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My external hard drive ExtDisk is set up as follows (output from diskutil list):

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Foo                     1.0 TB     disk2s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Foo2                    50.0 GB    disk2s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS DELETE_ME               100.0 GB   disk2s8
   5:                  Apple_HFS Foo3                    600.0 GB   disk2s4
   6:                  Apple_HFS Foo4                    150.0 GB   disk2s5
   7:                  Apple_HFS MERGE_HERE              100.0 GB   disk2s6

I'm trying to take the disk space currently allocated to DELETE_ME and add it to MERGE_HERE, deleting DELETE_ME in the process. Disk Utility, representing this list in pie chart format, automatically adds freed space from a partition to the previous partition on the list — in this case, that would mean merging DELETE_ME into Foo2 instead of MERGE_HERE.

I could manually move the data from Foo2 to DELETE_ME, resize, and repeat, working my way through the list until I move the free space adjacent to and merged with MERGE_HERE, but that's incredibly time-consuming.

Is there a way to do this, if not with Disk Utility then with Terminal? MacOS is running Catalina 10.15.7, and Terminal is running zsh. My external disk is partitioned with GUID.

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  • If you are willing to accept a command line solution, then you probably should have included the output from diskutil list. – David Anderson Oct 22 '20 at 15:33
  • @DavidAnderson Done. – DonielF Oct 22 '20 at 16:11
  • Since resizing a HFS partition does not change where the partition starts, I do not understand what would be gained by manually moving the data from Foo2 to DELETE_ME. – David Anderson Oct 23 '20 at 6:21
  • @DavidAnderson If the free space is in Foo I can easily merge Foo into MERGE_HERE. By manually reshuffling the data and resizing I can move all the extra free space into Foo and delete that instead of DELETE_ME. – DonielF Oct 23 '20 at 16:23
  • You are aware that the other Apple_HFS partitions do not move, when a partition is deleted or resize to create free space, Also, the diskutil list command does not show where this free space between partitions exists. You need to use the gpt command or a third party command such as driveinfo, if you what to see where the free space between partitions resides. – David Anderson Oct 23 '20 at 19:24

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