I partitioned my HD into three volumes, and installed 9.1 on the first. It works fine like that, but I tried installing 9.1 on the other partitions, and at startup it's just a gray screen that does nothing. When there's more than one partition with a system folder on it, that's what happens. I chose which one I wanted to start up with from the Startup Disk contrl panel, but to no avail.

You see, it's a family computer and I'd like to boot differently from each partition. One for my mom and brother, one for me, & one for my pops. My pops and I always clutter up the computer with extra crap that messes it up, and I'm trying to get it separated so my mom and brother don't have any problems.

Anyway, I was wondering if there was like a boot manager or something. Also, I was wondering if it's even possible to boot from different partitions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Life

[Cipher13]

You should be having no problems. I have OS 9.1 on one partition, and OS 9.04 on another, and both boot fine...
How large is your hard drive? Theres something going around about the System Folder needing to be within the first 8 gigs to be bootable or something...
What are the stats of your computer?

Cipher13

My first partition is around 4 gigs, second is about 12 gigs and third is about 12 gigs also. I read a back post a few minutes ago about that 8 gig thing, too. I was wondering if all three that I wanted to boot from would have to add up to less than 8 gigs?

That kinda sucks... I've been thinking that since it was a third party drive (Maxtor 30gig), maybe Apple's Drive Setup wasn't what I should have used... Maybe FWB Hard Disk Toolkit, but that program is so friggin' confusing. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Life

[jeronimo]

I have two 4.5 GB partitions, 9.1 on only one, and everything works fine.

------------------
Think Diferente!

[doug young]

I have several small partitions with a different system on each, they all work fine.
G3 B&W 37GB Drive
I also have a separate partition for applications and yet another for files.

I have booted from CD and used Drive Setup to set some volumes not to mount(I then mount them from drive setup, or use aliases of the volumes, which doesn't always work?), on a G4 it might be possible to do this to your system partitions and to choose which one you need at startup by holding down the option key.
That way You Could Set 'Applications' and 'Files' to always mount with individual system volumes mounting when needed.

I plan to do this or something similar with 5 startup volumes for 5 people when I get a new G4 in July

I also find it useful to run 1 volume that I can periodically erase and reinstall.
I use disk copy to make an image of a fresh install after I have set all my system preferences, then I mount it and copy the contents to this 'virgin' volume. That way I can test demos and programs that might write to my system file and when I have finished I can Erase the volume and install fresh from the disc image, so that I can be certain my system has no left over files.

Am I thinkin' diffrent enough for you?

[This message has been edited by doug young (edited 02-06-2001).]

[Gregory]

You don't say what Mac this is on. If it is a tower or anything that supports multiple disk drives you can also use a couple IDE drives or SCSI or a mix of the two and have a disk drive for each person, and not mount the other person's.

Sometimes programs will automatically mount or use other drives and/or partitions - Outlook and IE seem to be especially so. Eudora 5 left me with cross-linked folders (I used an alias and when I backed up it remembered the new location).

I am pretty sure that you CAN have multiple systems under 9.1 in the same volume. You could try that.

I keep system folders as disk copy images and by being uncompressed, read/write, I can mount and update them as needed. Which also means you can synchronize an image file/folder with the "real" folder.

You could drop you system folder on disk copy, make an image file, duplicate, etc. Or for any folder, and use for backup.

9.1 Startup Disk does seem to allow multiple systems. System Picker after all did so, and CC8 use to (but CC8 no longer seems to recognize or understand 9.1's command to bless, select system folders).

Gregory

I think this gives more fuel to the 8GB theory.

[ddiokno]

I have a B&W G3 with an 80 GB Maxtor partitioned into three equal (roughly equal) partitions and have different OSes on each one and have not run into problems booting from any of them...
dave

[This message has been edited by ddiokno (edited 02-06-2001).]

On the new open firmware Macs, there is indeed a 8GB limit for the system folder. For your setup, only the first two partitions can have the system folder. On your second parition, make sure that the system folder IS NOT fragmented past the 8GB limit. It will not boot. Basically, your 1st partition is 4GB (no problems), second is 12GB (problem -- the system folder must reside on the first 4GB of the partition). Hope that helps you out.

NOTE: Drive Setup is not the limiting factor here. Its the open firmware.

[doug young]

How do You tell which partitions are in the first 8 Gig?

[This message has been edited by doug young (edited 02-06-2001).]

Doug,

You would use Drive Setup. Drive Setup creates partitions in order on the disk.


Ex: Here's an example for a partitioned 20GB drive

Partition 1 (4GB HFS+)
Partition 2 (12GB HFS+)
Partition 3 (4GB HFS+)

Using these numbers, MacOS can be placed on Partition 1 or Partition 2. For partition 2, the MacOS system files MUST reside on the first 4GB of the partition.

The flip side of this issue is if you use a 20GB drive as a single MacOS partition, if the system folder fragments past the 8GB limit, it will not boot until you use a defragment program to defrag the drive to place the system files back into the first 8GB of the drive.

Has anybody here been able to find something in the TIL about this problem?

scl

[Richard Pinneau]

It's not a problem, it's a *feature*

Seriously, it's a *requirement* for such machines, apparently, so a *fix* is not an issue. ...never seen a work-around-discussed.

[Gregory]

8GB is one of those magic numbers, and no one planned for it. Sort of the Y2K of disk drives. Or the 32GB limit, or the 2GB volume limit for older Macs.

1024 x 1024 x 8 = 8388608 and that seems to overflow a "word" address space.
Comments?

Greg