How do I convert from Case-Insensitive to case-sensitive in 10.8 I just got a new (well refurbished) MacBook Pro running 10.8.3. I am a programmer, so I have need of a case-sensitive filesystem. It is fresh and I am reluctant to upgrade it or do much with it until I can change the partition to be case-sensitive.

To be sure, I ran "diskutil info disk0s2" on it. Under filesystem personality it says "Journaled HFS+". Which I understand to be the case-insensitive format.

I have done a little research and supposedly iPartition can do it, but I am reluctant to buy it because I think it can be done without spending money. Even if it is a more complicated method. And because I just got it, so I am not afraid to reinstall Mac OS X if need be. I would just need a way to do it without a disk.

So, what is the quickest and easiest way to make the partition case-sensitive?
I've run in to this before and the only solution I'm aware of is to reformat your file system. Here's what I suggest you do:


Boot off of your OSX install media and use Disk Utility to clone your OS image on to another drive.
Reformat your main drive with the file system you want
Restore the contents of your backed-up system to the main drive.


You could also go largely through Time Machine for this, but I'd recommend going straight at Disk Utility. TimeMachine refuses to restore from backups that have a different case-sensitivity setting.

Here's a random link to someone's article on cloning a drive with Disk Utility.