![Mac Mac](https://www.minitool.com/images/uploads/articles/2018/08/format-external-disk-for-mac-and-pc/format-external-disk-for-mac-and-pc-thumbnail.jpg)
HomeHow ToHow to Partition a Mac Hard Drive or SSD, or Create a..
There are lots of reasons why you might want to partition your Mac. Perhaps you want to partition your Mac to run Windows, or maybe you want to install Mojave betaon a partition, so that you can run both the beta and the full version of Mojave, alternatively you might want to keep High Sierra on your Mac but install Mojave on a separate partition so that you can use apps that might not work in Mojave or its successors.
Luckily, the latter has grown faster and now it is possible to run two, or more, different versions of OS X, side-by-side, on the same internal hard drive. And there are good reasons for doing this. There are several reasons why you might want to partition your Mac's hard drive. Historically, the most common was to separate the Mac's system files from the volume on which data was stored.
There are a few factors that will determine how you go about your project. The most important point is to establish whether you will even need to create a partition, or, if you can just create a volume on your Mac. (This is a little confusing, because essentially a volume and a partition are the same thing, but newer versions of the macOS handle things differently enabling users to create a volume and use it in the same way as a partition would have been used, but without any of the complications of having to wipe the Mac and start from scratch).
Why Partitioning Your Hard Drive Makes Sense. Most PCs come from the factory with a single partition on their hard drive, meaning that it shows up as one drive in the Computer window (as C. Booting from a hard drive is a whole lot faster than booting from a CD or DVD installer or emergency disc. (When I did IT work for a local publisher, every Mac had a small “emergency” partition with the Mac OS and some utility programs, and sometimes it was a life saver.).
If you are running High Sierra on a Mac with a Flash drive, or Mojave on any Mac then you don’t need to create a partition at all, you only need to create a new volume. This is thanks to the new Apple File System (APFS) which replaced the old HFS+. APFS has a number of advantages over HFS+ one is Space Sharing, which makes it possible for the available space to be shared between the different volumes on your disk. That space can be made available to all the different volumes at any time, rather than being assigned to them when they are formed, as is the case with a partition.
You may only have one Mac, but you can set it up so that it has multiple personalities…
Before you start there are a couple of things you need to do. Utorrent mac 10 5 8 download.
- Back Up just in case something goes wrong
- Delete files and applications you don’t need to make lots of space
How to create a volume in High Sierra or Mojave
It’s really easy to ‘partition’ your Mac in High Sierra (if you have a flash or SSD) or in Mojave thanks of APFS. While you can still partition your Mac, you don’t have to, you can just create an additional volume using Disk Utility.
If you do try to create a partition using Disk Utility in these versions of macOS you will see the warning: “APFS volumes share storage space within a container, occupying a single partition. Adding and deleting APFS volumes is faster and simpler than editing a partition map,” which, it has to be said, sounds more complicated than it is.
Partition A Hard Drive-in Xp
Needless to say, the best and simplest option is to Add a volume, so follow these steps:
- Open Disk Utility.
- Click the drop down menu beside the View button in the toolbar and choose Show All Devices. This will make sure you can see the volumes within your disk. It’s likely you have one called Home.
- Select the Home volume, and double check that it is an APFS Volume (it needs to be for this to work).
- Now all you need to do is click on the + button above Volume in the menu to create your new Volume.
- Give your new volume a name, we called ours Test, but you might want to call it Mojave or Beta, if you were planning to install that version of the OS on that volume.
- You can now choose to set a storage limit for this volume, but you don’t have to. If you want to, click on Size Option and fill in the Reserve (minimum) and Quota (maximum) options. Remember you will actually need to have enough space available on your Mac to allocate this way (which is why we started by advising you to delete things from your Mac!)
- Now you can click Add and your new Volume will be added to your Mac.
You could just attribute that volume to a family member or colleague to use so that you don’t mix up your files, but a popular scenario would be to use this volume to install an alternate version of the Mac operating system on. We have a detailed tutorial on installing two versions of macOS on your Mac here (How to dual boot two versions of MacOS, but in summary, here’s what you need to do:
- Download the installer for the version of the macOS or macOS beta you want, just don’t install it yet. (You can check to see if the installer is already downloaded by searching for it in Spotlight, press Command + Space and start typing the OS name).
- Now click on the installer, but make sure you choose the new volume you created as the destination for the installation.
- Wait while your Mac installs the new OS on that volume.
- Once it’s done it should open up in the volume with the new OS installed.
- When you are ready to go back to your old version of the OS, just shut down your Mac, and reboot with the Alt/Option key held down.
- Choose the ‘partition’ that has the version of the OS on it you want to run and your Mac will boot up in that.
Partitioning a Mac
If your Mac isn’t running Mojave or you are using High Sierra on a Fusion Drive, or if you can’t update your Mac (or dom’t want to update your Mac) to either macOS, or even if you are using Mojave or High Sierra, but you don’t want to go down the Volume path, prefering to create a firm partition on your Mac, here’s what to do. (This section includes original reporting by Kenny Hemphill).
As we touched on above, partitioning a hard drive, or an SSD drive, involves creating multiple volumes from one physical storage medium. The volumes appear separately in the Finder and are treated separately by your Mac. You can format them independently and use them for different purposes.
Why should I partition my Mac?
There are several reasons why you might want to partition your Mac’s hard drive. Historically, the most common was to separate the Mac’s system files from the volume on which data was stored. These days MacOS keeps your data in your Home folder, or even in iCloud, so it’s a far less common scenario.
Now it’s more likely that you’ll partition a drive in order to run multiple operating systems, or multiple versions of the same operating system, on a single disk. That’s how Boot Camp works, by partitioning the drive and allowing you to install Windows on the other partition.
Why Partition A Hard Drive Mac Osx
As we said above, you could also partition your hard drive to allow you to use Time Machine to back your boot partition to a different partition on the same disk. To do this, however, the Time Machine partition has to be at least twice the size of the volume you want to back up, leaving you less than half the total disk capacity to work with.
In addition, storing a backup on the same disk as the one being backed up carries several risks and should only be done as a convenient method of restoring older versions of data. Your real back up should always be on a separate disk.
How to partition your Mac using Boot Camp
If you plan to use Boot Camp, you should run Boot Camp Assistant and follow the instructions to partition the drive and prepare for an installation of another OS.
You will need at least 40GB of free space available.
Why Partition A Hard Drive Macos
Follow the instructions on the Boot Camp assistant to install Windows.