cannot partition external hard drive in el capitan

Question

cannot partition external hard drive in el capitan

my + and - buttons are greyed-out. i cannot partition.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 7, 2017 1:40 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Sep 7, 2017 1:48 PM in response to Community User

You cannot add a partition to an exFAT format as you see it in Disk Utility.

Drive Partition and Format

Open Disk Utility in the Utilities' folder.
After Disk Utility loads select the drive (out-dented entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the side list.
Click on the Erase tab in the Disk Utility toolbar. A panel should drop down.
In the drop down panel set the partition scheme to GUID. Set the Format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
Click on the Apply button and click on the Done button when it is activated.
Quit Disk Utility.

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Answer 2

Oct 18, 2017 8:27 PM in response to Kappy

I have this issue with my external NTFS windows drive. OS X sees the 610GB disk, the 60GB of windows data with 560gb free space, and a separate 16gb recovery disk. I can not partition the additional 560gb of additional free space as the partition tab is grayed out. Do I need to attempt to add a partition on a windows based device disk manager for FAT? Or will I need a third party software?

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