It can be a lot of keep track of when you connect a lot of drives to your Mac—or connect a particular external hard drive to a lot of different Macs. Changing the icon for your drives is a quick way to visually tell them apart.
Feb 08, 2020 How to Partition an External Hard Drive on Mac. If you want to create multiple partitions on your external hard drive (in fact, you should for better file organization), here’s a step-by-step guide: Step 1: Highlight your drive and click “Partition” in Disk Utility. Open the Disk Utility app and highlight your external hard drive. Sep 10, 2017 In these screenshots I applied custom icons to internal drives, but it also works for external hard drives, including USB flash drives. Even better: in my tests, changing an icon on one Mac will change it on every Mac, so you’ll always be able to quickly find your drive if you’re using another computer.
Similar to changing folder and application icons, but the process is different in a few key ways. For one thing, the change carries over from one Mac to another, which is great if there’s an external drive you regularly connect to different Macs. In fact, custom icons will even show up the bootloader. So if you’ve installed Windows with Boot Camp or created a USB installer for macOS, a custom icon can make it easier to spot which drive you want.
Where to Find Hard Drive Icons for macOS
Just find a few custom icons to try out at first. Look for icons that are square, ideally 512 by 512 pixels (or higher), and in Apple’s .icns format. You might also find icons in PNG format you can convert to ICNS using an online converter like iConvert Icons. Here’s a quick roundup of icons I’ve found:
Some external hard drive manufacturers may offer icons to match the drives they sell. Both Lacie and Akitio offer icon packs, for example. Doing so certainly makes it easier to keep track of which drive is which.
This forum post has a collection of icons for various solid state drives, including the Intel icon I used in the images above. It’s perfect if you’ve added your own solid state drive to an older Mac, and want to show that fact off a little.
DeviantArt has a bunch of hard drive icons, but you’ll have to do some digging. I used this one for my second drive in the first screenshot of this article.
IconArchive is another site worth checking out, offering .icns files for basically all of their icons.
Beyond this, I suggest doing some Googling. If there’s a specific drive you’d like an icon for, searching for the model with followed by “icns download” or “png” will sometimes give you want you want, assuming someone else took the time to make you an icon. Good luck!
Step One: Copy Your Icon File
If you’ve downloaded a few icons you’d like to try out, lets get started! Open the folder where you’ve stored your icons.
Copy the icon you’d like to use for your drive by right-clicking the icon and then clicking “Copy.”
Now we’re ready to paste the icon onto our drive.
Step Two: Paste Your Icon File
Next, make sure the drive you want to give a custom icon is connected to your computer. Then, open the Finder and click your computer under “Devices.” You’ll see all of your connected drives.
Right-click the drive you’d like to give a custom icon, then click “Get Info.”
This will bring up the information screen for your hard drive.
If you click the icon at the top of this window, you will see a blue highlight, indicating that the icon has been selected.
Once you see this, press Command+V on your keyboard to paste your icon. (If nothing happens, the icon you copied may not be compatible, but you can sometimes work around this by opening the icon file in Preview, selecting the entire canvas, and copying that.)
You might be asked for your password.
Enter it, and the change will take place.
Repeat this process for any other drives you’d like to customize.
To undo your change, open Get Info for the drive again, then select the icon and hit the Delete key. The icon will revert to the default.
In these screenshots I applied custom icons to internal drives, but it also works for external hard drives, including USB flash drives. Even better: in my tests, changing an icon on one Mac will change it on every Mac, so you’ll always be able to quickly find your drive if you’re using another computer.
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By default, your Mac starts up from its built-in hard disk, but a startup disk can be any storage device that contains an operating system compatible with your Mac. For example, if you install macOS on an internal or external drive, your Mac can recognize that drive as a startup disk. You can then follow the steps in this article to start up from it.
Use Startup Disk preferences
When you use Startup Disk preferences to select a startup disk, your Mac starts up from that disk until you choose a different one.
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Startup Disk.
Click the lock and enter your administrator password.
Select your startup disk, then restart your Mac.
If you see a message that your security settings do not allow this Mac to use an external startup disk, check the External Boot setting in Startup Security Utility.
Use Startup Manager
When you use Startup Manager to select a startup disk, your Mac starts up from that disk once, then returns to using the disk selected in Startup Disk preferences.
Press and hold the Option (Alt) key immediately after turning on or restarting your Mac.
Release the Option key when you see the Startup Manager window. If your Mac is protected by a firmware password, you can release the key when you're asked to enter the password.
Select your startup disk, then click the arrow under its icon, or press Return. If you press and hold the Control key during this step, your selection is saved in Startup Disk preferences, so it persists until you change it.
If your Mac is using OS X Lion 10.7.3 or later, you can also use this method to start up from your Time Machine backup disk. Startup Manager identifies your Time Machine backup as ”EFI Boot.”
If you can't select your startup disk or start up from it
Check for these possibilities if you can't see your disk in Startup Disk preferences or Startup Manager, or your Mac won't start up from it.
Check for a compatible operating system on the startup disk
Make sure that your startup disk is using a version of macOS that is compatible with your Mac. If in doubt, use the same Mac to reinstall macOS on that disk.
To start up from an external disk with macOS Catalina 10.15 or later, the disk must connect via USB-A, USB-C, or Thunderbolt, not FireWire.
Check startup security settings
If you're using a Mac that has the Apple T2 Security Chip, check the settings in Startup Security Utility. These settings determine whether your Mac can start up from another disk.
Hard Drive Icon On Desktop
Check for Option ROM firmware
Mac Tip: Create Custom Icons For External Hard Drives
If you're in Startup Manager and can't see a third-party startup disk, the startup disk could be using Option ROM firmware. To enhance system security, Mac computers with up-to-date software don’t show devices that use Option ROM firmware until you load their firmware. To do that, press Option-Shift-Command-Period while in Startup Manager. If your startup disk appears, do that each time you want to start up from it or from another disk connected to it.
If you're using a firmware password, the ability to load Option ROM firmware is disabled as an additional security protection.