Apr 16, 2012 Partitioning a Mac hard drive, stey by step. Step 1: Open Finder (either through Spotlight or the icon in the dock). Step 3: Scroll down and find a folder named Utilities. Double-click on it. Step 4: Once in the folder, you'll see an application named Disk Utility, double-click on it. To partition a hard drive in Windows means to section off a part of it and make that part available to the operating system.Most of the time, the 'part' of the hard drive is the entire usable space, but creating multiple partitions on a hard drive is also possible so that you can store backup files in one partition, movies in another, etc.
- How To Partition Mac Hard Drive
- Access Mac Drive From Windows
- Manual Partition Mac Hard Drive To Run Windows Free
- Read Mac Hard Drive On Windows 10
How to do External Hard Drive Partition on Windows Yes, you can partition your hard drive into a couple of logical units you desire. Partitioning your hard disk, you reduce the chances of your vital data being corrupted, thus separate data from operating system. Optional Formatting and Partitioning. Your Backup Plus Desktop is formatted as NTFS for compatibility with Windows out of the box. Therfore, you can connect Backup Plus Desktop to a Windows PC without formatting the hard drive. However, NTFS is not fully compatible with Mac computers.
Partitioning a disk divides it into individual sections. You may need to partition a disk if you want to install multiple operating systems or if you need to change the device’s format.
How you partition a disk depends on the file format it uses.
If you’re partitioning your internal physical disk because you want to install Windows, use Boot Camp Assistant.
Important: Do not use Disk Utility to remove a partition that was created using Boot Camp Assistant. Use Boot Camp Assistant to remove the partition from your Mac.
WARNING: To prevent the loss of data on your Fusion Drive, don’t connect it to a Mac that’s using a version of OS X earlier than 10.8.5. See the Apple Support article Only connect OS X Mavericks Fusion drives to OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.5 or later.
Add a volume to an APFS container
Apple File System (APFS) allocates disk space on demand; however, you can manually manage APFS volume allocation if required.
Important: As a precaution, it’s best to back up your data before creating new partitions on your device.
In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose View > Show All Devices.
Select an existing APFS volume in the sidebar, then click the Add Volume button .
Enter a name for the new APFS volume.
Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose a file system format.
If you want to manually manage APFS volume allocation, click Size Options and enter values in the fields:
Reserve Size: The optional reserve size ensures that the amount of storage will remain available for this volume.
Quota Size: The optional quota size limits how much storage the volume can allocate.
When you’re done, click OK.
Click Add, then click Done.
Add a partition to a device formatted as Mac OS Extended, MS-DOS (FAT), or ExFAT
Important: As a precaution, it’s best to back up your data before creating new partitions on your device.
In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose View > Show All Devices.
Select the device in the sidebar, then click the Partition button .
Internal storage devices appear below the Internal section in the sidebar. External devices appear below the External section in the sidebar.
When you select a volume that already has data on it, the pie chart shows a shaded area representing the amount of data on the volume and an unshaded area representing the amount of free space available for another volume. Disk Utility also reports whether the volume can be removed or resized.
If you see a small volume with an asterisk, the partition is smaller than can be represented at the correct scale in the chart.
Click the Add button .
Click each volume in the pie chart on the left, then enter a name for it.
For MS-DOS (FAT) and ExFAT volumes, the maximum length for the volume name is 11 characters.
Enter the size or drag the divider to increase or decrease the size of each volume.
For each volume, click the Format pop-up menu, then choose a file system format.
Click Apply, then click Partition.
Click Show Details to view the step-by-step process of creating a new volume.
When Disk Utility is finished creating the volumes, click Done.
After you partition a storage device, an icon for each volume appears in both the Disk Utility sidebar and the Finder sidebar.
Enlarge a partition formatted as Mac OS Extended, MS-DOS (FAT), or ExFAT
If you have multiple volumes formatted as Mac OS Extended, MS-DOS (FAT), or ExFAT on a device and one of them is running out of space, you may be able to enlarge it without losing any of the files on it.
How To Partition Mac Hard Drive
To enlarge a volume, you must delete the volume that comes after it on the device, then move the end point of the volume you want to enlarge into the freed space. You can’t enlarge the last volume on a device.
WARNING: When you delete a volume, all data on it is erased. Be sure to back up your data before you begin.
In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose View > Show All Devices.
In the sidebar, select the device that contains the volume you want to enlarge, then click the Partition button .
In the pie chart on the left, select the volume you want to remove, then click the Remove button .
Click Apply.
The volume is removed, reformatted, and all free space is assigned to the previous volume.
Click Done.
I recently bought a Seagate for Mac 1 TB external hard drive. When I connect to my MacBook through the FireWire, it works fine, but I also have media on my Dell laptop which is running Windows Vista. When I connect the hard drive to that laptop using the USB cable, Windows doesn't recognize it. What am I doing wrong?
Excellll6 Answers
Since you have a Seagate drive you are in luck!
Seagate has free drivers available to download for:
Both are commercial products made by Paragon. See their homepages for:
I'm not affiliated with Paragon. I just bought a Seagate drive to use on a Mac I just acquired though I've always had Windows machines. I've given them both a quick test and they seem to work well, but I haven't put them to extensive use this far.
hippietrailhippietrailAccess Mac Drive From Windows
If you open the Disk Utility application on your Mac with the disk connected, you should be able to see it in the list of disks on the left hand column of the Disk Utility window.
If you click on the the partition (i.e. the name you see in your file tree when the disk mounts under OS X) what do you see for the Format at the bottom of the window?
If it is Mac OS Extended or a something similar then your disk is using the HFS+ file system, which is the default for OS X. This file system type is not natively supported by Windows, which is why the disk will not mount when you plug it into your laptop.
You have a couple of options:
Reformat the disk to
FAT32, which (as suggested by Michael Sturm) is the lowest common denominator in file systems between OS X and Windows. In addition to limitation to file sizes < 4 GB, you also lose a lot of nice features onHFS+such as permissions and journalling.Create a
FAT32partition on the disk along side the existingHFS+partition. This could be used to move data between the Mac and the Windows machine, but would suffer from all the sameFAT32issues mentioned above.Look at additional software which will allow for either
NTFSorHFS+to be read on OS X and Windows respectively. On the Mac, this can be accomplished using add-ons related to the MacFuse project. You should choose the filesystem that you plan on using most frequently so that it is as fast as possible and then reformat the disk accordingly. Using additional software like this will probably create a performance hit, but how noticeable it is depends on your usage pattern.
Its is probably the format of the drive. In general, Macs will read Windows formatted drives (FAT and, I believe NTFS), but Windows doesn't recognize Mac formatted drives (HFS+).
KeithBKeithBDepends on the filesystem type and partitioning scheme whether it'll work on both. If the hard drive were formatted for HFS it would not show up on the Windows Computer. If the Partition Scheme were Apple Partition Map, it would also not show up.
For maximum compatibility, back up everything from the external hard drive onto your Mac. Open Disk Utility, select the external hard drive and go to Partition. Under Volume Scheme, choose 1 Partition, then click Options. Choose Master Boot Record. Click Ok. Then choose MSDOS under the Format menu. Then click Apply.
Your hard drive should work on either computer at that point, as well as others you may try to use it on.
This is most likely related to the File System type that the drive was formatted with:
- Windows cannot use HFS+ (the Mac file system).
- Mac can not use NTFS (as far as I know), and the lowest common denominator -
- FAT32 - is not available as an option in the Windows Format Dialog (although I think there are tools to use it as it supports 2 TB Partitions).
File Size on FAT32 is limited to 4 GB though, disqualifying it for video applications.
Michael Stum♦Michael StumIf you want something that both machines / OSes can read a write, and that can act as an emergency boot drive for either machine, do this:
Manual Partition Mac Hard Drive To Run Windows Free
- Reformat the drive, using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) as the low-level partition table format. Avoid Master Boot Record, which Intel Macs can't boot from. Also avoid Apple Partition Map, which Windows machines would have no clue about.
- Give the drive one HFS+J (Mac OS Extended, Journaled) partition large enough to install Mac OS X onto (10GB+). This volume format accommodates Mac OS X and Mac files the best.
- Give the drive one FAT32 (MS-DOS) partition, which both Mac OS X and Windows can read and write. This is a good place to put files that you want both Mac and Windows to have read/write access to. The FAT volume format is showing its age, but a huge variety of OSes know how to work with it.
- If you want the drive to have a volume that's more optimal for Windows than FAT, give it an NTFS partition as well. This would be a good volume to install Windows onto, but beware that Mac OS X only has read-only support for NTFS built-in. If you want your Mac to be able to write to this partition, you'll need third-party software to enable this on Mac OS X.