partition external drive for mac and bootcamp windows

Use the buttons to select the pre-defined sizes.

Alternatively, you can click the '32 GB' button, which is a good general-purpose choice for a Windows partition, again assuming you have enough free hard drive space to create a partition this size. This, of course, assumes that there's enough available free space on the drive to split things equitably.

You can click the 'Divide Equally' button, which, as you might have guessed, will split your drive in half, using half of the available space for Mac OS X and half of the available space for Windows. You may also notice that there are two predefined sizes to choose from, via the two buttons located just below the display of the partitions. You'll also notice that you can't make the Windows partition smaller than 5 GB, although as we mentioned earlier, we don't recommend making it smaller than 20 GB. Use your mouse to click and drag the nub between the sections, to expand or shrink each partition, but don't click any of the buttons yet.Īs you drag the nub, you'll notice that you can only shrink the Mac OS X partition by the amount of free space that is available on the selected drive.

The hard drive you selected in the previous step will display in Boot Camp Assistant, with one section labeled Mac OS X and the other labeled Windows. Use the slider to divide the existing hard drive into two partitions, one for the existing OS X and one for Windows.

Partition external drive for mac and bootcamp windows