Partitioning External Drive

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Partitioning External Drive

I've started the process of backing up my Mac on an external hard drive (WD MyPassport 2TB) and have run into some questions I'm struggling to answer.

From my understanding, there are three main format options

APFS - only works with Mac. Optimized with SSD but works with hard drive; can cause more "wear and tear" on drive? No protection unless you encrypt with password?
Mac OS Extended - only works with Mac. "Journaled" option allows you to both use the drive to back up with Time Machine, AND to drag and drop specific items into it separately (like a flash drive)
ExFAT - only option that works with both OS and Windows. Doesn't work with Time Machine

I found that I can partition my drive to reap the benefits of both Time Machine and ExFAT (allowing both OS and Windows to read drive). I've historically had Macs as my personal computer but use PC's exclusively for work, so it would be good to allow this. Before determining. I would split them as follows:

"Time Machine" piece: Format - Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
"Mac" piece: Format - APFS (Encrypted?)
"Windows" piece: Format - ExFAT

Before moving forward, I'd like to know:

My drive is 2TB, is that too small to partition my drive? My Mac is 256GB, currently about 90GB is taken up by OS and files/messages and 135GB is taken up by pending updates and backup(s) that I'm attempting to move to the drive. I am guessing that if I allow 256GB for the Windows piece of the partition, 512GB for the Mac piece (I've read before to have your external drive at least 2x that of the actual drive) and the rest as Time Machine that should be enough? Or should I be working with something larger?
Is there really no protection with APFS without a password? Or if File Vault is turned on, will that somehow encrypt the files on the drive as well (so do not turn on Encryption for non-Time Machine Mac partition piece)? I know the Time Machine piece is already encrypted via File Vault (or so it sounds), but I'd like to make sure there's some sort of protection on the others as well. Or can I not protect the Windows portion anyways so it doesn't totally matter?

Input would be greatly appreciated

MacBook Air, macOS 12.5

Posted on Dec 4, 2022 1:08 PM

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Answer 1

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DerekM87

Community Specialist

Dec 6, 2022 3:18 PM in response to caity177

Hi caity177,

To get started, your overall understanding of each of the formats is correct, however APFS has a number of subtypes, namely APFS (Encrypted) in which it does encrypt the contents of that partition by default. If you choose the non-encrypted option, then yes if the external is stolen those contents are free to be accessed.

Additionally, it is recommended by Apple to use APFS, macOS Extended (Journaled) is an outdated file structure. If your Mac is on 10.13 or later, one of the APFS versions is the recommended file structure for both backups and the internal storage on your computer.

Also, clarifying here, are you wanting a second Mac partition on the external outside of the Time Machine backup? Is that correct?

As to your questions, whether or not that is enough space is subjective. At the moment that seems fine, but storage needs can change over time. Additionally the various partitions you'd be creating cannot be resized without deleting and recreating them.

Cheers!

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Partitioning External Drive

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