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Is there any way that I can resize (grow, in this case) a HFS+ partition?

I tried gparted and acronis but of them none seem to be able to do it.

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With or without formatting the drive? What partition map are you using as the live resizing feature only works with GPT (GUID Partition Table) which is the default if you have an Intel Mac.

It is possible to resize an HFS+ drive from the command line using diskutil or by using Disk Utility. In Disk Utility you can resize the partition using the resize scrubber (the the diagonal lines in the bottom right corner of the partition) (Example).

If you want to do it via the command line you're looking for the command resizeVolume as part of diskutil. This will non-destructively resize a disk so long as you have space available. It may be necessary to defrag your disk before this is possible if your disk is relatively full.

Example: diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 10G JHFS+ 10G JHFS+ (Creates two partitions of 10GB apiece formatted as Journaled HFS+ systems).

You can find more by running diskutil resizeVolume. It should go without saying that you should have a backup just in case something goes wrong.

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    "resizing" a partition usually means without formatting the drive. "repartitioning" is the term used when you're creating new partitions and formatting new filesystems.
    – quack quixote
    Oct 3, 2009 at 10:26
  • Also because doing it destructively is usually trivial, definitely not a big problem to search a solution for.
    – o0'.
    Feb 28, 2011 at 13:47
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    The Example does not work anymore, you get a database error when accessing the website makemacwork.com/resize-disk-partitions.htm
    – Roalt
    Mar 30, 2011 at 9:28

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