different units.
iPartition generally displays the unformatted capacity of a partition, which is the total size of the disk sectors occupied by a partition. Some other disk utility software (including Disk Utility when you select a mounted volume) displays the formatted capacity of a volume, which takes account of the sizes of filesystem structures, and so will tend to be smaller than the size displayed by iPartition.
It is also worth pointing-out that the unformatted capacity of a single partition that fills a disk is probably not the same as the quoted unformatted capacity of the disk, because the latter will generally not include the size of the partition map. This makes sense when you think about it… after all, the manufacturers of most disks don’t know which operating system you are going to use their disk with, and different systems use different amounts of space for their partition maps. Indeed, many systems, including the Mac OS, can actually vary the size of the partition map from one disk to the next.
The other common source of differences is that some software uses base-10 units; the reason for this is that manufacturers of disks have typically quoted capacities using base-10 figures, partly to make their disks look larger, and partly because, historically speaking, disks were designed by engineers and physicists, who were used to base-10. On the other hand, computer programmers, and indeed computers themselves, prefer base-2 arithmetic, so, for instance, while the former may say 1KB and mean 1,000 bytes (103 bytes), the latter would instead read 1KB to mean 1,024 bytes (210 bytes). iPartition, however, was written with this in mind, and allows you to choose whether to use base-10 or base-2 units in any particular field.
We are aware of the NIST units (KiB, MiB, GiB etc.), but we believe that using them would have been more confusing than anything else. iPartition has a preference for those that wish to use the NIST abbreviations.
6. Where is the documentation for iPartition?
Look under the Help menu in the application. The full documentation also ships with the demo version, so you can have a read and decide whether or not to buy the full product. You can also view the help here.
7. Why does iPartition display a different name for my volume than the one shown in Finder or Disk Utility?
This may be the result of minor inconsistencies in the volume’s catalog file. As a first step, we recommend that you run a third party disk repair utility to verify the integrity of your filesystem.
If you do experience this type of symptom and are unable to resolve it through the use of third-party tools, then please contact us for further advice.
8. What about version upgrades?
As the owner of a copy of iPartition, you are entitled to free upgrades to any release with the same major version number. For instance, if you purchased version 3.4.0 of iPartition, you would be eligible for a free upgrade to any version numbered 3.x.x, but version 4 and above will be a chargeable upgrade.
To obtain a free upgrade to the latest version, the simplest way of doing it is to get the software to upgrade itself by selecting “Check for Updates…” in the iPartition menu (this will only work from version 1.2.0 onwards). Alternatively, you can monitor iPartition news. You also get the latest version by logging into the My Account area of our site. You will need your username (your e-mail address) and password. If you cannot find your password, you can get it sent to you from the login page. Sometimes we will send e-mails about important upgrades but not for every update and so we recommend that you monitor our blog.
Please note that the demo version does not contain all of the code from the full version, and it is not possible to enable the demo version using your license key.
9. According to Finder, I’ve got 70GB of free space on my disk, but iPartition will only let me make a new partition 3MB in size, and won’t let me make it any larger.
Finder displays the amount of free space within a partition. In iPartition, “Free Space” refers to the amount of space on your disk that is not currently within any partition. Before you can create a larger partition, you will need to shrink one or more of your existing partitions to make space. iPartition can’t do this for you, because there is no way for it to know which of your existing partitions you wish to shrink.
10. After growing a partition, my write performance isn’t as high as it used to be.
This may be because iPartition has had to create another chunk of allocation bitmap on your disk to cover the new space in the partition. For whatever reason, this chunk couldn’t be placed next to the existing allocation bitmap, so the system may have to seek between the two chunks when attempting to allocate space.
To improve the performance of your volume, please use the included iDefrag Lite utility to optimize your volume’s metadata (using the “Metadata” algorithm).
11. The demo doesn’t let me partition my disk, which isn’t enough to convince me that your program works. Can I have a version that will partition the disk a couple of times?
Sorry, no. We aren’t prepared to offer such a version, because we estimate that 90% of customers purchase the product because of an immediate desire to repartition their disk—once—and will not use the product again for 6 to 12 months. For that reason, offering a version with a number-of-uses restriction (which would be easily removed in any case) does not make commercial sense for us.
What we can offer is a pair of before and after disk images (approx. 5MB and 8MB in size respectively), showing that iPartition is capable of resizing a volume whilst keeping the files intact, and that it is possible to add files to an enlarged volume. Notice that in the before image, there is not enough room in the “Reference” volume for some files that we would like to add, although there is some space in the “Classics” volume… so, using iPartition, we can simply shrink the “Classics” volume and grow the “Reference” volume, then add the files we wanted.
The content in these images is due to Project Gutenberg; please see the licenses before redistributing any of the files (or indeed the images themselves). The images were created by asking Disk Utility to compress the original 40MB read/write disk image, both before and after using iPartition (and adding some extra files). No disk repair has been carried out on either of the images, although they were checked to make sure that there were no problems.
12. How do I delete a partition?
Select it, then press Delete or Backspace on your keyboard, or choose “Delete” from the “Edit” menu.
13. My newly created partition doesn’t appear on my desktop.
The most likely reason is that you haven’t formatted it. Please format the partition using an appropriate utility (iPartition can format HFS and HFS+ volumes, including journaled and case-sensitive variants; it cannot format other types of filesystem, so you will need to use a third party tool for that purpose).
If you’re using iPartition, remember to hit “Commit” after creating the format operation, otherwise all you’ll have done is queued-up a format operation.
14. iPartition stops with an error message
The chances are that this is not a bug. If iPartition is displaying an error message, then there is something wrong with your filesystem, your disk, or even with your machine itself.
If the error message is telling you that iPartition could not move data
from one location to another, and you see in the list of error codes the
text “errno 5”, then it most likely means you have
a bad block. Please
read our page about bad blocks to understand
what this means and what you can do about it.
Note that “errno 5” is quite a general error code; if
the disk itself seems to be “stuck”, cannot be accessed by any
software without power cycling the unit, seems to be a lot slower than
normal, is making funny noises, or is exhibiting other unusual symptoms,
then it may be that there is a more serious fault with the disk hardware.
This could range from a fault with the logic board of your machine through
bad controller chips, faulty firmware, a faulty logic board on the disk, or
even some sort of mechanical failure. If you do have other symptoms like
these, please contact
us and we’ll endeavour to diagnose the issue in more detail for
you. N.B. if your disk is making funny noises or emitting
smoke, switch it off.
If the error does not contain the text “errno 5”,
please do let us know about it, as we may be able to offer further advice
on what you can do to resolve the problem.
15. Is iPartition compatible with Boot Camp?
The latest version of iPartition (version 3 onwards) will work fine with Windows.
We advise against using version 1 of iPartition for resizing or moving Windows partitions.
16. Can iPartition combine or merge two partitions?
No.
What you can do is shrink one to its absolute minimum size, then grow the other one and move files across.
If there’s enough free space to do this in one go, then it might be worth taking this approach. Otherwise, you’re probably best off backing-up the files from one partition, deleting it, growing the remaining partition, then restoring the files from your back-up.
