These instructions assume that you want to change the existing partitions on your USB drive, rather than deleting them and starting over with a blank partition.It's possible to delete some or all of the files on your USB drive during partitioning, so it's important to have a backup for anything you might delete. Always back up the USB drive's entire contents first.We'll give you instructions for both Windows 10 and Mac OS X below. Partitioning a USB drive works slightly differently depending on what kind of host computer you use to create the partition. In the next sections, we'll show you how!

Organizing your USB flash drive's storage volumesįortunately, it's not hard to partition a USB drive yourself.

Changing the file storage format of a USB flash drive.

Encrypting one section of your USB flash drive.

However, sometimes you might want to do something with a USB flash drive that requires partitioning the disk, such as: (Order custom USB drives from USB Memory Direct and we'll even name the volumes for you!) Recovery partitions are a perfect example of how partitions can help organize a drive and make it work better.Īgain, you usually don't need to partition a new USB drive just to use it to store and move your files. A recovery partition is a small separate partition of your drive that you can access if your main drive has been damaged, corrupted, or is otherwise unusable.

However, many computer hard drives also contain what's called a recovery partition. On a new computer, for example, the onboard hard drive will already be partitioned with one main volume ( usually called C: on a PC). Most data storage devices are already partitioned when you buy them. Moreover, even an empty hard drive needs to have at least one partition to create the logical 'container' needed for storing files. It creates logical sections within the drive that can be accessed separately on your machine. The verb 'partition' simply means ' to divide into parts,' and that's exactly what partitioning a drive does. Up ahead, we'll show you how to partition a USB drive on both PC and Mac, and we'll talk about a few things you should know before you get started. Sometimes, when you're organizing or reformatting your digital storage, it might be necessary to reset or change the partitions on a USB drive.

Almost everyone uses partitioned drives every day, and most of us don't think twice about it! These digital divisions separate hard drives into separate logical volumes, and they're an important part of the basic structure of how hard drives store information. Partitions are an essential part of any kind of digital hard drive storage.

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