Big Book of Apple Hacks

Chapter 8. Maximize your Mac with Multiple Operating Systems

Since the switch to Intel chips, Macs have become a viable option for those who want to run OS X but need to run Windows. However, your Mac can do more than just run Windows and OS X. Your Mac can run classic versions of the Mac OS, and you can swap drives from a Windows machine to the Mac and boot without installing OS X. You can even suck your information from your Mac to your newly installed Windows partition if you want your experience to be as seamless as possible.

HACK 66: Nondestructively Partition Your Hard Drive

Installing Leopard? Linux? Need partitions? Use the command line to partition your drives without losing that hard-earned data.

It has probably happened to you: you’re sitting in front of your machine and find yourself wishing that you were running separate partitions on your Mac. The reasons vary, perhaps you want to install Linux on a second partition, maybe you want a second startup disk to repair the first hard drive, etc.

In the pre-Tiger days, partitioning your drive meant a willingness to lose all your data. You had to start up from a bootable CD, invoke Disk Utility (Disk Copy in the very olden days), and partition the drive. Of course, if you were willing to do that, it meant you had a rock solid backup of your data and likely another disk. Thing is, if you already had another disk, the reasoning behind ...