How To: Resize Partitions

Today I'm reinstalling Windows 7 on my remaining 1TB hard-drive. I currently have Ubuntu 6.10 installed in a 200GB partition, and the remaining 800GB is NTFS formatted for movies, music, photos, etc., to be shared between operating systems. The first step in my installation is to make room for windows, creating a 200GB partition from the current 800GB one. To do this I'm using GParted, a great GUI tool for editing, resizing, and moving partitions on a disk.

Here are a couple of helpful tips (and notes so I don't have to look it up again!):

1) Use MBR instead of GUID Partition Table. More support for MBR, it is old, but it's restrictions (only 4 primary partitions; max 2TB partition) don't usually interfere with most people's operations.

2) If you get an error, make sure to click on 'details' and then expand the arrows to find the cause of the errors. On my first attempt at resizing I didn't leave enough room for the original partition. To fix, allocate less space for the new partition.

3) The other error I encountered was something about a 'NTFS Journal file is unclean'. I think it was specifically ERROR(95). To fix, use ntfsfix /dev/[your_partition]. For me, it was /dev/sda1 that I was trying to resize, so [your_partition] was replaced with sda1.

Remember to sit tight, resizing (especially on a TB drive) is no laughing matter! Go for a bike ride, see a movie, and let it do its thing.

etc.

How To: Mount a Time Capsule from Terminal/Command Line

For the second or third time, I've had to save my macbook Air from destruction with the aid of my time capsule.

Here's the situation:

1. MacBook Air is DEAD. (Mine specifically couldn't get past the spinning white loading screen...)
2. MacBook Air only has one USB slot and no CD drive, so we need to boot up from the Install disk with the external drive, taking up our USB slot. (Note: Using a USB hub doesn't allow me to boot from the disk externally... maybe people have had other successes)
3. We want to save our HD data before reinstalling, but we can't plug in an external HD while the disk is plugged in, so
4. WHAT TO DO?
5. Time Capsule!!

Before you start, realize that copying any portion of your harddrive over WiFi to the TimeCapsule is absurdly slow. Also, a little experience with Terminal doesn't hurt. Here we go!

How To Open Terminal:

1. Boot from the disk - hold down the alt key while starting up with the install disk.
2. Choose the MacOSX Install Disk to boot up.
3. At the Install screen, go up to Utilities in the toolbar, and open Terminal.

How To Mount TimeCapsule:

1. Make a place to mount the TimeCapsule with: mkdir /Volumes/TimeCapsule
2. Mount the TimeCapsule with: mount_afp -i afp:/// /Volumes/TimeCapsule

• ip is the IP of the TimeCapsule (mine was 10.0.1.1).
• folder is the root folder of the TimeCapsule (the 'SharePoint')
• -i means Interactive Mode, so it will prompt you for your Username and Password.
• The User will be the user of your computer (not the lowercase version), so mine was Nicolas Williamson, and Password is the password for the TimeCapsule when you originally set it up.

How To Copy Files:

1. Make a directory on the TimeCapsule for your backup files with: mkdir /Volumes/TimeCapsule/Backup_Date
2. Go to your harddrive with: cd /Volumes//Users/
3. Copy any files you need from Documents or Desktop (or anywhere else) with the cp command. Note: If you are copying a folder use the -r option, and use the -v (verbose) option to see what files are copying (otherwise it can feel like it's not doing anything!). Ex: cp -r -v Documents /Volume/TimeCapsule/Backup/