Partitioning External Hard Drive

Dear Forums
I want to partition my external hard drive into 3 sections:
1: Mac Only for video editing/backup etc (HFS+?)
2: PC for video editing (NTFS?)
3: Both MAC & PC to transfer music and photos (FAT32?)
I have recently made the switch to Mac and purchased a 1Tb external hard drive. It is currently formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
How do I go about partitioning the drive?
Any help gratefully received.

Hi, welcome to the forums and Macs.
If you're having difficulty with Disk Utility's instructions, try these:
Most disks come with various things on them that you don't need. So even if the drive says "Mac Ready" or the like, you should erase and format it with the Disk Utility app (in your Applications/Utilities folder):
A. When Disk Utility starts, select the new drive in the sidebar (the line with the size and make/ID).
B. Select the Erase tab, then confirm. This will erase the entire disk. (If you want, you can select +Security Options,+ then +Zero-Out Data+ to physically erase the entire disk by writing over everything. This will take quite a while, and shouldn't be necessary.)
C. Select the Partition tab, then set the number of partitions from the drop down menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.)
D. Click Options, then choose either GUID (for Intel Macs), or +Apple Partition Map+ (for PPC Macs)
E. For each partition, click on it (it will then be outlined in blue), then supply a name (this is the name that will appear on your desktop and/or Finder sidebar) and size (either by typing in the box or dragging the dividers), and be sure the format type is +Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)+ Don't use any of the other options unless you're sure you need to.
F. When you've got everything the way you want it, click Apply and wait until the process has completed.
I am wondering just what you mean by "video editing/backup." If you're planning to use Time Machine for backups, it should have it's own, exclusive partition, ideally 2 - 3 times the size of what it's backing-up.

Similar Messages

Can a use a partitioned external hard drive to create a disk image? I tried, doesn't seem to work using disk manager.

Can a use a partitioned external hard drive to create a disk image? I tried, doesn't seem to work using disk manager.

OK, it's very bad computing to use a backup disk for anything but a backup. The reason being is if/when the HD crashes you will have lost not only all your backup but the data files. While I commend you for wanting redundant backup, you really need separate EHDs for doing so. Format each EHD using Disk Utility to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using the GUID parttition. When you connect, OS X will ask if you want to use that drive as a Time Machine backup drive, select yes and then let it backup. On the second EHD format the same way however do not use TM as a backup, this time I'd suggest an app such as SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to make a clone of the internal HD. Leave both EHDs connected and TM will backup new or changed files automatically on a hourly basis. The clone you will need to set to backup on the schedule you want. For example I have my SuperDuper EHD set to backup only changed or updated files at 2AM every day.
The advantage of a clone is that if the computers internal HD crashes you can boot from a clone and continue working, TM will not do that but it's great for keeping an archive of all files. So if you want a version of a file from many months ago, TM will help you locate and restore it.

Partition external hard drive-what format do I use

I'm trying to partition an external hard drive by following the instructions in the disk utility help and am confused about which "format" to use. My choices are: Mac OS extended (Journaled), Mac OS Extended, Mac OS Extended (case sensitive, journaled), Mac OS Extended (case sensitive), Unix file system and Free space.
I've looked in the forums and in the disk utility for definitions of these terms and am sorry if its there and I just don't see it.
On a different subject is there any opinion as to whether I should create a partition that should or should not be used for startup? What is the difference and which is better?
Thank-you very much,
Margie

Choose Mac OS extended (Journaled) unless you have a specific reason to use another format.
(31565)

Questions Re: Partitioning External Hard Drive

I need to free up some space on my MacBook Pro, but first I need to reorganize my external hard drive. It's presently divided into five partitions, as follows:
Mac - Mac OS (Extended Journaled) - 100 GB
Mac 2 - Mac OS (Extended Journaled) - 115.76 GB
Media - Mac OS Extended - 100 GB
Websites - Mac OS Extended - 50 GB
PC - MS-DOS (FAT) - 100 GB
I use the first two for cloning my hard drive, the next two for storing images, videos and websites, and the last one is reserved for files I copied from the PC I abandoned when I bought my Mac.
In fact, the last partition (PC) has about 80 GB available, so I'd like to take 75 GB and redistribute it. I'd like to wind up with something like this:
Mac - 100
Mac 2 - 145
Media - 150
Websites - 50
PC - 25
In other words, I want to add more capacity to the partitions Mac 2 and Media.
First question: Is there a way to shrink PC from 100 GB to 25 GB without erasing the data it contains, then expand Mac 2 and Media without destroying the data they contain?
If not, there's another possible solution. My last attempt to clone my hard drive failed, so I erased Mac 2; it's empty.
So could I reformat it as MS-DOS, resize it to 25 GB, then copy all my files from PC to Mac 2, then either reformat and enlarge PC or delete it and create a new partition?
When I open Disk Utilties and click on my external hard drive, I can then click on each partition and see its stats. But I don't see any way to resize any particular partition. At the top of the panel it says Volume Scheme, below which it lists Current, followed by other partition schemes (3, 4, 5, etc.). However, I assume that clicking any of these would erase all my data.
So can anyone suggest a way to reorganize my external hard drive without losing all my data?
Thanks.

All the commands remain grayed out when I click on various partitions. Maybe it's because I'm actually booted up on my external hard drive. I deleted several GB of files from my internal hard drive, but it still won't boot up. So it looks like I have a technical problem, and I'll have to visit my local Apple store. After I get it fixed, I'll take another look at re-partitioning my external hard drive.
Thanks.

Partition external hard drive and install OS9

I have a Lacie external hard drive, 350 GB, and would like to partition it and install OS9 in one of the partitions so that I can run some of the applications I have that won't run in OSX. What do I need to do. How much space should I partition the volumes into, and how many. Do the applications need to be in the same volume as OS9. I also want a volume for backup using "Time Machine" of OSx (leopard) which is in my internal drive in my iMac G5 with 80 GB., and another for backup of files that are in my internal hard drive.

Hi, falcontech -
Welcome to Apple's Discussions -
Bad news, perhaps.
Your G5 is not OS 9 bootable; no G5 is.
In addition, Leopard (OSX 10.5) does not support Classic (OS 9 used as a program while the machine is booted to OSX).
In order to make use of OS 9 as Classic, you would need to also install a bootable version of OSX 10.4 (Tiger) or 10.3 (Panther), boot the machine to that and then use Classic. Depending on which model it is, your iMac G5 model originally came with a version of either OSX 10.3 or OSX 10.4; its original disk set also can install Classic.
As far as partition sizes go, I would allow at least 20GB for the OSX/Classic partition. Although Classic (OS 9) is not fussy about whether its programs are on the same volume as OS 9 is, it would make little sense to have them elsewhere. Among other things, having the OS 9 programs on the same volume as OS 9 would make responses a bit faster since seeking would be restricted to just one volume.
As far as the remainder goes, your needs would best determine the partition sizes.

MacBook Pro crashed while deleting old backups off partitioned external hard drive. Now only recognizes windows formatted half of drive. Can the Apple side be saved?

MacBook Pro 15-inch, Mid 2010
Processor 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB
Software OS X 10.9.5 (13F34)
I have an external hard drive:
2 TB Seagate Backup+Desk Media
Partitioned:
1TB - Windows NTFS
1TB - Mac (sorry I can't remember the formatting, whatever Mavricks asked me to use...)
What happened:
I was erasing 3 old backups from the Apple partition and my laptop crashed part way through emptying the trash. (it has done this many times before, where parts of the screen are frozen in square blocks displaced all over the screen. Screenshot not possible unless I use a separate camera).
When I force restarted my computer (holding down the power button) neither side of the drive was accessible. After running the Disk Utility and Verifying and Repairing the Disk Permissions and the Disk Itself (for the Windows side) I was able to access the Windows partition. However, upon attempting to do so with the Mac partition it tells me that it cannot be repaired. I have found many forums discussing SIMILAR situations but none with the same and here is why:
Up until this happening I could access ONLY the Windows partition when the drive was connected to either my Apple laptop in Bootcamp Windows 7 or my HP laptop in Vista, while my MacBook could access both sides of the drive. HOWEVER, after this crash, BOTH my Windows 7 and Vista can access both sides of the drive (so My files are still all there and accessible) but my MacBook Pro swears that the Apple partition is doomed.
Since the Apple side of my laptop is my primary workhorse I really want to figure out how to fix my drive.
So Questions:
1. Anything else I can provide to the experts out there to help me get this fixed?
2. Can I custom fix this via accessing the drive on either of the Windows systems?
3. Why would it suddenly show up in Windows when it became unaccessible to Mac?
Thanks All!

UPDATE:
It has been maybe a month since this happened.
After I made this post and was checking emails, walking away from computer, and then came back my Mac partition of the External Drive has shown up on the Desktop...
So, in the ever immortal way of asking the tech to come check the issue and the issue resolving itself, perhaps I should posted on the forum sooner...
NOTE: The disk still shows up as unusable in the Disk Utility and it appears that the files are read only (cannot make a new folder on this side of the external drive)
I still consider this a volatile issue because I do not want to lose the files on this half of the partition and I have not gotten a replacement drive yet (too much data to move to my computer and then format the current drive)

Problem partitioning external hard drive with Disk Utility

I'm trying to create a new partition in disk utility in an external hard drive using disk utility and every time I click Apply it says that "Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and can't continue. Quit and relaunch Disk Utility". It is a 3TB hard disk and I already created the first partition of 2 TB, and when I click the + symbol to add a 1 TB partition and click Apply is when the error shows up. I have restart the mac, unplugged the hard disk but the error still shows up. Anyone has any idea??? Thanks for your help in advance
David

I solved this issue. I was able to create the partition with the format MS-DOS and then I erased it to the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
Now it is working OK. Hope this help someone

How do i partition external hard drive using mac

how do i partition my external hard drive on mac? can i use it as time machine disk as well as external drive?

You can use an external disk for store files and for Time Machine, but you have to create a second volume.
To create volumes on the external disk, use Disk Utility. See > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU3.html I recommend you to put as much space as you can for the Time Machine volume, because backups consume a lot and Time Machine starts deleting backups when the external disk is full

Setting Up Time Machine with a Partitioned External Hard Drive

I recently bought a new external hard drive (MyPassport) and I was advised to partition it in order to keep my movies/music files separate from the rest of my files. So I partitioned it, but now I can't figure out how to set up the Time Machine with 2 separate hard drives. Is there a way to set it up so that I can use Time Machine for both, one for movies/music and one for everything else?

I recently bought a new external hard drive (MyPassport) and I was advised to partition it in order to keep my movies/music files separate from the rest of my files. So I partitioned it, but now I can't figure out how to set up the Time Machine with 2 separate hard drives. Is there a way to set it up so that I can use Time Machine for both, one for movies/music and one for everything else?

Partitioned External Hard Drive - Permissions.

I have an external hard drive that is partitioned into two volumes. Recently one of the volumes has not been showing on the desktop. I tried repairing and verifying the drive with Dick Utility (this second partition is visible with a generic icon) and says everything is okay. I think this might be a permissions issue - this problem appeared shortly after changed volume permisions for differnt users. Problem is no user can see the drive (Admin or others). Is there any way to revert, delete or fix this so that I can access the second volume?
Running Mac OS X 10.4.11
Thanks for your Help.

Running Mac OS X 10.4.11
This is the Leopard forum.
For future reference, the Tiger forum is here:
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.4_tiger?categoryID=1 77

Partitioning external hard drive problem?

I bought a new Seagate 120GB ATA/100 internal hard drive which I put into an Apricorn Firewire enclosure to create an External Hard Drive. The Mac initialized the drive and I used Disk Utility to partition the disk into 2 partitions, one for 70GB and the second for 50GB. When I clicked on "Partition", the Mac changed the size from 70GB to 55.9GB, essetially dividing the partitions equally, which is not what I wanted.
How do I correct this to get a 70GB and a 50GB external hard drive?
Thanks
Herschel

Rod,
Finally solved the mystery. Obviously, it would not be in the Help section, even though I had followed the directions exactly. Once I typed in the Size: 70GB, I then had to click on the left hand grey, partition box. At that moment, the box enlarged and the 70GB did not change in the Size window. How is one supposed to know to do all of that????
Anyway, it worked.
By the way, the Apricon Enclosures came and the setup was extremely easy. Took about 5 minutes and it was a Firewire External Drive. I got very good support, getting answers by email and phone in hours, not days. They are even sending me a cable that was missing. No Problem.
Now, I will work through the SuperDuper program. In corresponding with them, they suggested strongly that I Clone, and not Image the drive.
Thanks
Herschel

Partitioning External Hard Drive- questions about software & filing system

I just got my macbook and I want to use my older external hard drive to transfer data between the macbook and my PC desktop. I have a Maxtor OneTouch II 300gb with only one partition. I have about 80gb of data already on the Maxtor. So my two questions are . .
1. What is the best software (prefer freeware) to partition my Maxtor and keep the data I already have on it? Or is there a better way?
2. What is the best setup for the filing system for the partitions? NTFS for one and FAT32 for the other or something else? I want to be able to both read & write to the Maxtor from both the PC and Mac. Appreciate any help anyone can throw my way.
Macbook- Black model Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I'm not quite sure of what you mean by:
I would like to avoid
moving all the stuff from the external drive to the
mac, and then having to move it all back onto the
external drive.
But most external drive was formated using fat 32 which theoretically limit to 2 TB and file size limit to 4 GB. Just put a useless file from your pc, and connect your external to your MacBook ,and see if you can copy and or delete that file from your Mac.
You can also check your HD format on PC side by: go to my computer, right click the external HD icon and select properties, and it will shows you the hd was formatted with,...
If you mean you want to format to mac format "on the fly", they might be some utilities for that on Mac side, but I'm not aware of, but why you want to re-format it if the external work for both sides without getting new format, since format that using MAc extended journaled wight result unreadable on your PC side.
Good Luck

Time Machine & newly re-formatted/partitioned external hard drive.

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to reformat a WD external hard drive, entitled "My External", from MS-DOS format into Journaled Mac OS X format.
I backed up my "My External" files to another separate external hard drive using Time Machine. When the back-up was complete, I proceeded to create 1 partition and reformat half of "My External" into the Journal Mac OS X format.
When the process was finished, the new sections were entitled, "Mac Only" and "Et Al". I entered Time Machine, expecting to see "My External" on the Finder window sidebar so I could restore files. However, all I saw was "Mac Only" and "Et Al" all grayed out.
Where did the back-up files for "My External" go? And is there any way I can get them back? PLEASE help. I thought using Time Machine would cover and back-up everything.
Thanks in advance for your time.

Rini718 wrote:
Before, I do remember going back in time the cascade and seeing My External in the Finder sidebar and being able to click around in it. That's why I had assumed that it also backed up My External via Time Machine.
I tried your tip for the no-longer-connected drives; it seems that you're right about the MS-DOS AKA FAT32 format not allowing for back-up via Time Machine. I feel so ignorant/lied to by the display. -sigh-
I really don't think you saw the data. You probably saw the icon and name in the sidebar, and didn't notice that they were grayed-out on the backup windows (it's not particularly obvious, unless you're looking for it). And/or, you saw it on the first +Today (Now)+ window, and didn't realize it wasn't a backup. You would not be the first, unfortunately.
What do you suggest I do? I have the newly reformatted/partitioned Mac Only/Et Al External. I have not written anything to it since the day this all occurred, but I have let a salvaging program read it for a preliminary scan (the attempt did eventually fail though). Reading it shouldn't do anything to the data that may still be in it, si? Only writing to it?
That's my understanding.
The app mentioned here most often is +Data Rescue 3,+ and it seems to get good reviews, but I haven't used it myself, so can't recommend it over any of the others.
Some of these have a free "trial mode," that will tell you if there's anything to be recovered, and perhaps recover a single file. For more, you have to pay the $$.
You'll also need another drive to receive anything it can recover.
Look for apps or services under +Data Recovery+ via Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com.
|
Once this is sorted out, I'd strongly suggest keeping secondary backups. See #27 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Partitioned external hard drive for creating the USB bootable device

Hi all,
I want to install Win 7 on my Macbook Pro (OS X Yosemite 10.10.1) but I don't have an 8GB or larger USB flash driver. I do have an external hard drive of 500GB that I use for backup. So, I tried to create a small partition on this disk to create the USB bootable device required for the windows installation but apparently I'm not able to select any specific partition when the boot camp assistant ask me for the destination disk.
Is that normal?
Thanks.

Yes, you can do that.
Although you can buy a complete external drive system, you can also put one together if you are so inclined. It's relatively easy and only requires a Phillips head screwdriver (typically.) You can purchase hard drives separately. This gives you an opportunity to shop for the best prices on a hard drive of your choice. Reliable brands include Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Toshiba, and Fujitsu. You can find reviews and benchmarks on many drives at Storage Review.
Enclosures for FireWire and USB are readily available. You can find only FireWire enclosures, only USB enclosures, and enclosures that feature multiple ports. I would stress getting enclosures that use the Oxford chipsets especially for Firewire drives (911, 921, 922, for example.) You can find enclosures at places such as;
Cool Drives
OWC
WiebeTech
Firewire Direct
California Drives
NewEgg
All you need do is remove a case cover, mount the hard drive in the enclosure and connect the cables, then re-attach the case cover. Usually the only tool required is a small or medium Phillips screwdriver.

How to partition external hard drive?

I have an external hard drive that is mac os journal formatted but I want to format it so part of the hard drive is fat32. How can I do this. Thanks

Have a look at this thread -
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1577540&tstart=0
This is what I have understood -
1. FAT 32 partitioned from OS X - Not recognisable from XP
2. FAT 32 partitioned from XP - Recognisable from OS X, but cannot have a single partition of more than 32 GB and there cannot be more than 4 partitions
3. NTFS partitioned from XP - Only readable in OS X
4. NTFS partitioned from XP, converted to HFS+ (i.e. Mac OS Extended Journaled) - becomes unrecognisable in XP and the remaining partition becomes unusable
5. NTFS partitioned in XP and converted to NTFS -3G after installing Macfuse in OS X - Perfect

Partitioning External Hard Drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for