When you get a new PC or laptop, you may want to partition your hard drive into two or more drives. This allows you to better organize your data and is also useful if you want to install another operating system. Partitioning a drive in macOS is relatively simple and can be done via Disk Utility.

What Is a Partition?

Partitioning a hard drive means splitting the drive into separate, usable standalone systems. For example, you may choose to create two partitions on an external hard disk – one for backing up your Mac and the other for your normal data storage. Similarly, you may choose to use two partitions for installing two different operating systems.

How to Partition a Disk in macOS

To partition any disk in macOS, follow the steps below:

  1. Connect the drive you want to partition to your Mac.

  2. Open Disk Utility, either by using Spotlight or by navigating to “Finder -> Applications -> Utilities.”

  3. From the left pane, select the drive you’d like to partition. In the pop-up menu, choose Partition.

  4. Click on the Partition tab, and then click on the “+” sign to add a new partition.

  5. Change the size of the partition you’re creating, either by dragging the resize handles or entering a size.

  6. Name the partition and specify which file system you’d like to use. If you’re partitioning an internal Mac drive, we’d suggest you use AFPS if you’re running macOS 10.13 or later and Mac OS Extended if you’re using macOS 10.12 or older.

If you’re using an external disk that you’ll also be using with other operating systems such as Windows, select MS-DOS (FAT).

  1. Click Apply to create the partition. Disk Utility will check the disk and make the changes, which can take up to several minutes.

You can now choose to either install Windows or another operating system on your newly created partition or use it for your normal data storage needs. If you ever need to change the storage allocation size for a partition, you can do so from the same menu.

Shujaa Imran is MakeTechEasier’s resident Mac tutorial writer. He’s currently training to follow his other passion become a commercial pilot. You can check his content out on Youtube

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