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jindrich · Jun 24, 2005, 12:04 PM

hi everyone,
do you think partiotioning is worth anything today, like on the old days?

i'm slightly concerned about too much of HD messing on my powerbook, as i transfer loads of GBs files weekly from logic projects or Finalcut, using the laptop as backup or transfer medium, or maybe to burn data to DVD.., or if i travel somewhere i'd transfer a few movies to HD to watch then while on train/plane..

that all together means i'd fill the HD up to almost its full 80GB capacity, and although i empty later the most of it, i get a bad feeling, that maybe i'm fragmenting the HD too much, wich will evenntually be not good for my everyday apps (photoshop, safari, office, freehand..)

should i have a 40GB "temporal-mess" partition?
thx for your replies.

osxisfun · Jun 24, 2005, 12:33 PM

i made a small 5 gig partition and put 10.3 on there just as another way to recover my machine if my main partition goes down. yes. it does it some disc space but i have got an 80 gig and 35 gigs left over...

osxisfun · Jun 24, 2005, 12:34 PM

i just wish i could auto-demount the other HD on restart... i like having 1 hard drive icon on the desktop not two... if anyone knows a script to do this let me know. applescript is not letting me eject the drive... possibly due to filevault?

jokarak · Jun 24, 2005, 01:32 PM

That actually sounds like a good idea, specially if you rip some movies to watch on the road. For me, the biggest space hogs are music and photos, but I store them on my G5 desktop, so my PB HD is pretty empty right now. Of course, you'll have to deal w/ reinstalling everything (I think - you would lose all your info in a windows box on re-partitioning a drive), so you might want to put this off until your PB starts behaving a little kooky. If you haven't upgraded to Tiger, it might also be a good idea to do a re-partitioning when you do upgrade and do a clean install.

mrmister · Jun 24, 2005, 03:13 PM

Honestly, unless you are using your PB in some really unusual way, partitioning is generally more trouble than its worth. I used to keep multiple partitions up until Jaguar, but since then things have been rock stable and since my rig doesn't have OS 9 booting it doesn't make a lot of sense...I'd more often run into size issues where my partitions weren't large enough.

If you need partitions, you'll know, because you'll have some specific need (running Linux, etc.) that requires multiple partitions.

jindrich · Jun 24, 2005, 06:37 PM

hey, thx for your replies
actually i havent upgraded to tiger yet, because i was for some weeks in germany, waiting to get back home to do it, so i have to format the HD anyway.

i travel a lot, and that's one of the reasons i fill the HD so quick. for example, as i went to germany i ripped 10 or more movies to watch later, having less than 9GB free. If you were to do so, fill and erase lotsa gigas very often (dvds, fcut and logic projects for transfer) would you dedicate a partiton for it?

mrmister · Jun 24, 2005, 07:16 PM

I do that myself, and no, I wouldn't.

B Gallagher · Jun 25, 2005, 12:15 AM

I wouldn't dedicate a whole partition to that either, not when a folder will do the job.

Randman · Jun 25, 2005, 02:41 AM

Lots of threads on this already. Unless you are a developer, there's almost no need for multiple partitions and they can cause headaches in the long run.

There are also threads on fragmentation. As long as you are regularly doing maintenance, cron jobs, clearing caches and such, you should be fine.

pcummins · Jun 25, 2005, 09:33 AM

Two partitions is almost mandatory in my experience. Possibly more.

For MacOS X an 8 to 16 GB partition acts as your boot partition, while the other remaining space is data, movies, etc. In the case of needing to reformat your computer, you can simply move your files to the data partition, then format the main boot partition and reinstall and avoid having to copy your files all off and back on again.

In the case of the recent Tiger release, I was dual-booting off 10.3.x and 10.4.x until about 10.4.1 when I figured it was stable enough for me. Having both versions of the OS is important when testing apps and making sure they work properly.

If you by any chance use Windows, an 8 GB partition is required pretty much to do those often-loved clean installs every 6 months or so, or thereabouts... same deal as above. You can get by with 1 partition, but I recommend 2 so you have the choice of what to do, rather than constricting your choices unnecessarily.

Randman · Jun 25, 2005, 09:53 AM

Windows and OSX are not the same. While partitioning can help on a PC, there's almost no need for one in OSX unless you are a developer and need multiple OSes.

You can accomplish the same by having a backup plan in place. And with the price of external drives so low these days, there's even less reason not to have one for backups and extra space, neither of which a partition helps against in case of drive failure/computer loss.