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.
- M.2 form factor supports PCIe and SATA, with many board size options Apple's MacBook Air and some MacBook Pro systems use an SSD with a connector and dimensions that closely resemble those of the.
- Jan 06, 2020 Size and Weight. Height: 0.61 inch (1.55 cm) Width: 13.75 inches (34.93 cm) Depth: 9.48 inches (24.07 cm) Weight: 4.02 pounds (1.83 kg) 3; Operating System. MacOS macOS is the operating system that powers every Mac. MacOS Catalina gives you more of everything you love about Mac. So you can take everything you do above and beyond.
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.
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.
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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.
Mac Fusion Drive Ssd Size
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.
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.
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This article was originally written in 2015 but it is still relevant. I have just updated it given that SSD prices have dropped dramatically in the last 3 years. Upgrading the boot drive on my Mac Mini to an SSD drive was by far the biggest speed enhancement I’ve experienced on any computer! The speed increase is incredible – almost hard to believe. Boot time went from 60 seconds to under 30 seconds, and applications launch instantly – no bouncing dock icon. In terms of bang for dollar, upgrading to an SSD drive is by far the best upgrade you can do.
SDD stands for ‘Solid State Drive.’ SSD drives are the same shape and size as a traditional drive. The difference is that an SSD drive uses RAM chips instead of a spinning hard disk to store information. This makes it much, much faster.
SSD drives are now reasonably cheap. I’d suggest you upgrade your entire hard drive to SSD.
1. Order an SSD.
There have been issues in the past with SSD drives and there have been some brands not working with OSX, so make sure you get a good one.
Ssd Drive For Mac
Red giant magic bullet looks 4 0 3 download free. The first place I would recommend is macsales.com. I have one of their OWC Mercury SSD drives in 2 of my laptops. They have a screen where you choose your macintosh computer, and it tells you which SSD drive is compatible. Just click here and you will be asked what mac you have, follow the prompts. (I have signed up to be an affiliate of Macsales so I get a commission if you use these links.) Last check a 1TB drive was under $400. When I first wrote this article a 480G SSD drive was $1579.99!
The second place I would recommend is crucial.com. If you do get a Crucial SSD you can go for the MX or BX series. I’ve also got a Samsung EVO drive running in a 2012 Macbook pro and it’s running fine. Buy a new SSD not a second hand one. They do degrade over time.
2. Temporarily connect the new SSD Drive to your Mac.
For this you will need a cable to connect your SSD drive to your USB port. They are only about $20 and they look like this:
The external drive enclosures for normal hard disks should also work with an SSD.
Plug the SSD into the enclosure, and then into the Mac, and it should appear on the desktop as an ‘Untitled’ drive.
3. Format the SSD Drive using disk utility.
After your SDD drive is plugged in you’ll need to use Disk Utility to format it – Mac OS Extended (Journaled):
4. Copy everything onto the new boot drive.
Now you need to copy your entire drive onto your SSD drive. You can’t do this by hand – there are hidden files that need to be copied, so need to make what is called a ‘Clone.’ Apple’s built-in Disk Utility won’t do this so you will need an app like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.
Using Carbon Copy Cloner, select your boot drive as the target Disk and then select ‘Backup Everything’:
Click ‘Clone’ and your boot disk will be created on the SSD disk.
The other option is to use Super Duper. There’s a free version that will enable to clone your drive. Select ‘Backup -all files’ to make a clone.
Making a clone of you drive can take a long time – hours – so take a break!
5. Reboot from the new SSD boot drive.
Under System Preferences click Startup Drive select the SSD Drive, then restart! (wow – notice how fast it is!)
6. Swap the internal Hard disk for the SSD drive.
Now that it’s working it’s time to get rid of your old hard drive and physically replace it with the working SSD.
The difficulty of this varies according to what kind of a Macintosh computer you have. I’d check out ifixit.com for the best instructions according to your mac model.
Mac Pro
Difficulty: easy – 30 seconds.
For a mac pro it simply connects into the spare optical bay slot – no adapters needed, a 30 second operation – see how here. I just sat the SSD drive in and added a bit of gaffe tape but there are some great adapters out there eg Angelbird SSD Adapter Pdfill for mac free.
Macbook
Difficulty: moderate – 1 hour.
For a Macbook or Macbook Pro can replace the internal optical drive with your old Hard Drive or order a large SSD drive and replace your old hard drive with it. You can find instructions here.
Mac Mini
Difficulty: hard – 1/2 hr.
For a new aluminium mac mini you will need to replace one of the internal drives. This involves pulling out the fan and motherboard to get the new SSD drive in. You can get the old hard disk out without pulling out the motherboard but the SSD drives are actually ever so slightly thicker and more uniform in shape so the motherboard needs to come out to manoeuvre the SSD drive in place. There’s easy to follow instructions here at mac fixit.
iMac
Difficulty: hard – 1/2 hr.
It’s quite complex to pull the iMac apart and you need a vacuum clamp to pull the glass screen off. This is easier than it sounds, but you still need to but the suction caps to do it. It requires some mechanical skill. There are good instructions here and crucial have their own guide here.
So how fast is it? Here’s a demo of how quickly applications launch from my new SSD drive…
7. Check if you need to Enable TRIM.
Some Hard Drives do not come with TRIM support and so you need to download this TRIM Enabler app and run it. This will enable OS X built in TRIM support which keeps your SSD drive lean and clean.
The SSD I recommend above (Crucial M4) does not need TRIM support (read this article for more information). You can turn it on anyway no problems. The OWC Mercury SSD drives do not need TRIM enabled either.
STOP PRESS: There are new reports that TRIM enabler does not work with Yosemite. Read this article for more information.
Mac Ssd Speed
8. Time Machine
If you already have a Time Machine backup, when you change Hard Drives it starts all over again and won’t recognise the old Time Machine backup. Read this post for info on how to get around this. Also here is another very good article on this.
I also just found this GREAT article on keeping Time Machine working when you change the Hard Drive.
Mac Pro Ssd
If you don’t have a Time Machine backup now is a great time to start! You can use your old Internal Drive as a backup drive.