How to Partition a Hard Drive on Mac?

Do you wish to partition Mac but can’t find a feasible solution? Read on and learn how to partition a hard drive on Mac by following this step by step tutorial.

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“How to partition a hard drive on Mac? I have just switched from Windows to macOS, but can’t seem to find the Mac partition manager!”

- a question from Quora

This is one of the many queries of macOS users that we get about its partition management. While it might seem a bit different working on Mac, the operating system can be extremely friendly after a while. Just like Windows, it also provides a seamless solution to partition hard drive on Mac or un-partition it as well. Mac has a dedicated Disk Utility feature that allows us to manage the hard disk (Macintosh HD) pretty easily. In this post, we will cover the same and teach you how to partition a hard drive on Mac like a pro!

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Part 1: What Does a Partition Mean on Mac?

Ideally, partitioning a hard drive means similar in almost every operating system. It divides the total space of a hard drive into different logical separations. This helps us keep our data segregated into dedicated locations, protect it, and even run different firmware versions on it as well.

Part 2: How to Partition a Hard Drive on Mac?

If you have enough free space on your Mac’s hard drive, then you can make the most of it by creating new partitions. In case if there is no free space, then you can unpartition a hard drive on Mac beforehand. To make it easier for us to partition hard drive on Mac, the OS has come up with the Disk Utility feature. We can take its assistance to manage the overall hard drive of our system and arrange it into different logical separations as well. To learn how to partition a hard drive on Mac, simply follow these steps:

Step 1 To get things started, you need to access Disk Utility on Mac. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities and launch the “Disk Utility” app from here.

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Step 2 As the Disk Utility app will open, you can see the internal hard drive on the left panel, named as Fusion or Macintosh HD. If you have connected an external drive, then choose to view all devices.

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Step 3 Simply select a source drive from here and click on the “Partition” button from the toolbar. This will display a graphical representation of the hard drive’s storage and partition.

Step 4 To create a new partition, click on the Add (“+”) button. In order to adjust the size of the partition, you can move the divider on the pie-chart.

Step 5 Subsequently, you can enter a name for the partition and choose its file system. Presently, Mac supports a wide range of file systems like APFS, exFAT, NTFS, etc.

Step 6 After confirming its size, just click on the “Apply” button and wait for a while as Mac partition manager would create a new partition on the disk.

Part 3: How to Unpartition a Hard Drive on Mac?

Apart from creating new partitions on Mac, the Disk Utility feature can also be used to unpartition it as well. For instance, if you have created a partition by mistake or would like to merge it with another, then Disk Utility can help you. It can erase the existing data on a partition and also delete the partition altogether. You can unpartition a hard drive on Mac by following these steps:

Step 1 Firstly, go to your Mac’s Applications > Utilities and launch the Disk Utility tool from here.

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Step 2 Select the partition or the external hard drive that you wish to delete from the left panel. From the provided options on the right, click on the “Erase” button.

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Step 3 As the following pop-up would appear, click on the “Erase” button to confirm your choice. You can also change the format of the partition from here.

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Step 4 Great! You are almost there. Once you have erased a partition, you can easily delete it altogether. Go to Disk Utility and select the root drive (Fusion/Macintosh HD) from the left. Click on the “Partitions” menu on the right to explore the available space.

Step 5 From the visual representation of the drive, you can see the available space. Just select the partition you have made available and click on the minus (“–”) button to delete it.

Once you have deleted a partition, the space allocated to it can be used the way you like. You can merge it with another partition, split it into different partitions, or create a new partition.

Part 4: How to Recover Data Lost When Partitioning Mac?

Too often, while creating new partitions on Mac, users end up losing their important data. Chances are that you can lose an entire partition as well. While this might seem like a tedious situation, it can be fixed by using Recoverit (IS). One of the best data recovery tools for Mac, it can get back all kinds of lost, deleted, or unavailable data from Mac. The application performs a thorough scan on the source and has one of the highest data recovery rates in the industry.

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  • Using Recoverit (IS), you can get back all kinds of data from your Mac. It supports 1000+ different formats of media files, documents, and more.
  • The tool supports different scanning methods and will let you preview the extracted data on its interface. Users can selectively recover the data to a desired location.
  • It supports data recovery under all kinds of scenario. This includes lost partition recovery, accidental data recovery, virus attack recovery, formatted disk recovery, and more.
  • No prior technical knowledge is needed to use Recoverit (IS). All you need to do is follow a simple click-through process to recover your data.
  • Not only Mac’s internal hard disks or partitions, users can also perform data recovery on numerous external sources like USB drives, SD card, digital cameras, and more.
3,165,867 people have downloaded it

You can visit the official website of Recoverit (IS) and download it on your Mac. Once it is done, follow these steps to recover its lost data.

Step 1 Select a recovery mode

When the application is launched, you will be asked to select a data recovery mode. It can be for a lost partition, accidentally deleted data, formatted disk, and so on. You can also connect an external device in order to recover data from it as well.

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Step 2 Choose a location to scan

In order to proceed, you need to pick a location to scan for the lost content. It can be an internal partition, the entire drive, or an external source as well. You can select multiple locations to scan if you are not sure.

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Step 3 Restore your data

Sit back and wait for a few minutes as iSkysoft would scan your Mac storage. It will try to extract all kinds of lost or deleted content under different scenarios. Once it is done, it will let you preview your data by listing it under different categories. Just select the files of your choice and click on the “Recover” button to save them.

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Step 4 Perform a deep scan (optional)

In case if you are not satisfied with the results of the quick scan, then you can perform a deep scan as well. To do this, click on the “All-around Recovery” option. This will take more time, but would also yield far better data recovery results.

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Part 5: Tips for Partitioning and Unpartitioning Mac

By now, you can easily know how to partition a hard drive on Mac or unpartition it. If you wish to make the most of the Mac partition manager, then consider following these suggestions.

That brings us to the end of this extensive guide on how to repartition a hard drive on Mac. As you can see, we have listed various options to partition a Mac and even delete an existing partition using its native Disk Utility feature. If you don’t want to lose any data during the Mac partition management, then keep a recovery tool like Recoverit (IS) handy. It is one of the most popular and secure recovery tools for Mac that will certainly meet every data recovery need of yours.

Elva

staff Editor

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