

Once your drive has been formatted (see the steps above), you can partition it into two formats. It will also help protect your drive if it’s infected with malware since it would be contained in one partition section. A partition offers dedicated space for a bootable backup of your OS or your Time Machine backup files. How to Partition an External Hard Drive on a Macīy partitioning your external hard drive, you can have separate drives for Mac, PC, and other operating systems.

Click on the first level of your external drive.In the pop-up on the left, your external hard drive should appear in the list under your Mac’s internal drive, under the “External” heading.Choose “Utilities” then “Disk Utility.”.From the “Finder” window, select the “Applications” folder from the left pane.Select the “General” tab, then check that the “External Drive” checkbox is checked.If it doesn’t, try opening “Finder.” Then choose “Preferences.” Once connected, a drive icon should appear on your desktop.Plug your external hard drive into your Mac. If you’re using a MacBook to format the drive, ensure it’s either fully charged or connected to a power supply to ensure it doesn’t turn off in the middle of the process.
