Formatting & Partitioning a Hard Drive in OS X Revised December 3, 2007 May, 16, 2005 Formatting & Partitioning a Hard Drive in OS X - Tiger and Leopard By Partitioning a hard drive is the process of dividing a hard drive into separate, discrete sections, called 'volumes'. You can create up to 16 different partitions on a hard drive, each one can be of different size and format, even including the 'MS-DOS' format for use with PCs on a network. With hard drives getting bigger there are reasons why you might want to partition a hard drive. Partitioning can be used for organization purposes, i.e., each volume could be used as a media (scratch) drive, each for a different FCP Project. I typically partition into two volumes, one for FCP Captured media, the second for DVD SP projects, for Builds and MPEG 2 encoded files. With FireWire external hard drives reaching one Terabyte in size, partitioning the drive can make project and file management much more manageable.
Formatting When you purchase a new hard drive for your Mac, either SATA/ATA (internal) or FireWire (external) the box that the drive comes in will likely tell you that the drive will run on both Macs and PCs. This is true, but because the drive is formatted for cross platform compatibility, some stability and facility issues could arise. It is possible that your new cross platform hard drive could have a 2 gig file size limit. Using the drive for FCP (and encoded files for DVD SP) could cause problems.
2 gigs is good for about 9 minutes of DV capture. Capturing clips longer than 9 minutes could result in the captured clip being broken into separate files. Whether you intend to partition your hard drive or not, you really should reformat your new hard drive for the Mac. If your new hard drive is FireWire and you intend to use it with both Macs and PCs, then leave it as is and do not reformat. Tiger and Leopard The process of formatting and/or partitioning a hard drive is exactly the same for both Tiger and Leopard. However, the Disk Utility interface has change a bit from Tiger to Leopard. In Leopard When you launch Disk Utility in Leopard, it opens in default, with no drives selected in the left hand column.
Dec 10, 2009 To format an external or an extra internal hard drive on your Mac, just attach (or install) the drive and open the application “Disk Utility”. It’s in your Applications > Utilities folder. Select your new hard drive in the menu on the left, then choose the Erase tab in the main window.
If you will look at the tabs near the top of the Disk Utility window (red box below), you will notice that the tab 'Partitioning' is not available as it was in Tiger. Select the hard drive that you wish to partition in the left hand column. Once you have select a hard drive to partition, the Partition tab will now appear along with the other tabs near the top of the window, (red box below). In the Partition tab, my Disk Utility is shown below. You will note that both the Name and Format sections are grayed out, (red box below). This is because the drive that I have selected has already been named and formatted and is currently in use. These option will become available once we have set the new partition scheme.
Also note that the 'Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed' box is checked. Unless you have a specific need for OS 9 drivers, leave this box unchecked. In the Partition tab select the number of partitions that you want from the 'Volume Scheme' drop-down menu. As shown below, I have selected 2 partitions. Once you have set the number of partitions in the Volume Scheme' drop-down, select one of the partitions.
When a partition is selected, as noted by the blue bounding box, (red arrow below), you will notice that both Name and Format, (red box below) have now become available for this partition. Name your partition and then select your format. You'll want Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for a partition that you will want to serve as a boot (start-up) volume.
Select Mac OS Extended (No Journaling) for volumes that will be used as media or data storage drives. You can change the alloted size of the partitions by dragging the little button found between the the partitions in the Volume Scheme section, up or down, (red arrow below). Select each partition and then name and set the format. When you are done, click on the 'Apply' button.
In Tiger If you are going to partition your new drive you can skip down to the Partition section below, as when you partition your hard drive, you will reformat the drive during the partition process. After you plugin your new hard drive and attach it to your Mac via a FireWire cable, the hard drive will mount on your desktop. Open Disk Utility. Applications folder Utilities folder Disk Utility. Select the hard drive in the left hand column and click on the Erase tab.
In the Volume Format drop-down menu, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) if you plan to place the Mac Tiger operating system on this drive to make it a bootable drive. Select Mac OS Extended if you plan to use the drive as a media (capture scratch) drive. Name the drive. Install Mac OS 9 Disk Driver There is an option to Install Mac OS 9 Disk Drivers. If you plan on using the hard drive with a Mac booting from OS 9, or believe that this might be a possibility, then select the checkbox to install the Mac OS 9 drivers. You do not need to install the Mac OS 9 drivers to use the disk with the Classic environment.
Security Options. When the default setting 'Don't Erase Data' is used, only the Directory information (information used to locate files on the hard drive) is erased leaving the actual files intact. This means, that for awhile, there is the possibility of recovering files. Over time the files will be over-written with new files thus destroying the data. For the paranoid there are three additional settings to insure that no data can be recovered from the hard drive. Once you have selected the format and have named the drive, click on Erase. You will be presented with the 'Are you Sure' dialog box.
Note that the volume still has the name 'untitled' because the process has not yet run. After 'Erase' the name will change to your new name. Click the Erase button again. The Erase process will take just a minute to erase and reformat your new drive. Partitioning With the new drive mounted, open Disk Utility. Applications folder Utilities folder Disk Utility.
Select the hard drive in the left hand column and click on the Partition tab. The drive will be displayed as one volume, 'Untitled'. In the 'Volume Scheme' drop down, select the number of partitions you want to have.
For this example I have selected 2 partitions. Click in the top partition box to select it. Enter a name for this partition (External Boot) and from the 'Format' drop down menu select 'Mac OS Extended Journaled'.
We do want Journaling turned on for a boot drive or volume. I have the 'Install Mac OS 9 Disk Drivers' box checked. These drivers should be installed for machines that can boot into OS 9. If OS 9 drivers aren't present on the drive, you can't mount that drive from a machine running OS 9. If you want to boot into OS9 from this drive, or access it while booted into OS 9 from another drive/partition, its imperative that you install OS 9 drivers when you initialize or partition. Even for systems that don't boot into OS 9 it is a good idea; its possible to mount such a drive via Firewire T mode from another machine, which can come in handy in rare maintenance situations. It doesn't hurt to have those drivers there, and you never know when you might need them.
Now select the second partition, give it a name and set Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaling off) as this volume will be used as a Capture Scratch drive. Note that Mac OS 9 drives are installed on this volume as well.
Now it's time to size each of the partitions. Place your cursor in between the two partitions, it will turn into a up/down arrow. Click and drag up or down to change the size of the partition, (red arrow below). As you drag, the new size of the 'selected' partition will be reflected in the 'Size' box, (blue arrow below). Repeat the above process for each of your intend partitions.
Once you have set partitions, named, sized, and selected formats, click on the Partition button. Your drive will be partitioned. This process will only take a few seconds.
Be aware that when you partition a drive all information on that drive will be lost, so be sure to back up any data that you wish to preserve. Journaling When Journaling is turned on for a drive or volume, a continuous record (a journal) is created by the Mac OS, of the work that you do, i.e., opening, saving, deleting files, etc. If your Mac crashes or goes down do to a power failure, upon reboot, Journaling will help the Mac OS to get back up and running. You can turn Journaling on, at any time, for any drive or volume. In Disk Utility, select the drive in the left hand column, then, from the Disk Utility tool bar click on 'Enable Journaling' (below left). Once a drive or partition has Journaling turned on, the only way to turn it off would be to open up disk utility, select the drive you want to turn journalling off, then hold down the option key and click the file menu - now the 'disable journaling' option will be available (below right).
Ignore Ownership When you have finished formatting and partitioning your new hard drive, there is one more chore. If you plan to use this new drive as a 'media drive' for storage rather than as a Mac OS X System boot drive, you may want to insure that all files on this drive will always be read-write accessible to everyone (all Users), even when the drive is moved to a different Mac. This is important for Firewire hard drives being used as media (scratch) drives for FCP and other apps, as it will make the drive and its files accessible (read-write) on any Mac. To accomplish this, select the hard drive icon on the desktop and 'command i' from the keyboard which will open the 'info' dialog box. At the bottom of the window, make sure that the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' box is checked. If this drive is to be used as a Mac OS X System boot drive, never select 'Ignore ownership'.
Cryptic Error Message There have been some reports of problems when attempting to re format some drives (Western Digital). If you have a new drive and attempt to re format the drive as Mac OS Extended, you could get an error message that says 'unknown error with the partition map'. This problem can occur because of the differences between a PPC and Intel Mac. Here is the work around. Open Disk Utility and select the drive in the left hand column (the device not the volume) and then click on the Partition tab. In the Partition tab, click on the Options button. In Options you'll see several choices, the first 'GUID Partition Table' is for Intel-based Macs.
The second choice 'Apple Partition Map' is for PowerPC-based Macs. Select the choice that is appropriate for the Mac you are on, then click OK. You should now be able to format the drive as Mac Os Extended with Journaling on or off. A word of caution, the Mac OS X has UNIX at its core. There is one keyboard item that is reserved for UNIX exclusively.
It is the forward slash, (/). Never use the forward slash in the name of a drive or partition, file, folder, bin, project, sequence or anywhere else for that matter. Enjoy, -ken copyright © www.kenstone.net 2005 © 2000 -2005 Apple Computer, Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Final Cut Pro, Macintosh and Power Mac are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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The Case of the Missing EFI: Yesterday, I installed a new hard drive on a mid-2012 MacBook Pro (here is a very good video on how to install the drive: )1. The install itself is pretty straight forward, and within about 20 minutes the little MacBook was back together and ready to have the drive formatted, and a new operating system installed. I fired up the computer, held down the Command + R keys and waited to be booted to the OS X Utilities page, from where I could launch Disk Utilities, and eventually install OS X to the new hard drive. After a few moments, all I was able to see on the MacBook’s screen was an icon of a folder with a question mark on it. At this point I knew that like most “simple” jobs, this one may well launch me on a “complex” journey. The first step to figure out was to decide what was missing in the equation?
I then had a “Gee, I wished I would have that about this before” moment. Yep, I realized that when I removed the old hard drive, I also removed the yellow-brick-road to the MacBook’s EFI firmware (Apple’s answer to a PC’s Bios). Without help from the EFI, I was dead in the water.
My solution would be simple. I have a OS X 10.6 DVD. I thought I would install this version of OS X, then go to the APP Store, and download Yosemite.
The world would be a better place, as my problems with the missing EFI would be over. It was indeed a good thought, and an exercise in futility. It seems that “Snow Leopard” was designed for Mac’s with fewer and slower processors than those in the Macbook Pro I was working on. As I tried to install the operating system, a kernel panic brought the process to an abrupt halt. So much for my bright ideas.
As I had run out of “rabbits” to pull out of my digital hat, it clearly was time for the Larry of LarryTalksTech to get some help. I then fired up my trusty iMac, and headed straight for the land of Google. In the end, I found two solutions: one nearly by accident without Google, and another with Google’s help. The Easy Way After doing about 20 minutes of research on how to install a bootable version of Yosemite to a DVD (you can also do this to a thumb drive – I just didn’t have any lying around my office at the time), I noticed a startup key combination that uses the “Option” key to temporarily change your startup disk.
This process activates the Startup Manager.2 As I didn’t have any other disks available from which to startup the MacBook, I wondered what would happen if I simply rebooted the MacBook and depressed only the “Option” key. It seemed to me that as I had no additional drives, this might re-direct me, via the internet, to Apple, where I might find a pathway to the OS X Utilities menu needed to install Yosemite. A stretch I know, but. After depressing the “Start” button on the MacBook, and holding down the “Option” key, a few short moments elapsed and to my amazement a drop down box appeared toward the bottom of the MacBook’s screen. This box provided a list of the available WIFI networks around my home.
I found my SSID, and supplied the password. After another moment, a button with an arrow (pointing to the top of the screen) appeared. I clicked it. Then, the OS X Utilities menu appeared on the screen. Now, I was ready to install my operating system. I do not know if the “Option” key solution works on pre mid-2012 Macs.
I also don’t know if this solution works on Macs after mid-2012. All I know is that this worked for me, and if your Mac has WIFI, it might work for you too. It is most certainly worth a try, and without a doubt, the easiest way to install OS X to a new hard drive. Note: The installation will only be for the original version of OS X installed on your Mac. For the MacBook I was working on, this operating system was Lion. Once installed, I went to the APP Store and installed Yosemite. Other more involved options: From my research, had my spelunking with the “Option” key failed, an article on MacWorld’s website proved to provide the best set of instruction for creating a bootable drive for the installation of the operating system (you can find it by clicking: 3.
![Macbook Macbook](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125512134/542632027.jpg)
The article presents two different pathways to create a bootable install drive, one with 6 steps, and one with 17 steps. It sounds more difficult than it really is, – once you have decided which pathway to use, just follow each step completely. Finishing Up Create a Partition and Format your drive.
From the OS X Utilities window, click on Disk Utilities, then: In the left-hand side bar, click on your new hard drive. Now, at the bottom of the Partition Layout, click the “+” and from the drop-down box, select and, unlike the example in the above graphic, click one partition. To name your partition, enter it in the Name field. Next, make sure the Format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Next, click the Apply button at the lower right side of the window. Finally, click out of the Disk Utilities window. Once at the OS X Utilities window, click Reinstall OS X, and follow the prompts, The operating system will begin its download and installation.
13-inch MacBook Pro Mid 2012 Hard Drive/SSD Installation Video OWC 2. How to choose a startup disk on your Mac Apple Support 3. How to make a bootable OX X 10.10 Yosemite Install Drive Macworld.