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GUID partition map or Apple partition map

I have seagate external portable hard-drive 1 TB, and I will be using with following Mac's.


  • 13" White MacBook (Intel Core 2 Duo) running Snow Leopard
  • 13" MacBook Air (Intel Core i5) running Lion
  • iMac running Lion


What partition map I should use, GUID or Apple when formatting external portable hard-drive?


Once more question, I want to format it with HFS+ type. Is HFS+ synonym for Mac OS Extended Journaled type?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Apr 26, 2012 11:05 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 26, 2012 11:25 AM

GUID + OS X Extended Journaled (aka HFS+)


Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's


https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents

3 replies

Dec 2, 2012 11:35 AM in response to mhtjj

The solution I used when couldn’t save files on my Seagate external hard drive from my MacBook Air was to do a partition on my Seagate 1TB external hard drive. If you follow the next steps it will take you 5 minutes to do it from step 3. I hope this helps


  1. Connect your external hard drive to your MacBook Air
  2. Save all the information you already have on your Seagate external hard drive on your Mac or any other device that allows you to do so.

3. Go to Finder and click on the Applications option from the Favorites section

4- Click on Utilities and double click on Disk Utility

5- Click on your Seagate external hard drive to select it

6- Click on the Partition tab that appears at the top on the right hand pane

7- Click on the Current tab to select how many partitions you want from the drop down (you can select from1 to 16) it is totally up to you.

I will assume you only want 2 partitions

8- Click on the top window (partion1) and give a name on the Name field. I’ll assume you want the first partition is for Windows so you would call it WINDOWS if you want.

9- On the Format field select MS-DOS (FAT) from the drop down.

10- On the Size field Select how many GB you want to reserve for this first partition; I selected 200 GB

11- Now, click on the second window (partition2)

12- Give a name on the Name field. I’ll assume you want the second partition to be Macintosh so you would call it MACINTOSH if you want to.

13- On the Format field select Mac OS Extended (journaled) from the drop down.

14- On the Size field Select how many GB you want to reserve for this second partition; I selected 800 GB,

15- Click the Options button to select PC Partition Scheme to enable a partition for use on a Windows computer. Select Master Boot Record.

16- Click on the Apply button


You are done….

May 6, 2016 9:11 AM in response to MacTigre

For number "9- On the Format field select MS-DOS (FAT) from the drop down." Later in Windows format that partition to NTFS for better support, but Disk Utility doesn't allow it. If you're planning to partition with any other partitioning environment such as Parted Magic or EaseUs partition master or similar, you don't need to because it will detect it as unpartitioned space anyway..


And about the partition table, also is you're planing to use with Windows or Linux dual/multiboot you can use GPT if you're having EFI/UEFI bios type, using MBR is necessary only if you're having motherboard/laptop with legacy bios (speaking of "hackintosh" - installing OS X on PC, ofcourse if you have original installation DVD or installation media from apple store and own a mac😝 )

GUID partition map or Apple partition map

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