Disk Utility

[police340]

Hi, i have a 3TB Western Digital hard drive that I cannot seem to partition to 3TB. It only lets me do about 89GB. Ive tried all sorts of options to no avail. Any ideas? Thanks, Bill

 

[Apple_Robert]

Did you set the drive as Journal Extended, APFS?

 

[chabig]

You didn't clearly explain what you're trying to do and why. What format is the drive? How many partitions do you want? What sizes? What kind of error are you getting? Screenshots help a lot!

 

[gilby101]

If it is a new drive, my guess would be that you need to use Erase the disk. Otherwise as @chabig says.

 

[police340]

Did you set the drive as Journal Extended, APFS?

Yes Sir. Thanks.

 

[police340]

You didn't clearly explain what you're trying to do and why. What format is the drive? How many partitions do you want? What sizes? What kind of error are you getting? Screenshots help a lot!

I am trying to partition/format as one large drive. Here are two screenshots. Even if i change the parameters, it still partition the size it wants, not what I want. Thanks for the help all.

 

[chabig]

I think your best bet here is to just avoid the Partition button and just use the Erase button. That should leave you with a single 3TB volume.

 

[police340]

I think your best bet here is to just avoid the Partition button and just use the Erase button. That should leave you with a single 3TB volume.

Wow! That worked and i thought I had already tried that. Why is the partitioning not working. Thanks ChaBig!

 

[chabig]

Why is the partitioning not working.

With APFS, partitioning is no longer really a "thing". We used to use partitions to keep data logically separated. APFS is designed so that a normal device has a single Container. Inside the container are Volumes. The volumes are logically separate in the way that partitions were separate on older file systems. But whereas partitioning required space to be dedicated, APFS volumes all share the space inside a single Container.

So, going forward, if you ever thought you'd want to partition a drive to separate data. Don't. Just create another Volume inside the same container.

 

[police340]

With APFS, partitioning is no longer really a "thing". We used to use partitions to keep data logically separated. APFS is designed so that a normal device has a single Container. Inside the container are Volumes. The volumes are logically separate in the way that partitions were separate on older file systems. But whereas partitioning required space to be dedicated, APFS volumes all share the space inside a single Container.

So, going forward, if you ever thought you'd want to partition a drive to separate data. Don't. Just create another Volume inside the same container.

Thanks for an excellent explanation Chabig. Much appreciated.

 

[joevt]

Wow! That worked and i thought I had already tried that. Why is the partitioning not working. Thanks ChaBig!

Disk Utility does not deal with Free Space partitions very well. Or it least it won't let you create Free Space partitions (which may be an indication that it does not know how to deal with them). In this case I might use iPartition.app do deal with the free space partition. iPartition can delete partitions without changing the size of existing partitions and it can move partitions around. It does not know how to deal with APFS partitions so I wouldn't use it to change their size but I think it can still be used to change their position.

Did you try clicking on the circle icon of the NYPD3TB partition to increase its size?
But if you don't care about the existing contents of the existing partitions (NYPD3TB) then the erase option is the best.

As for APFS containers, yes it's more efficient to put all your volumes in a single container. But I like my different macOS versions to be in separate partitions/containers even though I can't give a good reason for that except for habit.