Can you partition an external hard drive

Home Computers How to Format an External Connect your external hard drive to a Windows computer. If your external hard drive is working, your computer will automatically detect it, and the drive will appear under Devices and Drives next to your internal drives in the This PC window. You can also find it in the left sidebar of File Explorer.

Right-click on the external hard drive and click Format. Choose a format under File System. But if you want the external hard drive to also work on a Mac, you should choose exFAT. Check the Quick Format box, and click Start. Depending on the size of the drive, and if there are files to be deleted in it, this can take a few to several minutes to finish.

Click OK when the Format Complete pop-up screen appears. Share This Post:. Share on facebook. Share on twitter. Share on linkedin. Share on reddit. Share on pinterest. Share on whatsapp. Share on email. Share on skype. Table of Contents. Benefits of External Hard Drive Partitioning How you partition data on your external hard drive is up to you. The benefits include better: 1. Data Backup and Recovery Most computer hard drives come with a small partition that serves as a backup.

Organization You can partition your external hard drive however you choose, organizing your data in a way that makes it easy to find at any time. Security External hard drive partitioning provides an extra layer of protection. Tips for How to Partition External Hard Drives It often helps to use a digital file shredder before you begin to partition your external hard drive. Finalize Your Partition Windows users can select Finish and Mac users can choose Apply to finalize the partitioning process.

Get The Shred Cube. Read More. What a revolutionary product that was created in my hometown! By some of the most hardworking family oriented people in the world. Top notch services and personnel with this company! Learn More About Computer Privacy:. March 25, March 30, Some computer users who partition external hard drives do so because it aids their file organization.

They might choose to have one partition for documents or music, another for installed programs and a third for storing drivers or other files. This cuts down on time spent searching for specific files, as each partition has only specific file types on it. Some owners of external hard drives use a small partition to create a central swap file or paging file for their entire system.

This gives their operating system a single location to write to and access from when using virtual memory, and lets the swap file be larger than it might be if it were located on a drive or partition with other files. Because the location of the virtual memory swap file is centralized, the OS can access it faster than if it had to access several swap files on different drives or partitions. Operating system crashes can have a devastating effect on installed software, especially if they are severe enough that the external hard drive or partition that the OS is installed on has to be reformatted and the operating system reinstalled.

Partitions can help prevent this, as you can create a partition to hold only the operating system and use other partitions to install or store all other programs and files.

Should the operating system crash, you can reformat its partition without affecting anything on the other partitions. Some older operating systems are not able to use the full amount of space available on a high-capacity external hard drive.