So, essentially, you format the drive the first time you use it and you reformat it the next time and the succeeding times after that, so what you need to do on your MacBook Pro will depend on whether it's the first time or the second, third, or fourth time you are going to be using it. Why to format hard drive on MacBook Air/Pro/iMac. There may be occasions when you need to format Mac hard drive. For example, you plan to backup DVDs to Mac hard drive or store other files and need to format an external hard drive for macOS to extend storage space. Every WSU MacBook hard drive is set up the same way: On a MacBook, all of the space on the single hard drive is assigned to one partition called MacBook Pro/Air # where the number represents the year it was distributed (e.g., MacBook Pro 13). Open your hard drive by double-clicking the MacBook Pro/Air # drive icon on your desktop (Figure 1). 1 Format a USB Drive to FAT32 in Mac OS with Disk Utility. Insert the USB to be formatted to a Mac PC. Navigate to Applications Utilities, and click it twice to open it. Select the drive you want to format and click on Erase. Rename the USB drive (optional), and choose the MS-DOS(FAT) for format.
- Hard Drive On Macbook Air
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Mac computers, whether you have an iMac, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or another Mac device, all have a finite amount of space. How you use it depends how quickly, or not, that space fills up and whether you need to add more space — either internally (such as upgrading to an SSD), or connecting to one or more external hard drives.
One thing you may not know is that the Mac boot drive is already partitioned. In all fairly recent models, the boot drive contains a secret partition that includes the macOS Recovery System, some essential Mac first aid tools and an installer, should, for any reason, your macOS fail to install or reboot.
How to get microsoft office on macbook pro for free. Before we go into how to partition a Mac hard drive or SSD, let's consider the benefits, and what you would need to do before partitioning a hard drive.
Benefits of making a partition in a Mac hard drive
One of the main reasons for implementing a partition is to run more than one operating system, such as macOS on one and Windows on the other. Or you can run two versions of the same OS in both sides of the partition, all from a single disk. Each disk drive, with its own volume, is found and treat separately in the Finder.
Once you know how to partition a hard drive on Mac, or how to partition an external hard drive on Mac, you can format and manage them separately, effectively giving you two computers within one. Although, if you want to use the other volume to run an earlier version of your Mac — which you can, using Time Machine, the volume for that side has to be twice as large as the space it requires.
What to do before partitioning a hard drive
Before going ahead with a partition, it's always useful to tidy your Mac up. Most users find they have way more clutter and junk than they think. Between old folders and documents, images and videos, apps taking up space, hundreds of email attachment downloads and local iOS backups, many people find they have at least 62GB of junk they simply don't need. We recommend downloading CleanMyMac X, a powerful Mac cleaner, ideal for decluttering your Mac before creating a partition.
How to partition a hard drive or SSD on Mac
There are several ways this can be done.
1. Use Boot Camp
Boot Camp is especially useful if you want to run Windows on your Mac. With Boot Camp comes Boot Camp Assistant, a handy app for partitioning your hard drive space so that one disk drive can run and operate macOS, and the other, Windows.
Following the on-screen instructions of this Mac app, you can partition your hard drive or SSD space to ensure that Windows will run smoothly on your Mac, almost as if it was operating on a native Windows PC or other device.
However, for those who don't want to partition Mac for that purpose, you can use Disk Utility.
2. Use Disk Utility
Disk Utility is another Mac application that will repair and, as needed, partition disk drive spaces. https://software-worth.medium.com/seo-analyze-site-online-638d51818960.
As a Mac partition manager, it is a useful app that sits within your Utilities folder, inside your Applications folder.
Before starting a Mac partition exercise, it's worth fully backing-up the folder you want to copy using Carbon Copy Cloner. Another useful tool that gives you an instantly bootable copy of the drive you are going to partition, working on the assumption that if anything goes wrong during this process, you are going to lose everything that is on that hard drive. So with a backup, nothing can go wrong, and if it does, you can easily fix it.
Before partitioning:
- Clone the drive.
- Make sure the clone has worked and with your cloned drive you can boot this up from the startup menu.
- Plug the clone in and go to System Preferences > Startup Disk.
- Check the cloned drive works, and then you can partition without any worries.
Now you are ready to partition hard drive on Mac, starting with the following:
- Press Command-Shift-U or go to Utilities in the Applications folder.
- Double-click the Disk Utility application.
- In Disk Utility, select your Mac's internal drive (or an internal SSD).
- You should see two options: First Aid or Partition.
- Click Partition.
- Click the ‘+' below Partition Layout.
- Now a new Partition will appear, and you can change the size according to what you need.
- Give this new drive a name.
- If it hasn't worked exactly as you want, you can always click Revert to unpartition hard drive on Mac.
- Or, once you are happy with the size, click Apply. You may also be asked to click a lock symbol in the bottom left-hand corner to confirm everything.
But don't worry if you want to make changes down the road. Everything you have done is reversible, so you can change the size or repartition hard drive on Mac.
Once the partition is done (which doesn't take as long as you might imagine) you will have a completely new hard drive or internal SSD, identical to your original, except without anything in it. Upload anything you need, or use the cloned version to store everything that was in the original hard drive - which still exists - in this partitioned version.
Within Disk Utility, you have the option of increasing or decreasing the size, erasing altogether (just remember to backup anything you need first), which will restore the space lost in the partition to your primary hard drive. Always backup before making any changes to a partition.
And remember, before making a partition, clean up your Mac from all the junk it contains. The fastest and the safest way to do that is to use CleanMyMac X. Try it today to rid your system of unwanted files and enjoy improved performance.
Hard Drive On Macbook Air
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Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
How To Format A Hard Drive On A Macbook Air
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
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3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
How To Format Macbook Air
How To Format Macbook Air Hard Drives
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
Macbook Pro Format Hard Drive
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.
Oct 28, 2011 8:17 AM
