Resize Hard Drive Partition Mac

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. Hi I am having issues trying to resize my Mac OS partition, I previously had a very large recovery partition almost 100gb as a result of removing my linux installation, I since resized this to 650mb. The problem is I am unsure on how to increase the size of my main Mac OS partition as I have no experience with this new container disk stuff. Resizing Mac partition using Disk Utility. Step 1: Open Disk Utility. In Spotlight search box, type 'Disk Utility' and double click on the first result that shows. Step 2: Select the Mac hard drive you want to partition, click the 'Partition' icon (next to 'First Aid'). Now navigate the circle to adjust the size you want, and hit. The Disk Utility is developed to allow you to resize Mac disk & OS X partitions as well as add, remove the user-accessible disk partitions. When you open Disk Utility, it will show the user-accessible partitions.

1. Disk Utility Resize Partition
2. Resize Hard Drive Partition Mac Os
3. How To Resize Mac Partition

Summary :

Do you have a free software to resize partition so as to make the computer functions smoothly and enhance partition performance? This article provided by MiniTool Partition Wizard will show you how to resize partition Windows 10 with three best partition management freeware.

Resize Partition with Windows PowerShell Utility

Windows PowerShell, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language, is a task automation and configuration management framework. It's a free tool you that can be used to resize partition. You can shrink a partition to get unallocated space and extend small partitions with the space with it.

Here are the detailed steps to shrink a volume.

Step 1. Press Win + S to run Search utility. Then type power in the search box, right-click Windows PowerShell from the search results and select Run as administrator.

Step 2: In Windows PowerShell, input the following commands one by one and press Enter after each to execute them:

• Diskpart
• List volume
• Select volume * (replace * with the volume number of which you want to shrink)
• Shrink desired=# (# is the size you want to shrink in MB)

Once the partition is successfully shrunk, you can exit Windows PowerShell. If you're not familiar with this tool or you don't want to remember the command lines, you can try the next free utility.

Resize Partition with Disk Management Utility

Disk Management is a built-in tool in Windows 10 which can help make some simple partition managements like create, delete, and format partitions. It is able to help you resize partition Windows 10 though it still has some limitations.

To resize partition Windows 10 with Disk Management, you can follow the steps as below.

Step 1. Right-click the Windows Start menu and choose Disk Management.

Step 2. Select the partition you want to resize and right-click, choose Extend Volume feature or Shrink Volume feature to resize the partition. For example, if you want to shrink volume Windows 10, you may choose Shrink Volume.

Step 3. Enter the amount of space that you want to shrink in MB. Then click Shrink.

Note: To extend a partition, there must be contiguous unallocated space behind the partition that you want to extend. Besides, Disk Management is unable to resize a FAT 32 partition as the Extend Volume or Shrink Volume function only works to a RAW or NTFS partition, which could cause inconvenience.

So, Disk Management is not our best choice anyway, as it is not comprehensive enough for user to perform various disk management operations. Therefore, I would like to recommend a free partition manager - MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition – a powerful and absolutely free software to resize partition for home and individual users.

Resize Partition with a Free Partition Manager

Currently, there are various partition managers on market with distinctive functions, while among which, only a few are really useful.

MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, developed by MiniTool Software Ltd., is a reputable and reliable partition manager trusted by tens of millions of people. With this powerful partition manager, many complicated operations can be completed, such as extend partition, convert NTFS to FAT, migrate OS to HD/SSD, convert MBR to GPT without data loss, copy disk and so on.

As it is such an excellent partition manager, many users use it to resize partitions and perform advanced operations to enhance partition performance. MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition is totally free, and it supports for Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista and Windows XP.

Now let's see how to resize partition with the excellent partition manager.

Step 1. Download MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition by clicking the following button. Install it on your computer and launch it to get the main interface.

Step 2. Select the partition that you want to resize and click Move/Resize Partition from the left action panel.

Step 3. The blue handle represents partition while the blank area means unallocated space. Do the followings and click OK to go back to the main interface. Alternatively, you can manually type specified partition size in MB, GB, or TB.

To extend a partition, lengthen the handle to occupy more unallocated space. To shrink a partition, shorten the handle by dragging the triangles.

Step 4. Unreal 2004 mac. Click Apply to allow the pending operation.

Further Reading: Resize Partition on MacOS and Ubuntu

Now you have known three ways to resize partition free on Windows. But what should you do if you're using macOS or Ubuntu? They are different operating system platforms and the steps to resize partition are different. Let's get more details in the following contents.

Resize Partition Mac

Similar to Windows, Mac also has a built-in tool for disk management. It is Disk Utility which can be used to resize volume/partition size.

Before you use this utility to make any changes, here are some rules you need to follow:

• If you want to extend a volume on Mac, you have to delete the volume that is directly after the target volume to get necessary space. Besides, the last volume on a disk is unable to be extended.
• Only disks with GUID Partition Map can be resized without data loss.

Without further ado, let's see how to extend a volume with Disk Utility.

Step 1. In macOS, press Command + Space to open Spotlight search. Then type Disk Utility and press Enter to open Disk Utility.

Step 2. Select the hard drive which contains the volume you want to extend and click the Partition button on the toolbar. Then a pie chart will appear to display all the volumes on the hard drive.

Step 3: Select the volume after the target volume that you want to resize and click the Minus button (-) to delete it. Click Apply to execute the operating if you're sure to do it.

Step 4: Select the target volume and drag the resize control or type the new size in the Size field to extend the target volume. Then click Apply.

Resize Partition Ubuntu

Whether you want to shrink or extend your Ubuntu partition, you can't do it while it's in use. You need an Ubuntu live CD or USB drive which contains GParted partition editor if you want to make any changes to your partitions.

But things could go easier if you're using both Windows and Ubuntu on your computer. In this case, you can complete Ubuntu extend partition task under Windows operating system. For detailed steps, you can refer to our previous post: The Simplest Way to Resize Ubuntu Partition Under Windows.

Bottom Line

With MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, you may extend or shrink a partition at ease. So, if you want to find an easy and convenient way to resize partition Windows 10, MiniTool Partition Wizard must be your best choice. In addition, you can also find some suggestions here if you want to resize partition on macOS or Ubuntu.

If you have any question about how to resize partition Windows 10, you can leave a message in the following comment zone and we will reply as soon as possible. If you need any help while using MiniTool software, you can contact us via [email protected].

Summary

Disk Utility got a facelift with the launch of OS X El Capitan. But this makeover didn't go well for a handful of Mac users. Some of them find difficult to perform regular disk management activities on Apple hard disk drives including partitioning the disk, creating, resizing and deleting a partition.

Good News Arriving Soon

Very soon we will need to partition our Mac hard drive in order to make room for macOS Sierra installation which Apple announced this WWDC 2016 in San Francisco.

Tip

But before the time arrives to partition the Mac hard drive for macOS Sierra installation, it is equally necessary to backup the data on Mac startup disk drive to avoid losing any files during the upgrade or installation processes.

OS X El Capitan Partitioning

With the help of screenshots, I will be explaining some basic set of activities that are to be done while partition the OS X El Capitan drive. Alternatively, the same procedure will be explained with the help of a disk manager utility known as Stellar Partition Manager.

Background

I am using an old 40 GB external hard drive to create, resize and delete partition with Disk Utility and Stellar Partition Manager software.

** Resolving Partition Option Greyed Out issue

1. Select the external disk from the left side of Disk Utility
2. Unfortunately, the Disk Utility partition option is greyed out (see below screenshot)

Solution: Select the ‘Generic USB Disk Media' and the partition option will become active.

Partition Button is Now Active

Click the Partition button to start partitioning the external drive

Task 1) To create 3 Partitions of below sizes (using Disk Utility)

1. Partition A = 20 GB
2. Partition B = ~10 GB
3. Partition C = ~10 GB

Step 1) Enter partition name and format i.e. ‘Partition A' and ‘OS X Extended Journaled'

Step 2) Enter partition size i.e. 20 GB. Press Return and slider will automatically take 20 GB. Else drag the slider to occupy 20 GB of spaces for partition A.

Now select the 19.7 GB of the remaining hard drive spaces and click (+) plus sign. Name the 2 partitions as B and C.

Partition B and C Size

As shown above, the external hard drive is divided into 3 partitions of sizes 20GB, and two almost 10 Gb of partitions. Click Apply to save the changes.

Outcome Looks Good

Task 2) To resize the 3 partitions as below requirement (using Disk Utility)

1. Resize ‘Partition A' to 15 GB
2. Resize Partition B to ~12 GB
3. Resize ‘Partition C' to ~13 GB

Disk Utility Resize Partition

Now, here the problems arrives

Unable to resize Mac partition

Entered 15 GB for Partition A and pressed Return. The ‘Partition A' shrinks to 15 GB but created a new partition of 5 Gb, which is unused.

Now as per our second task, we need to create around 12 Gb for Partition B. Let's see if Disk Utility allows us to do it perfectly.

Unfortunately, neither the mouse slider nor the Size box is accepting the Partition B to expand to ~ 12 Gb in size. The same issue is bothering ‘Partition C' which is not expanding to ~13 Gb of size either through the partition slider or with the help of the size box.

No Productivity

Since the partitioning as mentioned in Task 2 cannot be done with the help of Disk Utility on OS X El Capitan we will choose to achieve this task with the help of Stellar Partition Manager utility.

Stellar Partition Manager

Task 3) To resize the 3 partitions as below requirement (using Mac disk manager software)

1. Resize ‘Partition A' to 15 GB
2. Resize Partition B to ~12 GB
3. Resize ‘Partition C' to ~13 GB

Witness the difference b/w Disk Utility and Stellar Partition Manager

Fortunately, Stellar Partition Manager utility collects all the available free spaces on the Mac hard drive or an external hard drive and uses it efficiently for resizing the Mac partitions.

Stellar Partition Manager

Now let's achieve our tasks

** Resize ‘Partition A' to 15 GB by using the mouse to drag the edge and shrink the partition size from 20 GB to 15 GB

Resize Hard Drive Partition Mac Os

** Time to resize ‘Partition B' to ~ 12 GB

12 GB Resize Easily Done

** Time to resize / expand ‘Partition C' to claim all available free spaces. In the above screenshot, you can see that Partition C is of size 8.3 Gb and only 1.74 GB of free spaces are available. Hence it will take all the free spaces but this external hard drive is only 40 in size so the final size of the Partition C will be 9.42 GB.

Mac Partition Resizing Done Successfully With Stellar Partition Manager

How To Resize Mac Partition

Click the Start button mounted on the top menu bar to apply the changes. Hence, we have achieved the partition-resizing task up to 90% with the help of Stellar Partition Manager utility. Concluding this article with: How to create bootable USB on Mac with Stellar Partition Manager application.