why partition an external hard drive for mac

When you open Disk Utility, you’ll see all the drives connected to your Mac. Getting Information About a Disk with Disk Utility File System: This is essentially a catalog that lets a computer keep track of where data is written on drives, so it can read and write files.Formatting: Formatting prepares a drive or volume to receive data by an operating system or device by adding a file system to it.A drive can contain a single partition, or several. In many usages, volumes and partitions are the same, but not always. Partition: When you partition a drive, it contains multiple volumes.A drive may have a single volume, or it may contain several. A volume also contains a file system, which allows a computer to keep track of where files are stored. Since a drive can have more than one volume, this term represents a part of a drive that appears, to the user, as a single unit. Volume: A volume is a logical storage device.A drive is not, however, a CD, a Zip cartridge (remember those), or a floppy disk. Drive: A drive is a physical device that can store data: a hard drive, an SSD, a USB flash drive, an SD card, or other types of media.I’ve simplified these explanations for the purpose of this article. It’s important to understand some of these terms, so you can be aware of how OS X’s Disk Utility works. Disk Utility Terminologyīefore we get into the nitty-gritty of using Disk Utility, let’s look at some terminology. In this article, you will learn how to get information about your drives, format a new disk, partition a drive, and turn on encryption.

The following is an overview of how to manage disks and volumes with OS X’s Disk Utility. Found in the Utilities folder, inside your Applications folder, Disk Utility is a powerful tool that offers a full range of features to manage disks and volumes, encrypt and decrypt them, work with disk images, and much more. If you need to format, partition, or otherwise work with hard drives on a Mac, Apple’s Disk Utility is the tool you use. Apple + How To How to Manage Disks and Volumes with OS X’s Disk Utility

Why partition an external hard drive for mac