Can't partition external drive with disk utility because the +/- is greyed out

How is the drive formatted? New drives are generally formatted for Windows (NTFS).

Erase it first and choose GUID Partition Map and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the format.

You should then be able to partition it.

Microsoft created ExFAT. macOS can read and write to it, but it isn’t native to macOS.

Why do you want to partition it? That answer would likely inform the question of how to do it.

If you want to store a Photos Library on it, then that partition should be a native format. If you just want to store image files, then any format would likely do.

If you want to partition it and have a partition be ExFAT, then you need to erase it to a native macOS format, then add an ExFAT partition.

exfat shows up in the drop down as an option so it appears that you can do it

That was what I meant in the second part.

What I wasn't sure about is if you can start from that.

I formatted a drive as GUID/ExFAT and cannot partition it.

I formatted it APFS and could add an ExFAT partition to that.

Any time I use a Windows format, I format it on the Windows computer. Perhaps you can do it there.

Your Seagate HD is a mechanical drive - spinning platters and moving read/write heads. It is not an SSD (Solid State Drive) with no moving parts. Apple's APFS is designed for SSD's and does not work well on spinning drives.

If it is a spinning hard disk drive, use Mac OS Extended (Journaled). APFS isn’t designed for spinning drives, though it will work.

When you add the partition, you can choose ExFAT when you create the partition.

Whatever files (Zoom, images, spreadsheets) you would need to have access to on Windows would need to be on the ExFAT partition. Windows cannot even read the macOS formats. I don’t know what it will do when you plug it into a Windows computer.

Why do you wish to split up the drive? Why not just make the whole thing ExFAT?

If you only occasionally use files on Windows, why not just get a cheap USB stick for those times? Copy the files to the USB stick when you need them.

on the sticky key, is this a brand new Mac or used? If new, I would get it checked out under warranty.

I don’t know how to remove or clean under the keys.

I don't know if Disk Utility can partition ExFAT. I don't know why it wouldn't. You can format the individual partitions as ExFAT.

This article doesn't indicate there would be a problem partitioning an ExFAT drive.

Partition a physical disk in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

Iowa Fan wrote:

ok - it sounds like one external drive for back up and extra storage per computer is the way to go - otherwise it gets complicated....

I don’t think it is complicated at all. I just don’t understand why you think you need to partition it. if you need to offload your Photos Library to the external, and you want to be able to access files on both macOS and Windows, then you would need to partition it. There aren’t very many good reasons to partition a drive.

f I only connect/use the drive with my mac notebook pro running Catalina and using mac compatible outlook, etc, then is having the drive formatted all APFS the way to go?

Not if it is a mechanical HDD. Use Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

f I download video files using my mac that are from zoom or other non apple places, do I need to store them in an exfat formatted partition of the drive or can they be stored in the APFS formatted area?

They can be stored anywhere. The format of the drive only affects which computers can read/write to the drive. The caveat to that is the Photos Library needs to be stored on a native macOS format.

on another topic - a friend updated to Big Sur and it corrupted everything in her mac so I am holding off on doing that software upgrade, have you heard of similar problems? Thank you so much you've been most helpful.

There are always people who have problems with upgrades. It almost always comes down to having some underlying problem before the Upgrade, or they have some ill-advised system modification installed that wreaks havoc in the new OS.

It can also be that the person failed to research what would and would not work in the new OS. Some people just don’t like the looks.

I always upgrade my Macs and have never had it corrupt anything. And, for many upgrades, I have upgraded straight to the first beta. Maybe that turns out to be safer, but I doubt it. Seems to me one of the ten OS betas I have installed on my various Macs would have corrupted one of them if it was something peculiar in the OS. I only have one Big Sur capable Mac, though.

Iowa Fan wrote:

while we are here....I was trying to make a ppt presentation in the mac version of outlook/powerpoint, then add a recording to each slide and then save it. When I did that I get an error that I can't save the file - is that because I need to save the file as an Mp4 or video file type now that it has a recording in it? When I tried to do a save as even after erasing the audio, it saved, it but didn't save the images properly on the slides. Do you know anything about why this is happening?

Might be best to open a separate question on the powerpoint as this seems unrelated to your previous one.

That said, in powerpoint, did you use the Insert menu?

Insert => Audio ...

or

Insert => Video ...

Basically, you include the audio (or video) that way. Then you save the file as you normally do (powerpoint, save in powerpoint format same as when there is no audio or video).

You should pay attention to the format of the audio or video files, and also your powerpoint must be up to date. Old versions might not work with Catalina for this.