Hard Drive Partitions

Hey Everyone,

I just bought a 3TB SSD. My Mac is the Mac Mini with the 1TB solid state internal memory.

What I would like to do is make a partition between my internal Mac hard drive and my external SSD.

I want the external hard drive to have 2.25TB for TimeMachine backups and the other .75TB to be added to the computer memory. I'm hoping there is a way to make the computer think that instead of having 1TB of memory, that it will think that it has 1.75TB of memory.

Does anyone know of a video or some instructions on how I can accomplish this?

Free space on a hard drive bis just that. Free space.

Memory is modules installed in memory slots. The internal drive has 1TB of space, not memory. The attached link shows what memory looks like and depending on your precise Mini model, it may hold up to 4/8/16GB of memory. The later model Minis have memory soldered in which can't be upgraded.


https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/mac-mini/

You can vary the size of partitions on one drive, but you cannot move the partition size to a completely different drive.

Welcome to our Forums.

Just for clarity, how much free storage space do you have left on your Mac mini out of the 1TB available?

If you're not sure, you can find out by clicking on the Apple icon  on the top Menu Bar, far left, choose About This Mac and then click on Storage.

This will tell you how much storage you have (1TB) and how much is available (i.e. free).

Ian

497 GB are used on the 1TB internal Mac mini.

I thought there was a way to make the Mac Mini view a section (or all) of an external drive as as part of its own. Basically, in this case I want the Mac to only have 497 GB used of 1750 GB available instead of 497 GB used of 1000 GB available.

Thoughts?

I'm still not sure what you are trying to do. The closest I can think of is a drive attached to something like a Time Capsule. The drive isn't actually seen as an extension of the internal hard drive though.

Davpmars said:

497 GB are used on the 1TB internal Mac mini.

I thought there was a way to make the Mac Mini view a section (or all) of an external drive as as part of its own. Basically, in this case I want the Mac to only have 497 GB used of 1750 GB available instead of 497 GB used of 1000 GB available.

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

Thank you very much for posting back. I appreciate that.

Others of greater experience than I may point to a way of achieving what you have stated above; but as far as my understanding goes, I do not think it possible for the Mac to view the External Hard Drive (EHD) and its content as part of itself.

Or to put it as you have, I cannot see the Mac as having 1760GB at its disposal. It will have 503GB of free space and it will view the EHD as an external device.

Ian

Sorry I'm stuck on this part:
Is your mini a late 2014 model with 1 TB Fusion drive? Only 128MB of that is SSD.
And you bought a 3 TB external hard drive - what connection type USB3 or Thunderbolt?

PS - I think we can help you use the external for "virtual" User space, but it won't be as simple as what you've described.