Here you'll find step by step instructions to format and partition 1 memory card or usb drive to use for both Dashcam and Music. Background Info To use 1 card for both Dashcam and Music, you'll need to virtually 'split' the card into 2 separate partitions. When insert into one of the front USB ports, the car will under.
![]() Caution - Doing this activity will erase everything on your USB drive
Step 1 Attach the USB Drive
Attach the USB drive that you want to use to create two partitions.My Mac already has two disks. This USB drive will become the third disk. This example uses a Mac that has two disks, and the third one is the USB drive.
Step 2 Find information about all the disk/drives on your Mac
Open Terminal.Find out details about all the disks using the command
diskutil list
Note:
disk3 is the one in which I want to create two FAT32 partitions.Note: disk3 was formatted as NTFS. You can first use Mac Disk Utility to erase the disk, reformat it using right format.Note: disk3 currently cannot be partitioned. See the icon being grayed out. At the end of the exercise, you will be able to partition it.
If you get prompted to use the drive for Time Machine, select 'Decide Later'
Step 3 Reformat from NTFS to FAT32
Using the command like one below, erase the disk
Step 4 Partition the USB Drive (disk3)
Now, you will be able to partition the disk using Disk Utility.
If you get an error like
MediaKit reports not enough space on device for requested operation.
Then run command like
Write zeros to the boot sector:
Remove the disk (detach the USB) and plug it in.
You will get message likeThe disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.
Initialize the Disk
Note: If you like the instructions here, please refer it on your posts/documentation. Contact me if there are corrections needed.
As people become more aware about its plus-points, hard drive partitioning is finding many more takers than in the previous years. And rightfully so; after all, it is good for the machine’s health, it helps isolate crucial data from personal thus ensuring more safety, helps organize data better and comes in handy when you wish to run more than one operating system on one machine. Against these advantages, the minor drawback of slightly reduced performance seems to fade out. This is the primary reason more Mac users too are taking the partitioning road.
So much so, that along with partitioning internal Mac hard drives, users are partitioning external drives and flash drives too in order to make them boot multiple operating systems on the run when required. However, hard drive partitioning can often become a problematic task marred by errors and unexpected hurdles. One such error crops up when you wish to partition Mac flash drive on OS X El Capitan.
In this article we’ll be discussing how to achieve Mac flash drive partitioning in the simplest and most error-free way possible.
Partitioning a flash drive on Mac – a brief introduction
This is for the benefit of those who’re not exactly sure what hard drive partitioning does to their drives.
When a flash drive is partitioned, the entire storage capacity of the device is divided into separate logical sections of storage. Each section is listed as a separate volume that you can find under the Devices section in the Finder sidebar. So if your flash drive has a capacity of 500GB, you can divided it into 2 partitions of 250GB each, one of which can be used with Mac and the other to boot Windows. Or two partitions of 250GB each one to store a bootable operating system and the other to serve as a backup destination.
To create a partition on a flash drive without formatting / erasing existing data, you can use Mac’s inbuilt Disk Utility feature. Just select the “Partition” button in Disk Utility, click on the Add (+) button and follow the instructions. After the drive is partitioned, an icon for each volume (newly created partition) appears in both the Disk Utility sidebar and the Finder sidebar.
Problems arising with flash drive partitioning on Mac
Sometimes, flash drive partitioning runs into problems. A few of the error scenarios are described here:
Disk Utility solutions to the above problems
All problems mentioned in the previous section can be resolved using different options within Disk Utility. Let us take each one in succession.
Partition option grayed out
Under Disk Utility, select the line with the model number of the hard drive, not the line with the name that you gave the partition. Then, the partition option will become active.
If you still find the option grayed out, that means your flash drive has a Master Boot Record (MBR) partition map. Remove all partitions through the “Erase” option. Then, you should be able to get to the Partition tab, and change the partition map to GUID. But before doing that, copy crucial data to another drive since erasing will delete all data present on the flash drive.
If this still doesn’t work, you can use the Terminal utility to partition the disk. Open Terminal and key in the following command:
diskutil partitionDisk disk1 2 MBR MS-DOS DOSEXC 20G ExFAT Exexchange R
Here is what each parameter in this command means
Now you should see the option to add more partitions to the disk.
![]()
Error “couldn’t unmount disk”
Image Source: Apple Stack Exchange
Under Disk Utility, right-click on the flash drive listed in the left hand panel and click on “unmount disk”. Once the disk is unmounted, click on the “Erase” button. The drive will be erased. Then you can proceed to the “Partition” option. As mentioned above, take care to backup all important data before pressing “Erase”.
Empty space doesn’t increase
Image Source: Apple Stack Exchange
Manual deletion doesn’t empty the Trash of the flash drive. Hence, use the “Erase” option to completely wipe the drive clean and then use the “Partition” option to create new volumes.
Mac formatted drives not recognized on Windows
Image Source: Windows EXE Errors
The Disk Utility advanced options are hidden in El Capitan. Thus, to format the flash drive on Mac such that even a Windows system recognizes it, you need to execute some commands on the Terminal. For this:
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility advanced-image-options 1 Now re-launch Disk Utility and format your USB with MBR Partition and exFAT file System.
Recommended Solution
Though the above mentioned solutions will fix the issue in 95% of the cases, the solutions themselves (specially the command-line one) can be a little too technical for some users. Moreover, some deeper, more complex issue might prevent you from partitioning the flash drive even after applying the above solutions.
Hence, we recommend using Stellar Partition Manager software to efficiently create, resize, format, manage, as well as delete partitions on Mac hard drives. Additionally, this product also works with BOOT volumes without causing any data loss. And above all, it has the advantage of an interactive user interface making the entire process much easier.
To sum it up
Don’t let minor problems stop you from partitioning your flash drives or other external drives on Mac. Use our helpful pointers to deal with issues, and if nothing works, trust Stellar Partition Manager to assist you.
![]() Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |