Wednesday, April 23, 2014

how to dual partition your flash drive in mac and windows

Dual partitioning your flash drive so that it can have a partition in windows and also in mac can be quite tricky. It is useful especially if you  want to embed an installer for mac while at the same time having also a partition for windows files on the same flashdrive.  

reminders: we need to use a mac unit for formatting and a windows unit for testing

here is the step:


step 1. Plug your flashdrive to your mac unit. Wait until it will boot to desktop





step 2. In your mac desktop, go to search/spotlight and type disk utility



step 3. In the disk utility, on the left side portion, select the flash drive you want to make a partition.




step 4. On the right side portion, click the "partition" tab. Then on partition layout, scroll down to "2 partions".




step.5 click on the first partition, write the name and the format to "MS-DOS(FAT). Make sure it is the windows partition first then followed by mac partition




step 6. Click on option, then choose "master boot record" for the windows partition then click ok


















step 7. Click on the next partition, write the name and set the format to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"



step 8. Click options then click GUID Partition table then click ok.



step 9. click on apply then a pop-up window appear, click on "partition".


wait for the process to finish...

step 10. Unplug the flash drive then plug it to the windows unit. A pop-up window will appear asking you if you would like to format the flash drive. click "format disk".


step 11. Start formatting 



step 12. After formatting, unplug your flash drive then plug it back to your mac unit. Go to disk utility then you will see the three partitions, the one on top is the new partition from the windows you just formatted.



step 13. Go to "partition" tab then click on the new partition which is on the upper most part of the partitions.


step 14. Delete the partition by clicking the "delete" button on your keyboard. A pop-up window will appear, click on "remove".






done! you can now try your newly partitioned flash drive :)