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diskutil partitionDisk

Utility to manage partitions inside disks and volumes. Part of diskutil. APM is only supported for macOS, MBR is optimized for DOS, while GPT is compatible for most modern systems. More information: https://keith.github.io/xcode-man-pages/diskutil.8.html.

  • Reformat a volume using APM/MBR/GPT partitioning scheme, leaving no partitions inside (this will erase all data on the volume):

diskutil partitionDisk {{/dev/disk_device}} 0 {{APM|MBR|GPT}}

  • Reformat a volume, then create a single partition using a specific filesystem filling up all free space:

diskutil partitionDisk {{/dev/disk_device}} 1 {{APM|MBR|GPT}} {{partition_filesystem}} {{partition_name}}

  • Reformat a volume, then create a single partition using a specific filesystem under specific size (e.g. 16G for 16GB or 50% to fill half of total volume size):

diskutil partitionDisk {{/dev/disk_device}} 1 {{APM|MBR|GPT}} {{partition_filesystem}} {{partition_name}} {{partition_size}}

  • Reformat a volume, then create multiple partitions:

diskutil partitionDisk {{/dev/disk_device}} {{number_of_partitions}} {{APM|MBR|GPT}} {{partition_filesystem1}} {{partition_name1}} {{partition_size1}} {{partition_filesystem2}} {{partition_name2}} {{partition_size2}} ...

  • List all supported file systems for partitioning:

diskutil listFilesystems