Most Popular Mac Partition Manager Applications

Whether you need to partition external hard drive mac or create recovery partition Mac, our list of best Mac partition manager applications is here to help. With these applications, you won’t have to spend time typing obscure commands into Terminal or read lengthy forum threads just to learn how to resize a partition or erase a hard drive.

Before you go ahead rearrange your existing partitions, you should back up all important data. You can either manually copy everything to another hard drive, or you can create a sector-by-sector copy. The latter option is perfect for system partitions as it allows you to restore your operating system to a working order should anything go wrong.

partition hard drive mac

Disk Utility

By far the most popular partition manager application for Mac OS X is Apple’s Disk Utility. This simple tool can perform a wide variety of disk-related tasks, including partition creation, conversion, compression, and even encryption.

Its user interface is well designed and divided into three sections. On the left is a list of all available storage devices. Next to them is the main partition management window. On the bottom are storage device details.

All you have to do is select your storage device from the list on the left, tell Disk Utility what kind of disk management task you would like to perform, and that’s it. Disk Utility can format partitions, verify and repair permissions, securely delete free space using a zero out data, a 7-pass DOD 5220-22 M standard, or a 35-pass Gutmann algorithm, and much more. Because it was developed by Apple, you won’t experience any compatibility issues.

Stellar Partition Manager

Even though Disk Utility can perform virtually all partition management tasks, its support for various file systems isn’t nearly as stellar. If you have a hard drive with Windows on it, you need a partition management software that supports NTFS resizing partition Mac. Stellar Partition Manager is the most recommended application to people who ask how to partition a hard drive Mac with the NTFS file system.

Besides NTFS, it also supports HFS, FAT, and exFAT files systems. You can create, format, resize, and hide partitions with just a few clicks, and the software actively ensures that no data is lost during partitioning.

iPartition

iPartition is the most complex disk partitioning tool on this list. It supports all popular file systems, including NTFS, allows you to change the size of a partition that’s currently full of data without reformatting, and can normally recover the disk even if you pull the plug during repartitioning.

The software costs $49.95, and, depending on your country, you might also have to pay VAT. While certainly not cheap, it works so great that you won’t ever have to wonder how to delete partition on mac ever again.

Bonus: Disk Drill

To handle any disk management-related situation, including data recovery, you should have at your disposal a powerful data recovery application such as Disk Drill. Even if your hard drive fails and you lose all your data, Disk Drill can help you get back on your feet in no time.

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Arthur Cole

Arthur Cole is a freelance content creator. He also has a more than 10-year experience in program development for macOS, Windows, iOS, Android. Arthur Cole is a writer with deep expertise in programming, who can easily...

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Brett Johnson

This article has been approved by Brett Johnson, Data Recovery Engineer at ACE Data Recovery. Brett has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Systems and Network, 12 years of experience.