MacBook Pro 16" M4 – who splits their onboard SSD into Volumes or into Partitions?

[sparkie7]

Pros & Cons?

Have 1 1TB SSD on my MBP 16" M4. Would love to hear your opinions, and what are the advantages / disadvantages

Or do most people just keep it one volume only?

 

[Fishrrman]

I did, just to see if it would work.
It did.

I created a second "hard" partition on my 2021 MacBook Pro 14".
Formatted to HFS+ (NOT APFS).
It works.

But... I find I don't really need it, because the MBP isn't really my "main Mac" and not much stuff is on it.

I reckon I might be the only Apple Silicon MacBook Pro user in this forum who has an HFS+ partition on his internal SSD...

 

[FreakinEurekan]

There's an argument to be made for having multiple Volumes. I don't do it, but there can be reasons to.

Anyone who's Partitioning in APFS, is performing masochism IMO.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Pros & Cons?

Have 1 1TB SSD on my MBP 16" M4. Would love to hear who opinions, and what are the advantages / disadvantages

Or do most people just keep it one volume only?

I don't have that model of Mac but I have historically partitioned the internal drive of my laptops. Among other things this allows me to maintain multiple OS on the system with hard partitions between them (so even if one uses a different version of APFS/volume manager, they shouldn't conflict...though this gets a little messier given macOS's propensity to automount everything...though manual fstab entries can mitigate).

I don't just keep the OS separate though I keep the partition holding my home folder separate. Conversely to the previous, this allows me to share that partition across OS if I want and/or completely blow away a macOS instance without touching my home folder.

Mine is a more technical installation than typical and not for everyone. I suspect very few Mac users do this. I also haven't tried this under Sequoia though I am assuming for now they didn't break this.

In any case before doing this/committing to this, I would ask what problem(s) are you trying to solve?

 

[mathewgx]

Anyone who's Partitioning in APFS, is performing masochism IMO.

Why is that?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Why is that?

There's very, very little that partitioning can accomplish that can't be done easier and more flexibly with volumes.

If you NEED a partition - that's a very specialized function and you'll know what to do with it.
If you're not sure - use a Volume.