But if you encounter various NTFS external drives on a regular basis, you can just use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac instead of keeping a Windows partition. However, lots of people keep a separate Windows partition to be able to read external drives in the NTFS format, which is a Windows default that doesn’t work with Macs.Īn alternative here would be to reformat your external drive to exFAT, which Macs can read. While it’s wise to install beta macOS as a partition to keep your files safe in a separate stable macOS version, when the beta graduates to an official release, you can install it on your main partition and shut down the beta one.Īnother popular use case for partitions is running Windows alongside macOS, which is a great way to have two systems on a single computer. The most popular use case for removing partitions is getting rid of beta versions of macOS that are no longer needed. Why delete partitions from your hard drive? You first need to erase the partition and then delete it from your system. Regardless of whether you’re trying to remove partitions or volumes, it’s a two-step process.

That’s why Apple actually recommends creating volumes instead of partitions on your Mac. Partitions are rigid and are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Volumes are much more flexible when they share the same space and can shrink or expand as needed. Since macOS Catalina, Apple has moved from HFS+ hard drive format to APFS, which allows creating volumes instead of partitions. When you start a Mac that has a partitioned hard drive, you have an option of which partition to boot in. Partitioning is a process of dividing the space on your hard drive into two or more volumes that remain completely independent of each other, to the point where they can run different operating systems. What happens when you unpartition hard drives? Let’s explore how to unpartition a hard drive on Mac and what you have to watch out for in the process to keep your files safe.

So you might want to merge partitions once again. In any case, partitions are inflexible and tend to take up a lot of space that could be used for something else. Or maybe you’ve been using a second partition for Windows and don’t need it anymore. Maybe you’ve used your partition to check out a beta version of macOS, and now that macOS is out of beta, you just want to install the full version on your main drive. There are a few reasons to remove partitions. It might be that you’ve partitioned your hard drive before but don’t need the partition anymore and don’t want it to take up valuable space on your hard drive. Tackle your tasks with Setapp app suite solutions.

How to partition external drive mac