Partitioning your hard drive can be a frustrating and daunting task. However, once you understand how the process works, it’s a lot less scary. So why would you want to partition a drive? Back when I was in college, like many other students, I had a MacBook Pro for ease of use and its minimalist aesthetic. I didn’t think about the fact that some applications that I needed for school were not compatible on Mac. That is when I thought about partitioning my drive so that I could run Windows on Mac. In addition, I had an external hard drive that I also wanted to be able to use with both OS X and Windows.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps for partitioning internal and external hard drives on a Mac. Before you start, you should make sure to backup your entire Mac computer using Time Machine. Even if you don’t mess anything up, the chances are good that the OS will screw up and break your system. Partition External Drive If you have a large external hard drive, you can easily partition it so that the entire drive gets utilized.
I was using a 1.5 TB external drive with my Mac, but never really used more than 1/4 of the space. Instead, here’s how I ended up partitioning my drive, which ended up making it much more useful:. 33%: Mac (Extra Storage) – 500GB. 33%: Mac (Time Machine Backup) – 500GB.
Mac OSX users can read but not write to an NTFS partition. To write to the partition with a Macintosh, the Seagate external hard drive requires preparation with Macintosh Disk Utility, while Windows Disk Management is used to create partitions in the Windows operating system environment.
33%: Windows (Extra Storage and Backup can go on same partition) – 500GB As you can see, each partition can have its own file format. If you have an even larger drive, you can create even more partitions for other operating systems like Linux, etc. To partition the drive, go to Spotlight at the top of your MacBook Screen (Notification Bar) and type in Disk Utility. On the left hand side, navigate to the tab that says EXTERNAL.
Yours will look a little bit different than mine. Under the External heading on the left hand side, you should have one hard drive instead of 3 (I have already partitioned mine). Navigate to that external hard drive and partition it according to your needs. NOTE: If your external hard drive is not formatted for the Mac operating system, you may first need to Initialize it and then Erase it.
It’s very easy:. Under the external tab on the left side, select the drive you want to use. Then select the Erase option at the top. Once there, give it a name and format it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). For the Scheme, you can pick from GUID, MBR or Apple.
If you’re only using the drive for storage, then it doesn’t really matter which one you pick. However, if you plan to boot from the drive, you should pick MBR for Windows and Linux and GUID for OS X. If you plan to use the drive for Boot Camp, you should also pick GUID. Note that you can also click on Security Options and choose from different levels of security. By default, OS X will use the fastest method, which not does securely erase the drive. If you move the slider to Most Secure, it will meet the DOD standard for erasing data by overwriting the data 7 times.
This will prevent anyone or any software from recovering any previously written data from the drive. OS X may ask you if you want to use the drive for Time Machine backups, but you should choose Decide Later unless you want to use the entire drive for the backups. Now you’re ready to partition the external drive! Go to the top where it has the options: First Aid, Partition, Erase, Restore, Mount, etc. Select Partition and create the partitions based on your specific needs.
In my case, I chose a size of 500 GB, which is one-third of the drive. Select how you would like to partition the drive (refer back to my percentages, as that’s what I have used in the screenshots here), select Apply and then click Partition. After this, it will take a few minutes to partition, so be patient!
When completed should see the green check mark next to your drive and it should say Operation Successful. Now select Done and you’re done with the first partition.
Now to partition the rest of the space, you will click on Untitled under External and then click on Partition again. Give the partition a name, pick a size and choose the format. Since this is going to be for Windows storage, I chose MS-DOS (FAT). You can also choose exFAT if you like as that is compatible with both Windows and Mac.
![Drive Drive](https://images.pcworld.com/images/article/2012/02/ms_dos_fat_osx-11325444.jpg)
Partition Internal Drive Partitioning an internal hard drive is pretty much the same in terms of the procedure you have to follow, but it’s a little bit different in how it gets implemented. Since you already have OS X installed on your internal drive, when you click Partition and choose a size, you’ll notice that you can’t create a partition that is smaller than the amount of space already used on the drive. My internal drive was already using 359GB of space, so when I typed in 200GB, it automatically changed it to 359GB and put up a message stating that the first volume cannot be removed and the volume could not be split because the resulting volumes would be too small.
So if you want to create an additional partition, the first thing is to create a partition that will include OS X and give you some additional space for installing programs, etc. Below, I left the name as Macintosh HD and made the partition 500GB. That means the partition where OS X is installed with have about 140GB of breathing room for extra data. Basically, we are just shrinking the original partition, which took up the entire disk to something smaller. Then we will partition the free space as we like. As you can see, I have made the original partition 500GB instead of 1TB, which frees up 500GB on the disk for creating other partitions.
As with the external hard drive, once the partition has been created, click on Untitled, but this time under the Internal heading and click on Partition. That’s basically all there is to partitioning drives in OS X. Hopefully, it worked for you.
Looking to share an external hard drive between a Mac and PC? The best way to do it is with a drive formatted as FAT32. Though this format has some limitations, it enjoys nearly universal support from active platforms, including Mac and Windows operating systems, and many gaming and Linux OSs.
The chief drawbacks of FAT32 involve file and partition size limitations. FAT32 imposes a size limit of 4GB on single files. So if you work with bulky video clips, for example, adopting FAT32 may not be a good idea.
When formatting partitions, Windows 7's Disk Management utility won't let you create one that's larger than 32GB, whereas Mac OS X Lion can create partitions as large as 2TB using its Disk Utility application. Finally, Mac OS X's Time Machine backup utility won't work with FAT32. Windows prefers to use NTFS (which stands for New Technology File System, though it has been around for nearly 20 years now). Macs running Snow Leopard or Lion can read from drives formatted as NTFS, but they can't write to such drives unless you install a third-party driver or muck about in the Terminal.
Conversely, Windows 7 can't read and write to drives formatted as HFS+-also known as Mac OS Extended (journaled)-unless you install third-party software. Formatting From a Mac To format a drive as FAT32 from a Mac, follow these simple steps.
Set up your drive following the manufacturer's instructions. Connect the power supply (if necessary), connect to the Mac via USB or FireWire, and turn on the drive. The drive should automatically mount on your Mac's desktop (if the finder preferences are set to show external drives). If the drive is not formatted, you may get a message saying that the drive is unreadable by Mac OS X and asking you whether you want to format it via Disk Utility. We're going to do this anyway, so open Disk Utility from the prompt or by navigating to /Applications/Utilities. Select MS-DOS (FAT) as the format.
Mac OS X won't let you create a FAT32 partition larger than 2TB; so if your drive is larger than that, you'll need to divide the available drive capacity into multiple partitions. You can format the remaining space as a second FAT32 partition or as an HFS+ partition, or you can leave it as unallocated space.
To create a new partition, click the drive in the list on the left side of the Disk Utility menu. Click the Partition button in Disk Utility's main window. By default, Mac OS X will use the GUID partition table to format the drive. You can use this and still share FAT32 volumes with a PC, but if you'll primarily be using the drive with Windows, and if the full capacity of the drive doesn't exceed 2TB, the wiser course is to wipe the drive and then use Windows' Master Boot Record (MBR) partition scheme. Establishing the partition layout. Click the Partition Layout drop-down menu in Disk Utility, and select the number of partitions you want to create. By default, Disk Utility will divide the available space in half.
You can resize the partitions by clicking the line between the partitions and dragging it up or down to increase or decrease the capacity of one or the other side. Click on whichever partition segment you want to format as FAT32.
Type a name for that partition in the Name field and choose the FAT32 option from the Format drop-down menu. Once everything is arranged as you want it, click apply. A progress bar will appear at the bottom right of the window as Disk Utility creates the requested partitions. Once it finishes creating them, you can move the drive between Macs and Windows PCs, and move files back and forth easily.
Formatting From a PC Select your hard drive, and choose 'Convert to MBR Disk'.Here's how to create a FAT32 partition from a Windows 7 PC. Open the Disk Management utility. To do so, select Start, Control Panel, System and Security, Create and format hard disk partitions. Alternatively, press the Start button and start typing partitions.
Find the drive you'd like to format; in my case, it was Disk 5. Click the disk number, and select Convert to MBR Disk ('MBR' stands for 'Master Boot Record').
Right-click the unallocated segment in the next field over, select New Simple Volume, and click Next when the wizard launches. Change the value in the Simple Volume size field to 32,768MB or less-it needs to be under 32GB, to satisfy the format's file limit. Assign a drive letter, and click Next. Formatting the partition. Choose the drive letter to be assigned and click Next. Select FAT32 from the File System drop down menu, label the volume however you like, check the box next to Perform a quick format, and click Next.
The resulting window tells you that you have successfully completed creating the volume. Click Finish and you're ready to go.