Partitioning a hard drive in several volumes of similar or different sizes during operating system installation is not a difficult task to perform. However, you do not need to worry if you did not partition your hard drive in slew volumes, as Mac OS X allows you to create a new one and delete or resize Mac volume through a built-in disk management tool i.e. Disk Utility, whenever required. You can find it in Applications-> Utilities-> Disk Utility.
Risks during modifying a volume
Disk Utility is one of the best tools embedded in Mac OS X that facilitates end-user to perform several system related tasks easily. However, there are several risk factors, which you need to be careful about while performing any of the above mentioned operations on your Mac volumes. A few known possible vulnerabilities are discussed below:
Volume Inaccessibility due to Volume Header Corruption
Every Mac volume has a header (1KB in size) associated with it that stores overall information about respective volume. This header works as an entry in the Apple Partition Map indexing. In any case, if this volume header of a particular volume gets corrupt, then the respective volume as well as the data stored in it becomes inaccessible, as Mac is not able to detect that volume.
File System Corruption
Mac OS X employs an intelligent file system (HFS, HFSX, HFS+, and HFS wrapper) to format its volumes. Several internal and external factors, such as software and hardware, forced shutdown, power failure etc. affects these file systems. Modifying a Mac volume is also among the factors affecting these file systems that may cause corruption.
Partition Map Scheme
When you open Disk Utility and select hard drive in the left-pane, it displays certain information in the bottom-pane. Partition Map Scheme is one of this information that displays the partition scheme employed to partition that hard drive. You can modify a volume only if it displays GUID Partition Table (GPT). However, you cannot modify a volume if it is Apple Partition Map (APM) or Master Boot Record (MBR). In case, if you try to do it, it may also affect the logical structure of the respective volume.
Risk while Modifying Boot Volume of Mac
If you try to modify the boot volume of your Mac, you may suffer a crash, which may cause complete inaccessibility. Therefore, you need your Mac OS X installation disc if you wish to modify your boot volume.
You need to insert the disc and restart your Mac. Press and hold “Option” and “R” keys during startup to boot in Recovery mode. Go to Disk Utility after it starts up and select “Partition” tab in the right-pane. Click boot volume and drag it through its border to modify it. In case, if you are going to shrink it, you can utilize the unallocated space to create a new volume or enlarge any existing one.
However, always keep a backup of your data to avoid any sort of risk leading to data inaccessibility or corruption. Otherwise the last option is a Mac data recovery software. These software are capable to recover data after any type of corruption.
You need to insert the disc and restart your Mac. Press and hold “Option” and “R” keys during startup to boot in Recovery mode. Go to Disk Utility after it starts up and select “Partition” tab in the right-pane. Click boot volume and drag it through its border to modify it. In case, if you are going to shrink it, you can utilize the unallocated space to create a new volume or enlarge any existing one.
However, always keep a backup of your data to avoid any sort of risk leading to data inaccessibility or corruption. Otherwise the last option is a Mac data recovery software. These software are capable to recover data after any type of corruption.
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