Partition SSD external hard drive on Imac + Bootcamp

[SirApple]

Hi everyone,

I have tried to find a thread containing this subject but have not been able to find it, but if it is out there, please refer it to me

I have an Imac and I have installed bootcamp with windows in order to play windows games through steam.

My plan is to buy either a T5 or T7 samsung ssd harddrive (if anyone has a better recommendation please let me know ) and use it both in MacOS and windows and split it in half with a partition, e.g 500gb to each and use it for games on the windows partition.

My question is: Is it possible to do or is there any format issue (NTFS and the others etc) when I want to use it for both MacOS and Windows? Or will the ssd see it as the same since it is a mac computer?

I am a bit lost, as you can hear, so any clarification is appreciated

 

[casperes1996]

You don't even need to split it in two actually. If you format it with ExFAT you can use a single partition for both macOS and Windows. Make Steam put a Steam Library folder on it and the folder can be used for Steam in Windows while you put everything else you want on there both from macOS and Windows.

If you use NTFS it will be fully functional in Windows but read-only in macOS. If you use APFS it will only work in macOS. If you use HFS+ It will fully work in macOS but be read-only in Windows. ExFAT will be fully functional on both

 

[SirApple]

Awesome! Thank you very much for the clarification 🙌

 

[casperes1996]

Awesome! Thank you very much for the clarification 🙌

No problem
I actually think you can even make Steam share the library folder on the drive between macOS and Windows; I think I did that last time I had a setup like that, but it did get Steam a little confused, showing Windows games as ready to play inside macOS with obvious errors when you tried, but yeah. Works

 

[theSeb]

Don't use exFAT. It's designed for small external drives and flash drives. Not for SSDs. Use NTFS for the windows partition. It will work much faster. Just search for NTFS vs exFAT SSD to read up on this. Bog standard exFAT does not support TRIM on OS X, so this is a really bad idea in general.

I happen to have a spare external SSD lying around and, since I was installing Visual Studio, I figured I would play around with this.

1. Go to bootcamp, then right click on My Computer, click manage, then go to disk management
2. In there you should see your external drive. You need to create two NTFS partitions of whatever size you want. It's fairly easy to use and loads of help on the old tinternet. Initialise the drive to GPT
3. Go into your Mac OS partition and open Disk Utility. Now you should be able to right click on the first SSD partition and click Erase. Choose APFS. I wasn't able to do this to the second partition and had errors. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to investigate why this happen and how to fix it. But the first partition worked fine.

Now you have an SSD with an APFS partition and a NTFS one. As was mentioned, you can only read the one and not the other. However, Windows cannot read APFS at all. You have various easy solutions for that

3 Ways To Open APFS Drives In Windows 10

With macOS High Sierra, Apple introduced its new file system called APFS (Apple File System) for Mac computers. APFS replaced the Mac OS Extended (HFS+)

www.intowindows.com

 

[casperes1996]

Don't use exFAT. It's designed for small external drives and flash drives. Not for SSDs. Use NTFS for the windows partition. It will work much faster. Just search for NTFS vs exFAT SSD to read up on this. Bog standard exFAT does not support TRIM on OS X, so this is a really bad idea in general.

I happen to have a spare external SSD lying around and, since I was installing Visual Studio, I figured I would play around with this.

1. Go to bootcamp, then right click on My Computer, click manage, then go to disk management
2. In there you should see your external drive. You need to create two NTFS partitions of whatever size you want. It's fairly easy to use and loads of help on the old tinternet. Initialise the drive to GPT
3. Go into your Mac OS partition and open Disk Utility. Now you should be able to right click on the first SSD partition and click Erase. Choose APFS. I wasn't able to do this to the second partition and had errors. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to investigate why this happen and how to fix it. But the first partition worked fine.

Now you have an SSD with an APFS partition and a NTFS one. As was mentioned, you can only read the one and not the other. However, Windows cannot read APFS at all. You have various easy solutions for that

3 Ways To Open APFS Drives In Windows 10

With macOS High Sierra, Apple introduced its new file system called APFS (Apple File System) for Mac computers. APFS replaced the Mac OS Extended (HFS+)

www.intowindows.com

View attachment 969039
View attachment 969038

This is also an approach and you're completely right about the limitations of ExFAT. However, I would personally argue that the convenience factor in this case would outweigh the drawbacks.
But thanks for adding to the thread so the OP has more knowledge to make the best decision for them

 

[theSeb]

Not having TRIM is more than just a drawback.

 

[casperes1996]

Not having TRIM is more than just a drawback.

Depends what your usage is. If you write a couple of big files, and never delete and rewrite, it makes 0 difference. If you constantly write and delete it is a bigger deal, but the effects of TRIM depend on usage. The way I used my external SSD for a while with ExFAT was to regularly erase the whole disk, which effectively gives the same benefits as TRIM. - I'd install games onto it, play the games, erase the whole disk, repeat. These days it's used as an APFS backup disk, but yeah

 

[SirApple]

Don't use exFAT. It's designed for small external drives and flash drives. Not for SSDs. Use NTFS for the windows partition. It will work much faster. Just search for NTFS vs exFAT SSD to read up on this. Bog standard exFAT does not support TRIM on OS X, so this is a really bad idea in general.

I happen to have a spare external SSD lying around and, since I was installing Visual Studio, I figured I would play around with this.

1. Go to bootcamp, then right click on My Computer, click manage, then go to disk management
2. In there you should see your external drive. You need to create two NTFS partitions of whatever size you want. It's fairly easy to use and loads of help on the old tinternet. Initialise the drive to GPT
3. Go into your Mac OS partition and open Disk Utility. Now you should be able to right click on the first SSD partition and click Erase. Choose APFS. I wasn't able to do this to the second partition and had errors. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to investigate why this happen and how to fix it. But the first partition worked fine.

Now you have an SSD with an APFS partition and a NTFS one. As was mentioned, you can only read the one and not the other. However, Windows cannot read APFS at all. You have various easy solutions for that

3 Ways To Open APFS Drives In Windows 10

With macOS High Sierra, Apple introduced its new file system called APFS (Apple File System) for Mac computers. APFS replaced the Mac OS Extended (HFS+)

www.intowindows.com

View attachment 969039
View attachment 969038

Thank you for your insights, definitely worth taking into account.
If you set x gb towards APFS, then that is set in stone until you format the whole drive? or can you adjust over time?

And now a bonus question I just thought of:

Question
Does exfat also work for PS4 / PS5?
If I would go with a split of APFS and NTFS, where would then playstation fit in that scenario? Or does that have its own third format?

Once again, thanks for all help

 

[casperes1996]

Thank you for your insights, definitely worth taking into account.
If you set x gb towards APFS, then that is set in stone until you format the whole drive? or can you adjust over time?

And now a bonus question I just thought of:

Question
Does exfat also work for PS4 / PS5?
If I would go with a split of APFS and NTFS, where would then playstation fit in that scenario? Or does that have its own third format?

Once again, thanks for all help

Basically everything can read/write ExFAT, so I would highly assume PlayStation can as well. The PS3 definitely could, and I think my brother has used it on a PS4, but I'm actually not ready to guarantee that. It would be very strange to me if it didn't work though. Keep in mind though that since SSD speed is actually a factor for PS5 games, you might not be able to install PS5 games to it, only PS4 and other data.

As for the PlayStation's "native" file system, well, it's based off of FreeBSD, so it's likely to either be UFS (Unix File System) maybe version 2, or ZFS. Could also be EXT4 or BtrFS, but basically anything can use ExFAT.

As for whether the GB allocation is fixed or not - Well, within an APFS container you can add and remove as many APFS volumes you want and they will all do space-sharing. But when sharing with another file system you will need to use partitions and they will somewhat be set in stone, but not entirely. It depends on how they are in the partition hierarchy. I guess the short answer here is that for this setup I'm not entirely sure what resizing restrictions you might have

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I have a 2TB external SSD that I formatted 50/50 APFS / NTFS. Haven’t had any issues yet. The internal SSD is 1TB, with 75% to macOS and 25% to Bootcamp Windows.

The only issue I had was my external in windows started as drive D, but for some reason moved to drive E, and has stayed there since. This screwed up Epic’s game launcher though, which forced me to re-download the games.

 

[theSeb]

Because you are using APFS and NTFS partitions you cannot resize this arrangement, as far as I know. I have tried on my little test drive and it does not appear to be possible. You can mess around within each one, such as split and create APFS volumes or partitions in the APFS bit. You can create sub partitions on the NTFS bit in Windows.

PS4 can read FAT32 and exFAT for external drives. We don't know yet what PS5 is going to do. But it would not fit the ntfs/apfs split. I would get a separate drive for playstation stuff.

 

[theSeb]

I have a 2TB external SSD that I formatted 50/50 APFS / NTFS. Haven’t had any issues yet. The internal SSD is 1TB, with 75% to macOS and 25% to Bootcamp Windows.

The only issue I had was my external in windows started as drive D, but for some reason moved to drive E, and has stayed there since. This screwed up Epic’s game launcher though, which forced me to re-download the games.

Right click on My Computer, click Manage, then to go Storage --> Disk Management. You will see your drive there. Right click on the NTFS partition and select Change Drive Letter and Paths...

You will then be able to set your drive back to D (if it is an available drive letter)

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Right click on My Computer, click Manage, then to go Storage --> Disk Management. You will see your drive there. Right click on the NTFS partition and select Change Drive Letter and Paths...

You will then be able to set your drive back to D (if it is an available drive letter)

Hey thanks for the tip! Didn’t know this was possible.

 

[lapot]

I made it easier. I bought a Samsung T7 SSD for 1 Tb and put Windows on it. now when you need to play, we load with SSD

 

[SirApple]

Hi everyone,

I finally got my T7

I just tried to make 2 partition on it.

First made it into a APFS (it was exfat to begin with) and then tried to make a partition with NTFS but I can only select the full 2TB size of the SSD. I would like to only have 400gb of NTFS, how do I accomplish that?

Can anyone assist me in how to setup this correct with disc utility?

Much appreciated

 

[SirApple]

Hi everyone,

I finally got my T7

I just tried to make 2 partition on it.

First made it into a APFS (it was exfat to begin with) and then tried to make a partition with NTFS but I can only select the full 2TB size of the SSD. I would like to only have 400gb of NTFS, how do I accomplish that?

Can anyone assist me in how to setup this correct with disc utility?

Much appreciated

Hi everyone,


PLEASE help me with this! 🙏

 

[casperes1996]

Hi everyone,


PLEASE help me with this! 🙏

Please describe the procedure you've followed so far in attempting to partition the drive