Admittedly there aren’t many peripherals that use Thunderbolt, or many Macs that have Thunderbolt ports, but as Apple gears up for a whole slew of new Thunderbolt-enabled computers, a bunch of new peripherals are also in the pipeline. And in order to tap that opportunity, Apple introduced a new Thunderbolt cable today, available in the online store for $49.

In the product description for the new cable, Apple talks about the Thunderbolt’s ability to transfer data using two channels of 10Gbit/s each, and how it lets you use peripherals like hard drives. But the $999 Promise Pegasus 4×1 TB RAID drive, also now available for sale in the Apple online store, is currently the cheapest way to start using Thunderbolt storage. Other Pegasus RAID arrays are available in configurations ranging from 6×1 TB to 6×2 TB, costing up to $2,000.

It’s no surprise that both the cable itself and the Pegasus drives have such a high starting price point. Thunderbolt always seemed destined to appeal to professional users first, since the new technology will require more time on the market and a wider reach before it can bring production costs down. Apple seems to be working on expanding the potential pool of Thunderbolt users, however, as reports suggest that we’ll see new Mac minis, Mac Pros and MacBook Airs with Thunderbolt in the very near future.

With all those Thunderbolt Macs around, the new cable will become even more useful, as it also provides users a simple way to establish a very high-speed connection between computers using Target Disk Mode. Plus, you can use the cable to connect a Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook Pro to the latest iMac in order to use the iMac’s screen as a second display. Those features alone might be worth $50 to some multi-Mac consumer households.

If you own Thunderbolt-equipped Mac, are you planning on getting one of these cables, or will you wait until there’s more third-party gear available to use it with?

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The new Hitachi offering joins the Seagate GoFlex Satellite  as yet another device that is trying to make external storage relevant to user who are increasingly using mobile devices to consume content. Like the GoFlex, the G-Connect offers 500 GB of storage, and the ability to simultaneously stream to multiple devices. The G-Connect offers some nice advantages over the GoFlex, however, like the ability to stream to up to five devices, instead of just three, and an Ethernet port that lets it plug into a wired Internet connection and act as a wireless access point. But it also carries a major drawback: it lacks an internal battery, so unlike the GoFlex, you’ll have to plug the G-Connect into a power source if you want to use it, which for some might limit its utility as a mobile support device. Still, when a power source is available, as they often are on trains, planes and coffee shops, it should greatly expand the media library available to your iOS devices.

When iOS 5 arrives, iPads and iPhones will finally be cut loose from their PC tethers. That will mean that users can depend on them as their only computing devices, if they wish. But owing to the limited local storage options on iOS devices, they might run up against space constraints when doing so. iCloud aims to help with some of that, by making music, apps and books available on-demand from Apple’s servers, so that you can delete them as needed when you’re running out of room, and grab them again when you need them. But that solution depends on relatively unfettered access to an active Internet connection. Users without mobile data plans for their devices, or those with caps like Verizon’s new tiered plans will have a harder time taking full advantage of a cloud computing future.

Devices like the G-Connect and the GoFlex could be just the start of a flood of supplemental hardware designed to provide a local alternative remote streaming for users who either don’t have the bandwidth to take advantage of the latter, or who’d rather own their content than rent access to it from content providers. External local wireless storage also offers more privacy, which is a selling point for some.

While I expect the general thrust of computing in general to continue to favor remote cloud options, I think the personal cloud stands a good chance of developing at a similar pace at the same time, albeit on a smaller scale. Physical storage is cheap and getting cheaper, while the same can’t necessarily be said for broadband access. As Apple and other device manufacturers move to make the cloud the centre of its universe, it’s only natural that a percentage of consumers will opt to find an alternative centre for their own gadgets that allows them to remain autonomous and possibly save money.

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Don’t replace the hard drive

The fans-gone-wild issue and the failed AHT warning is a result of the logic board losing communication with the sensor. Thermal sensors have been included in Macs for as long as I can remember to help the system adjust fan speed to maintain acceptable temperatures. If these sensors do not report any temperature information, the firmware will turn the fans up to full to prevent a core breach in the warp engines, and/or red-hot CPU’s flowing like molten slag all over your pretty blue logic board. It’s a precautionary measure to prevent an overheating problem. The AHT warning is there to tell you which sensor has failed so you can replace it.

What makes this sensor different is that it is integrated into the custom hard drive. A lot of the earlier thermal sensors were stick-on affairs that attached to the hard drive or other locations with tape. I presume that Apple asked manufacturers to bake them into the drives to reduce both additional component costs and assembly steps.

Wires from the thermal sensor are taped to this hard drive

Unfortunately, this change means repairing a failed hard drive out of warranty (I think hard drives are designed to fail just after AppleCare expires) means paying Apple to do it instead of a cheaper DIY solution. This also means you can’t upgrade your drives because Apple will only replace drives with the exact same part. Under their current policies, you simply cannot get a bigger hard drive (or replace it with a SSD) even if you were willing to pay Apple’s prices. You better order your new iMac just the way you want it, because it’s going to stay that way for a long, long time.

Even more concerning than the design change to force the use of genuine Apple replacement drives is the absolute travesty that Apple has allowed this design flaw of the iMac to continue for so long.

The iMac is the hardest piece of Apple kit to work on yourself on by a long shot. The Mac Pro is designed to be easily opened. MacBooks and MacBook Pros provide easy access to the hard drives and RAM. The new Mac mini has a twist off access panel. Even the old Mac minis are not that bad as long as you have the right putty knife. It’s certainly not as bad as the old iBook (about 50 screws to get at the hard drive!), but it’s the worst of the current Macs. I don’t even think most people need access to the other components inside the machine, but access to the hard drive is important. The old iMacs were designed so that you could remove the back and get quick access to the drives. The aluminum iMacs were designed to open from the front so that you have to remove the glass panel (it pulls off with suction cups) and the LCD screen behind it to get to the drives.

The front glass panel is removed with suction cups

The worst part is that you often put it all back together only to find a piece of hair or lint or a stray thumbprint on the back of the glass. Takes me straight back to the days when I ran a frame shop and would turn a framed photo back over after papering the back only to find a small piece of dust emerge from the dark suede mats, staring at me from under museum glass like a blazing signal fire warning of imminent customer dissatisfaction or framer’s rage. That glass on the front of the iMac is likely responsible for more referrals to Apple’s generous mental health programs than any other item that has ever sat on a Genius Bar.

It does make for a very pretty iMac though.

Which is, I suppose, the reason why Apple has kept roughly the same iMac design for so long (since 2007). Maybe the drive could be relocated from where it is now, smack dab in the center of the machine, out to the edge where it could be accessed with a removable panel. But you can’t add an access panel for the drives to the top or bottom because that has to be kept open for the convection cooling airflow to pull air in at the bottom and vent out the top. So maybe, the side opposite the optical drive. But that would mess up the unibody look of the iMac with no visible seams in the aluminum (just the RAM slot at the bottom). Okay, so maybe adding easy hard drive access is too much of a design sacrifice, but now even if you manage to get at the hard drive, you can’t replace it.

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A combination of factors are changing the dynamics of the storage industry as broadband adoption drives new services and makes it less important to store music, movies and other files on a PC’s hard drive. Thus, while solid state drives using flash memory are about 10 times more expensive on a per-megabyte basis, more and more laptops are incorporating them. And now that we have the ability to stream music and store files in the cloud, a huge hard drive on a laptop just isn’t as important. Plus, more and more consumers are opting for smaller, sleeker mobile computers and devices that don’t have room for bulky hard drives.

However, that same trend has led to a massive build-out of storage in the cloud by players ranging from Amazon to Apple, and while those data centers will have SSDs, they will still have plenty of cheaper storage in the form of hard drives. Additionally, faster broadband has led to the creation of services such as Google, Facebook and other web-based applications that require huge amounts of storage at cheap prices (you can’t pay top dollar if you’re selling ads for pennies). So in the new, low-margin, competitive market, consolidation makes sense.

Under the terms of the deal, Seagate will pay Samsung for its hard drive business while Samsung gets 9.6 percent stake in Seagate. Seagate will also supply Samsung with hard drives for its computers and consumer-electronics products, while Samsung will supply Seagate with flash memory for enterprise SSD products. With this deal, Seagate extends a partnership it already had with Samsung that helps it access flash memory for building out higher margin SSDs, while Samsung through its stake in Seagate gets to continue to ride the demand curve for spinning disks.

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Dead or on Life Support

It’s been a little over a month since the last Apple Media event. The aftershock in the tech industry from that has yet to be fully felt, and there are some additions to the casualties I listed in September.

If Apple and Facebook can work things out regarding Ping, the final nail in MySpace’s coffin may be struck. Some of the new features in iTunes, like the artwork viewer, make certain add-ons like Sophiestication’s CoverSutra a little less appealing. Rogue Amoeba is sitting on the fence waiting to see if it’ll be able to participate in the updates to iOS 4.2 regarding Apple’s new AirPlay. While competition is still healthy among GameCenter’s competing services, iAd is starting to pick up some steam as it continues to innovate in the smartphone advertising space.

Next in Line for Execution

That’s what happened last time around. Here’s a short list of what’s on the chopping block after yesterday’s revelations:

The End of Disks (and Discs, Too) — A Timeline

• The floppy drive was the first to go in 1998 when Apple released the iMac G3. Rather than pursue disk-based alternates like the Ultra High Density Floppy disk, Zip disks or an Imation drive, Apple opted for a USB port.
• In the last several releases of iLife, one of the original cornerstone software programs, iDVD, has not seen any new features or updates.
• Apple has also been very vocal in its reluctance to support Blu-ray.
• Earlier this year, the icon for iTunes was updated, removing the disc from the icon entirely.
• When the iPod lineup was refreshed this year, the only model not updated was the iPod Classic, the one with an HDD inside.
• Then, following the quarterly earnings call where Steve proclaimed Apple’s love of flash, Apple announced an update to a drive-less MacBook Air: a MacBook which already lacks a SuperDrive.

See the pattern? Hard drive manufacturers sure do.  Western Digital has warned investors that with the advent of the iPad and the decline in low-end notebooks, the hard drive market is slowing drastically.  The MacBook Air announcement couldn’t have helped matters much.

Online Software Version Trackers for Mac

As developers flocked to iOS, many OS X development efforts were left high and dry. There was a notable dearth of new titles on the market, and bundle programs like MacHeist started offering wholesale pricing to boost sluggish sales. App discovery, purchase, download, install, and update are what Apple sees as missing. Yet that’s exactly what I use MacUpdate for. We’ll have to see how quickly developers adapt to Apple’s Mac App Store, and also what value-add sites like MacUpdate and CNET’s Downloads.com (formerly Version Tracker) can offer in order to stay afloat.

Apple Desktop Widgets

This one isn’t quite as clear as it could be. It appears as if iOS apps or something like an iOS app could run in some capacity on OS X. Changing the paradigm and allowing for multi-touch gestures and full screen apps could spell the eventual end of dashboard widgets as we know them today on OS X.

There’s a good reason everyone pays attention to Apple when they decide to speak to the media. Apple’s successes spell success for other companies as well. Samsung, a major flash supplier, no doubt benefits. And LG, supplier of the iPhone’s Retina Display, makes out pretty well. But not everyone comes away a winner when Steve Jobs opens his mouth. For some businesses, in fact, Apple’s idea of progress marks the end of the line.

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Checking Your Current State of Affairs

First, go to the Finder, right-click on your hard drive, and select “Get Info.” Under the General heading, you’ll find the details on your drive’s Capacity, Available, and Used space. It seems like I’m always shocked at how low that Available space number is, despite my best efforts to keep my Mac’s storage well-groomed. Media files (music, movies, photos) tend to be the main culprit, but Applications and other documents and support files may be to blame as well. The key is in identifying exactly what is taking up that space before you take any sort of action.

Disk Visualization

Disk visualizers are the way to go. They give you an easy way of looking at which folders contain the heavyweight files that you may or may not need (or can at least backup to an external drive if your hard drive space is at a premium). Grand Perspective and Disk Inventory X are somewhat old-school in their visuals, but are free. JDiskReport is a long time favorite of mine (also free) but in 10.6, it requires Rosetta to be installed as it’s not a Universal app for OS X. (The OS installs Rosetta for you, but if you don’t want extra background chaff, this may be a deal breaker for you.) OmniDiskSweeper is also free, but doesn’t have much in the way of visuals. WhatSize has been around for a while, and has a nice user interface and some great features to remove files once they’ve been found. It’ll set you back $12.99. Then there’s DaisyDisk, which looks stunning and works very nicely, although doesn’t have all the nice-to-have removal features. DaisyDisk goes for $19.95

Getting Rid of the Extras

As an extra tip, there are some system type files that are notorious for taking up lots of unnecessary space for many users, a major one being language packs. OS X ships with support for many different languages. There are some solutions out there for easily getting rid of those language packs to reclaim some storage space — just make sure you read the fine print so you don’t break anything!

Printer drivers are another thing that OS X comes loaded-down with. The premise is noble — make it easy for Mac users to use nearly any printer, but that convenience comes at a cost. If you regularly use only a couple of different printers, you may want to look into removing the dead weight drivers.

And lastly, a tip for iPhone/iPod/iPad users: iTunes keeps full backups of your iDevice stored within iTunes. I discovered recently that as I’ve upgraded my iPhone hardware over the years, my number of backups as grown, and taken up several extra gigabytes of storage. It’s probably worth curating those out-of-date backups while you’re at it.

Maintenance

Great! By now you’ve hopefully identified many of the files that are eating up space on your precious hard drive. You’ve either determined them deletable, necessary, or candidates for backup. So how do you maintain the space that you’ve reclaimed and/or have left? Unfortunately there’s no all-encompassing solution (that I’ve found yet), but the following are some applications which offer good solutions for keeping on top of your hard drive using maintenance practices.

Hazel (which we’ve written about plenty) can watch folders for you and perform intricate actions that you decide upon and build based on your criteria, and costs $21.95 — well worth it! AppZapper ($21.95) is the uninstaller that OS X lacks. CleanMyMac is a well-rounded system maintenance solution for cleaning out unused system caches, and other bloat-type files that build up over time. It costs $14.95 for six months or $29.95 for lifetime use. A smallish shareware utility called Singular identifies duplicate files on your hard drive. It was updated recently, but the developer’s main website is currently down, and I don’t recall the cost. Lastly is Squeeze. It doesn’t remove files like the rest, but it does work on compressing your drive’s files to save space. It’s sort of magical, and costs $12.95.

Bloated hard drives — whether from your own files, or the system’s — can impact the performance of your system. Using these tools to maintain that available space will not only help keep your Mac running well, but also keep you informed of the space you have, so you’re not caught by surprise when you run low on storage. Good luck waging war on your hard drive!

I’ll go through how to open the iMac up, just enough to replace the hard drive. There is risk involved with this but if you take your time, you should be just fine. If you want to transfer your data to the new drive before you begin, I recommend using a USB drive adapter such as this one by Apricorn and Carbon Copy Cloner.

Parts Needed

Suction cups: I am using suction cups from our server room floating floor but you can use any kind of suction cups you find at your local store.

Phillips Screwdriver: This is to remove the memory door on the bottom.

T8 Torx Screwdriver: The internal screws require this bit.

Canned Air: This is to remove any dust that may settle on the screen before you reassemble it.

Disassembly

1. The glass is held in by magnets so use your suction cups to pull the glass off the iMac.
   
   
2. Remove the memory door on the bottom of the iMac.
   
3. Remove the Torx screws that are holding the metal case on.
   
4. Pull the metal case off by starting at the top. You will see a connection by the iSight that you need to disconnect. After that, the case will slide right off.
   
5. Now the remove the screws on the sides of the actual LCD screen.
   
6. Gently rock the LCD screen forward from the top and you will see the hard drive behind it. You may need to disconnect the two wires running to the LCD.
   
7. Pull on the back plastic bar  on the left side and it will swing out.
   
8. Remove the heat sensor by pulling off the foam and sensor carefully. Set the foam aside so we can use it to re-attach the sensor to the new drive.
   
9. The drive is ready to be come out by rocking the top out of the frame and then pulling it up.
   
10. Once out, we need to transfer the Torx screws to the new drive.
    

To reassemble, just follow the same steps in reverse. Go slowly and don’t force anything. All the pieces should slide back together without much effort. Some people like to take the LCD screen all the way off and that’s fine. You will need a T7 bit to disconnect the LCD screen from the board and just remember where each connector goes. Before you put the glass back on, use some canned air to blow off any dusk that may have settled on the LCD screen.

On the support page created to describe the problem and the resulting warranty extension, Apple doesn’t mention which brand of hard drives are affected by name, which could mean that the problem doesn’t lie with the hard drives themselves, but with some other system components. Another indication that this is indeed the case is that all capacities of hard drive are also affected.

If you’re wondering whether or not you have an affected unit (Apple says only a “small percentage” of users will experience problems), it’s very easy to identify. Your MacBook will just stop working altogether, and any attempts to boot it will result in a screen that displays a folder icon with a question mark over top of it, as in the image below. As someone who’s seen this screen many times while fixing up old PowerBooks, I can tell you it isn’t a heartening experience.

Apple describes what you should do if you’re greeted with such a screen:

Please take your MacBook to the Apple representative most convenient for you:

• Apple Authorized Service Provider – Find one here.
• Apple Retail Store – Set up an appointment with a Genius.

If Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider confirms that your hard drive is affected, Apple will replace it with a new hard drive. You will need to have the original OS installation discs that were shipped with your product in order to re-install your operating system, other applications, and any backed up data.

If you need assistance finding the best service option in your area, you may contact Apple Technical Support for more information.

It sounds like any data you may have stored on the drive will be irrevocably lost if this does happen to you, so if you have one of the affected models and you haven’t yet implemented any kind of backup system, you should probably consider doing so.

If your machine has already had this problem, and you’ve already paid out of pocket to get it fixed or replace your drive, you can contact Apple Technical Support and inquire about a reimbursement process. No word on whether that extends to at home HD replacements, which is how I would’ve tried to solve the problem, but if you haven’t kept your old faulty drive, I highly doubt it would. Mostly I expect this will apply when people have taken their machines through official Apple repair channels to correct the problem.

The extension period covers affected Macs three years from the date of purchase, for this specific problem alone, or until August 15, 2010, whichever comes last, so you still have about six months in which your HD can fail and you’ll still be covered. It may seem like an arbitrary window, but Apple does include a caveat that it will be evaluating the repair need on an ongoing basis and extend that deadline if circumstances require.

Anyone experienced the symptoms Apple is describing with this model MacBook?

The Stora looks almost like an old-fashioned safe, with its small, squat design. Only the flashing lights on the front (indicating power and connectivity) give it away as a high-tech alternative. And high-tech it is: The Stora packs in a 1TB drive, and has a bay for adding another, should you need more space. It supports gigabit Ethernet, offers a USB 2.0 port, features a built-in iTunes server, and is DLNA certified, so it can stream media to compatible gear. It’s also remotely accessible from the web, allowing you to access multimedia files from within its web-based interface.

Setup is pretty simple: You connect the included Ethernet cord to the drive and your router, plug in the AC adapter, and turn it on. Netgear includes a CD with the Stora Desktop software; installing this was a bit time-consuming — the CD took awhile to run — but not complicated.

And the included software was worth the wait, as the Flash-based application is slick. Netgear says the Stora is designed for “first-time users who don’t want to learn server administration as a hobby,” and the software’s interface goes a long way toward that end. It features an attractive black and purple design, with appealing, easy-to-identify icons. Folders are automatically created for family sharing, as are a private set of folders for each user. Each of these libraries contains folders for documents, music, photos and videos, though these can be renamed or deleted and new folders can be added.

My only complaint about the application is that its graphic-heavy interface means uploading files takes a few more clicks than it might otherwise. If you were accessing the Stora through the plain-old Windows Explorer interface, you could just drag a file right to the desired folder on the Stora and transfer it with one click (and you can access the Stora via Windows Explorer, if you’d rather). To transfer the same file in the Stora Desktop app, you have to click on the folder, select “upload” from the drop-down menu, and then a new pop-up window appears. Here, you can either navigate to the file you want to add, or you can select the “Drag and Drop” option, which allows you to drag your file to the new window.

This is a minor annoyance, though, and it’s one that I quickly forgot about when I began exploring the rest of the app’s features. You can easily create a slide show of the photos you’ve uploaded, or create an album and upload it to a site like Facebook.

But where things get more interesting is when you begin exploring the embedded media player. Stora’s software has its own multimedia player, so you can play back music and video files from within the app. Just click on the file you want to view, or the playlist you want to listen to, and a new pop-up window with the player appears. It’s remarkably simple, and you don’t need to launch any external applications…unless your file format isn’t supported by the player. And the file format support could be better. Right now, the Stora player supports just a handful of formats (MP3 audio files, and MPEG-4, MOV, and FLV video files).

Sharing content is another strong point for the Stora. To access your content remotely, you just point your browser to mystora.com, and you can quickly navigate to your device. The web-based interface is nearly identical to the Stora Desktop app, so right away, you’re in familiar territory. You can set up shares to send to family and friends who might want to view your content, too.

Netgear offers a premium Stora service that, for $20 a year (after a free 30-day trial), offers some added remote access features. For one, you can play your media files over the web, using the same embedded media player. In my tests, performance was very good; video looked great when accessed remotely. The Stora premium service allows you to download files remotely, too, so you can access them from the computer itself if your file format isn’t supported by the embedded player.

We all know that we should be backing up our files for safe keeping. Thanks to Stora, securing your files doesn’t have to feel like work.

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I’ve been partitioning my hard drives since my very first Mac — a used Mac Plus back in 1992. Yes, I divided the Plus’s commodious 20MB external SCSI HD into two partitions so I could boot either System 6 (for speed) or System 7 (for Internet support).

I’m not as big an aficionado of partitioning as I once was, although all of my Macs since the Plus have had partitioned hard drives, including the unibody MacBook I’m typing this on, which has two HD partitions. That’s down from the four or five I used to configure back in the days of PowerBooks and OS 9.

Reasons to Partition

Partitioning means formatting the hard drive with two or more virtual volumes, which appear on your Desktop and function as if they were separate drives. I have a number of reasons for using multiple partitions.

• I like to be at least potentially able to install two different bootable operating systems on the same Mac — for instance, I have both OS X 10.5.8 Leopard and OS X 10.4.11 Tiger installed on my old G4 PowerBook (plus OS 9.2 to support Classic Mode in Tiger). Installing multiple boot systems makes version upgrades less of a dice-roll or leap of faith. Retaining a known-reliable older system installed is good insurance against disrupted work flow if the upgrade doesn’t go as smoothly as hoped. Also you may have favorite apps that aren’t supported by the latest OS version, of do a lot of testing of beta and/or alpha software, which has the potential to bollix things up.
• Troubleshooting is easier if you have two bootable partitions. For instance, you can usually run diagnostic and repair utilities from one partition on another, which goes much faster than booting from a CD or DVD, and diagnostically if a problem goes away when booted from a different system install, it’s more likely a software issue.
• By dividing up critical data, there’s less likelihood of catastrophic data loss due to file corruption. For example, a partition used strictly for document storage is unlikely to be affected by a serious system crash. Also if you have files that you want sharable without hassle among multiple users or across a network, you can create a partition volume for them with “Group” and/or “Others” read or read and write access.
• Partitioned drives make it easier to find particular files if you always store certain types of files on particular volumes.

Boot Camp Requires Partitioning

• If you’re running Boot Camp or one of the third-party virtualization solutions for Windows support, having Windows installed on a separate drive partition is a tidier way to proceed. In fact, Apple’s Boot Camp obliges you to have two (but no more) partitions. Boot Camp Assistant (OS X 10.5 Leopard and newer) automatically creates a discrete FAT 32, NT, or NTFS formatted Windows partition, but an important caveat is that Boot Camp Assistant doesn’t work on already partitioned disks, so with Boot Camp you’re limited to two partitions.
• Since OS X supports both the Apple HFS+ file system and the standard Unix UFS file system, creating a UFS-based partition will allow the drive to be accessed by Unix systems over a network.

Downsides to Partitioning

Some folks tout using a partition for file backups, a practice I’m less enthusiastic about as it will be no help if the hard drive itself fails.

Other potential disadvantages of partitioning are that as smaller volumes fill up, fragmentation can increase, there will be less free space for swap files when running applications that depend a lot on virtual memory, and partitioned drives are more complex to restore after serious crashes.

As I mentioned above, while I still partition, I don’t go as ape with it as I used to, partly because there are fewer advantages to multiple partitions with OS X’s excellent support for multiple users and today’s drive formatting schemes than there were back in Classic Mac OS and HFS formatting days, and partly because hard drives are so much bigger and faster than they used to be (plus there’s the two-partition Boot Camp limitation, if that applies).

The most convenient time to partition your hard drive is when you first set up the Mac, although these days you can partition and change partition sizes without erasing and re-initializing the drive using OS X Disk Utility or third-party partitioning software like Prosoft Engineering’s $99 Drive Genius 2 or Coriolis System’s $44.95 iPartition.

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