Partitioning external hard drive
I am currently using two LaCie external hard drives with my late-2015 iMac. One hard drive, with 2T of space (less than 1T in use), holds music files ripped from CDs; the other, with 4T of space (close to 1T in use), holds my Time Machine backup.
The port on the 4T drive is beginning to fail: intermittently, the iMac loses connection to the drive. I've isolated the problem to the drive, since switching the cables and the USB ports to which they are connected always results in loss of the same drive. I am considering replacing the two external drives with ONE new 4T drive. My questions: Will I have to partition this new drive to accommodate the music files and the Time Machine backups? And will Disc Utility do this all for me?
iMac 21.5″, macOS 12.3