How to Partition an External Hard Drive to Backup Windows Data & Mac Data

If you have an external hard drive with a USB connection, you can use that storage space to back up data on both Mac and Windows computers. However, in order to store Mac and Windows data on the same external hard drive, you will need to use Apple's Disk Utility to partition the drive into two separate partitions.

Things You'll Need

• External hard drive
• USB cable
• Mac and PC computers

Instructions

1. Connect the external hard drive to your Mac computer using a USB cable.

2. Open the Disk Utility program, which can be found in the "Applications" folder on your Mac computer.

3. Select the external hard drive from the list of available drives on the left side of the Disk Utility window.

4. Go to the "Partition" tab at the top of the window.

5. Choose "2 Partitions" from the "Volume Scheme" drop-down menu.

6. Click on the first partition and choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" as the format.

7. Click on the second partition and choose "MS-DOS (FAT)" as the format.

8. Click on the "Apply" button to partition the drive and put equal space on the drive for both Mac and Windows backup data.

References

• Partitioning a Disk with Disk Utility