With larger storage sizes available for newer Mac models, you may think about partitioning your Mac’s hard drive to create separate containers for different types of data. You could use this to keep your work and personal files separate, or to run an entirely different operating system in one partition on your Mac.

Whatever your reasons, we’ll cover how to create and delete a hard drive partition using your Mac below.

What Is a Partition?

Before we dig into how to partition an HDD or SSD, it’s important to know what a partition actually is. In simple words, a partition is a specific allocation of space on a hard drive that is separate from the others. This keeps the entire partition separate from other partitions on your hard drive or solid-state drive, even if it’s still the same physical drive.

Why Should You Partition a Hard Drive?

Partitioning a hard drive comes with many benefits, such as allowing easy installation for multiple operating systems or offering a streamlined data backup process. Similarly, you can keep specific data separate from other data—for example, keeping a separate partition for all your work files.

Related: How to Unlock and Format an External Hard Drive for Your Mac

It’s important to note that creating a partition splits your total available HDD/SSD space. Each partition takes up a portion of your usage storage. So even if you’ve got 100GB free in one partition, you can’t easily transfer it to another partition. So if you are running low on storage capacity, we don’t recommend partitioning.

How to Add a New Disk Partition With a Mac

Creating a new partition in macOS is very easy. These steps apply to both your Mac’s internal storage device and any external storage device connected to your Mac.

It’s a good idea to back up your data before modifying disk partitions to make sure you are protected against any unintentional data loss.

To partition a hard drive in macOS:

  1. Open up Disk Utility on your Mac. You can do this by searching for it in Spotlight or by accessing it from Finder > Applications > Utilities.
  2. You’ll see all your available storage volumes in the left-hand sidebar. These include both internal and external volumes and are listed beneath their respective headings.
  3. Select the volume you want to partition, and click on Partition.
    Partition button in Disk Utility
  4. Click the plus (+) icon on the storage allocation page to create a new partition. If it’s unavailable, the volume you selected cannot be partitioned, most probably because it’s full or the drive is protected.
  5. Enter a name for your new partition, and select a format for the partition. If you are unsure of which to choose, select APFS.
    Partition Details in Disk Utility
  6. Choose the size for the new partition. This will split the total available space between the current partition(s) and the new one you are creating. You can also use the image to the left and resize the partition by dragging it.
  7. Once you’re happy with all the details, click Apply.

That’s it! Your new partition will now be created, and you should see it in Finder and be able to use it as you would use any other volume.

How to Delete a Partition on Your Mac

If your Mac’s storage device has multiple partitions, and you want to delete them, you can do so using Disk Utility. Deleting a partition will free up some storage space, which you can then use to extend a current partition.

If you installed Windows on your Mac using BootCamp, it would have created a separate partition for the Windows operating system. In the case that you want to remove Windows from your Mac, you can use this method to delete the partition completely.

Related: How to Recover Data From an External Hard Drive

It’s important to note that deleting a partition will first erase its stored data, followed by removing the partition completely. Thus, if you want to keep the data intact, make sure you make a backup of everything on the partition before you delete it.

To delete a partition using Disk Utility:

  1. Open up Disk Utility on your Mac. Select the partition you want to delete from the left-hand sidebar.
  2. Click on the Partition button from the top menu, and select the partition you want to delete from the pie chart.
  3. Make sure you have the desired partition selected, and click on the minus (–) button. The pie chart will update to show you intend to remove the selected partition.
  4. Click Apply.
  5. A popup window will appear asking you to confirm that the partition will be removed. Click Partition to confirm, and the partition will be deleted.

That’s it! The partition should be deleted successfully, freeing up more storage which you can use for other purposes.

How to Erase a Partition Using Terminal

The Disk Utility method to manage partitions should be sufficient in most scenarios, but sometimes Disk Utility will fail to erase your partition. As the partition needs to be erased before it can be removed from the disk completely, you might get stuck.

Fortunately, you can also erase a specific partition directly from the command line in Terminal, and then use Disk Utility to remove the partition completely.

Make sure you back up your important data before erasing the partition, as erasing the partition will delete all the data on it.

  1. Open up Terminal on your Mac.
  2. Enter the command diskutil list to display your HDD or SSD partitions.
  3. Find the partition you want to erase, and note down the disk identifier for the specific partition.
  4. Enter the following command to erase the partition. Replace the identifier at the end with your specific disk identifier.
            diskutil eraseVolume jhfs+ drive /dev/<strong>disk3s6</strong>
        
  5. Terminal will display a progress bar, which you can use to monitor the status of your partition. Once you see a completion message such as Finished erase on disk3s6, the partition will have been erased.
  6. To delete the partition completely, head over to Disk Utility to remove the partition using the method described above.
Delete Partition Commands in Terminal

Partitioning Your Mac’s Hard Drive

Hopefully, you will have managed to create or delete a partition using the method above. Partitions can be very helpful, especially for managing different categories of data and content.

If you have an SSD in your Mac, you may want to consider creating a volume on your Mac instead of partitioning it. This saves time and doesn’t split your hard drive into different sections.