Partition USB drive
I am using Disk Utility to partition a USB 2.1TB drive, have selected view all devices and the partition button is grayed out. How do I partition this USB?
iMac (24-inch, M1, 2021, 2 ports)
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I am using Disk Utility to partition a USB 2.1TB drive, have selected view all devices and the partition button is grayed out. How do I partition this USB?
iMac (24-inch, M1, 2021, 2 ports)
Ah, I see- sorry, I wasn't aware you needed it in FAT-32.
In that case, first format the whole disk as APFS, GUID Partition Map. Then, click Partition. You should be able to set the individual partition as FAT-32, as seen below.
My recollection of doing this myself is that first you have to erase the device (the device, not the drive). When you do that, you will select a format & partition scheme. You should select GUID partition scheme. If it's an SSD, select APFS as the format; if it's an HDD select MacOS Extended Journaled.
Once that's done, you should be able to add more partitions to the drive. But, why do you want to partition the drive in the first place?
Great - thanks. Got that. Now I need to partition at least a 256GB partition to FAT-32 and now that is not a format option? I have a device that can only read <2TB for my music and that why I am trying to partition this USB drive. It has to be in FAT-32 format.
I have tried to do this before, and had problems starting with an MS-DOS partition.
I think you will need to erase the drive in either Mac OS Extended (GUID partition Map) or APFS.
Then, Partition that. You can change the first partition to MS-DOS (FAT32) and leave the remainder what you want. Since you want to use this with some sort of camera device, I would imagine the MS-DOS partition has to be in the beginning.
But, I don't know that your device will be able to handle the partitioned drive.
How about creating a sparsebundle or .dmg image formatted at FAT32. Once the image is open/mounted, it will appear as another accessible volume. I really don't recommend using multiple partitions because it is so hard to make changes when you find out later that one or all of the partitions don't have enough room.
In Disk Utility, when you select the USB device, then click Erase you should get this window, where you can select the format & scheme:
Here's what I see: Scheme is not an option
Thanks but I have erased the USB device and but none of the formats allow me to select a partition scheme?
Are you seeing a different screen than Martin's? Can you provide a screenshot of the Disk Utility page?
You need to select the whole disk. In your example, select "General UDisk..." instead of "Music". That should fix the problem.
Now you have my curiosity ... what drive do you have that has a 2.1GB capacity? In my experience that's a very unusual capacity.
formatting APFS, GUID Partition Map keeps failing?
It gives you an error?
Thanks for all the help. I keep getting errors so I’m going to use a smaller USB drive.
Partition USB drive