How to Determine the Order of MacOS Partitions in Disk Utility?

If you are already using an APFS formatted drive then there is no need to alter any drive partition. The APFS format allows APFS volumes to grow or shrink dynamically as the number of files and their storage requirements change. If you want to allow a single volume to have access to the entire drive space available on the device, just delete any other APFS volumes that are in that container. It doesn't matter where these APFS volumes are on the timeline of creation. You will add and delete APFS volumes using Disk Utility.

Ref: File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

❝ APFS allocates disk space within a container (partition) on demand. When a single APFS container has multiple volumes, the container’s free space is shared and is automatically allocated to any of the individual volumes as needed. If desired, you can specify reserve and quota sizes for each volume. Each volume uses only part of the overall container, so the available space is the total size of the container, minus the size of all the volumes in the container.❞

BeldarConehead wrote:

The Disk Utility instructions for increasing the size of a partition say that the partition to be resized cannot be the last one on the device. To enlarge a partition, first delete the one after it on the device.

Before I start deleting partitions on the chance that they may come after the one to be enlarged, I'd like to validate my assumptions.

In Disk Utility, is the order of a partition on the device indicated by the order in which it is listed, or by the lexicographical value of the partition name? How does the order on the device correlate to this, i.e. is a later-listed partition further down on the device or further up? Is a higher-named partition further down or higher up?

Partitions.... whats going on here exactly.

Diskutility falls short resizing partitions in the APFS situation. Typically erasing the drive and starting over is recommended to regain all your SSD space...

today we use Containers. Volumes can be added and removed within a Container w/ no penalty.

ref: Add, delete, or erase APFS volumes in Disk Utility on Mac

random example from the Terminal app

MacBook-Pro ~ % diskutil list internal

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 314.6 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_APFS Container disk1 1.0 TB disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +1.0 TB disk1

Physical Store disk0s2

1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 11.2 GB disk1s1

2: APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 11.2 GB disk1s1s1

3: APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data 573.6 GB disk1s2

4: APFS Volume Preboot 2.6 GB disk1s3

5: APFS Volume Recovery 1.3 GB disk1s4

6: APFS Volume VM 2.1 GB disk1s5

If I may ask, what is your purpose for repartitioning your drive?

You should consider using the APFS format for the drive you will be working with. APFS allows for improved volume size management over the older HFS+ drive format. APFS is the default format used by macOS since the release of macOS 10.15 Catalina. It is optimized for use on SSDs, but also works on HDDs.

With the Mac OS Extended (HFS+) format, you select a drive device and then select Partition. You will be presented a pie graph that shows the various partitions on that drive. The partitions are ordered clockwise as they were created on the disk. You can work with the partitions in reverse clockwise order. This layout is typical of drives formatted with HFS+ format.

However, the APFS drive format makes this sort of partition management obsolete. APFS formatted drives use a scheme that is more fluid and easier to work with.

A drive that is formatted with APFS may have one or more containers defined optionally with size limits and quotas. The basic APFS format is constructed with a single container that claims and dynamically allocates the entire drive storage capacity among a number of drive volumes within the container. These volumes can grow and shrink in size as the needs of the files stored within them increases and decreases.

To add or delete a partition to an APFS disk, one simply adds or deletes drive volumes within the container. The change is very fast, much faster than repartitioning an HFS+ formatted drive.

Please see: File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

HWTech wrote:

As to your question regarding the ordering of the partitions. I'm not sure Disk Utility has this ability. I believe one of the command line utilities is necessary to discover the actual physical ordering of partitions on a macOS drive.

In Disk Utility, when you select a disk (device) in the leftmost pane, then click the Partition icon you get a nice pie chart showing the Partitions (and/or Containers) in their physical order going clockwise starting at the 12:00 position. Also there, you can add, delete or resize the partitions/containers subject to the rules for creating/deleting/resizing. Normally you have to work counter-clockwise from the last partition/container in order to change anything.

Not that I'm encouraging anyone to partition a drive or create multiple Containers. Partitions made some sense in the HFS+ days but not with APFS.

If you have an Apple Silicon Mac (and your profile says you have a MacBookPro M1) then you should not have any Partitions at all. You should have a single APFS Container that contains 2 Volumes (with default names Macintosh HD & Macintosh HD - Data) plus 3 hidden Volumes (Preboot, Recovery & VM) and a macOS update Snapshot. All these share the entire space of the Container, which in nearly all cases is the full size of the disk (SSD or HDD); you do not resize them or remove any of them.

If you create additional Volumes on your own, you can specify a maximum size for each when you create them and later change that maximum size; but those Volumes still share the space within the APFS Container.

If you actually did Partition the system drive on an Apple Silicon Mac you should wipe the drive and re-do from scratch with only the one APFS Container. Partitioning the system disk of an M-series Mac is not recommended.

OTOH, if you are talking about an external drive that is formatted MacOS Extended, then, yes, it is possible to have multiple partitions. You can visualize the order of the partitions in the Partition Tab in Disk Utility, which is the same place you would create, resize or delete partitions.

The others have already given great advice. I agree & go even further that no one should be making multiple partitions on any drive because they usually discover one or more partitions are too small.

As to your question regarding the ordering of the partitions. I'm not sure Disk Utility has this ability. I believe one of the command line utilities is necessary to discover the actual physical ordering of partitions on a macOS drive. Theoretically Disk Utility (or rather macOS) tends to provide device identifiers in the order a drive appears, which I would also assume would apply to partitions, but cannot say for certain. A few years ago I believe I saw a difference between what Disk Utility reported and what a different command line utility reported....I trust that other command line utility more than I trust Disk Utility since everything I've seen with Disk Utility tells me it is a terrible app.