Formatting a Hard Drive

Article, Disk Utility, Intermediate, Mac OS X | March 6th, 2008

One great thing about the Mac operating system is all the tools available at your finger tips. One of these is Disk Utility. In this lesson you’ll learn how to format and partition your hard drive to suit your needs.

Warning: When you partition a storage device it will erase everything on the device. Make sure there is nothing important on the storage device because you will lose it.

1. First launch Disk Utility. This can be found at Applications > Utilities
2. After Disk Utility launches you’ll see your storage device in the left column. Select it and click on the Partition tab.
3. Now click on the drop down menu under “Volume Scheme” and select how many partitions you want to make. A partition is much like a file folder in a filing cabinet. You can partition your hard drive into multiple partitions of certain sizes and name them accordingly. In this case, I selected to create just one partition.
4. Make sure to give your partition a relevant name. Once your ready, click Apply.
5. Disk Utility will ask you if you are sure you want to partition the storage device. Everything on your hard drive will be erased, so MAKE SURE there is nothing on the hard drive that is of crucial importance to you. When you know your ready, click Partition. Disk Utility will do some partitioning and formating (as indicated in the bottom right with the progress bar) and your drive will be ready to use.

And there you have it you now have a newly partitioned hard drive. Easy, huh?