[malique]

I am jealous of the PC geeks - they can so easily change partition sizes all the time...

[lookmark]

Yeah, and the PC geeks have to defragment their drives all the time, too.

Not that easier partitioning wouldn't be a nice thing. Anyone know, is this a drawback with HFS?

[malique]

Originally posted by lookmark:
Yeah, and the PC geeks have to defragment their drives all the time, too.

are you shure we don't – just because it is not as easy?!

[stuffedmonkey]

I don't know of any Mac utility - but does anyone know if any of the many ppc Linux-es have some kind of utility on the disk that will let you resize a partition?

[Gul Banana]

Debian does. Of course, it's incredibly dangerous and difficult to use. Works, though

[diamondsw]

Resizing partitions on the fly involves a lot of voodoo, even on the PC side, and has a lot of potential for destroying your disk. I used programs that did it back on OS 8 and such, and ended up losing a drive to one of them.

Generally, they require a custom disk driver to do so in the first place, which can cause compatibility issues. Then there's the matter of it shifting huge amounts of data and rewriting the directory to accomplish the resizing (and you better hope it does every last bit correctly). Overall, just too dangerous.

[rambo47]

Even on a pc this is an extrememly sketchy operation. I did it on a Sony Vaio notebook running Win98 and it completley hosed the system. Restore was useless and a total reinstall was needed. I bought Win2KPro then since it was the best that MS had to offer at the time (maybe still is), installed it, and all was well. Then I tried to repartition on the fly again and guess what? Hosed again. I was using Partition Magic and have since thrown the disk into the ocean at Point Pleasant, NJ. If anyone comes across it, washed up on the shore please don't mess with it. Treat it like toxic waste and call the DEP.

[P]

I think that pdisk, the command line disk tool that ships with OS X, can actually resize partitions on the fly. I wouldn't try, though - if you're going to do this, you'll need a backup. If you have space for a backup, do a backup, reformat and restore - safer, better end result and so. much. easier.

[Natdragon]

I was given a Powerbook G3 Firewire and the New Adobe CS Professional as a gift. Here I sit not being able to load CS because of the stupid OS 9 partition tying up 4 GB of space. I have been searching all week for a Partition Magic like I use on my 8 PC's. I have only found one comparable program and they want $50 for it. I have not owned a Mac since the Classic many years ago, and I'm remembering why now. While kewl looking they are expensive to do anything on, very discouraging. I can't even get Norton Anti-virus for Mac to download properly, so I'm without anti-virus software, too.
I LOVE partition magic, and have never had any problems with it, why does regaining that unusable 4 GB have to require an act of congress?


[B]I am jealous of the PC geeks - they can so easily change partition sizes all the time...

[Randman]

Partitioning is stupid anyway. And almost useless with OSX.

[malique]

I am jealous of the PC geeks - they can so easily change partition sizes all the time...

AFAIK there was (since 2-3 weeks?) a new tool that actually could resize on the fly, but maybe that's your $50 candidate. I don't recall it's name but it was written by one of the bif companies. Norton or one of the others who care about disk tools.

as posted above:
Why more than one partition in X?

Even though I started this thread weeks ago, now I think of the times when partitioning was a NECESSITY (for data security reasons or multiple-OS-reasons): those reasons are GONE now and so we have to bother a lot LESS than the PC guys. And we have real names for our drives

[Developer]

We don't have tools for easily changing partition sizes because there's no market for such a tool. There's no market because it's not needed. All Macs ship with a single partition. And there's almost no good reason to change that. The only reason that comes to mind would be when someone is developing software and needs several partitions to install and boot from multiple OS versions. And even these people don't need a tool to change partition sizes all the time.
Save yourself the trouble and simply don't partition your hard disk.

Originally posted by Natdragon:
I have been searching all week for a Partition Magic like I use on my 8 PC's. I have only found one comparable program and they want $50 for it. I have not owned a Mac since the Classic many years ago, and I'm remembering why now. While kewl looking they are expensive to do anything on, very discouraging.

Just looked at the Symantec Store and the want $69.95 for Partition Magic. So how are Macs more "expensive to do anything"?

[Sven G]

BTW, on the PC side, a very good and free non-destructive partitioning tool is QtParted, contained within the excellent SystemRescueCd (AFAIK, it's based on the Gentoo Linux LiveCD); there's also a PPC version of this CD, but I don't think it yet contains that graphical disk utility. Another option is also the Mandrakelinux 10 installer, which can resize both FAT and NTFS partitions.

[rhogue islander]

I've used Partition Magic on my PC's for years with good results.

Sometimes I miss not having a similar utility for my Mac. I get around this by having an external drive hard drive that I clone my four partitions to on a semi regular basis. Once I've backed up my disk, I can start deleting partitions on the original and recreate them to whatever size I like. Copy the data back and I'm good to go.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally posted by malique:
AFAIK there was (since 2-3 weeks?) a new tool that actually could resize on the fly, but maybe that's your $50 candidate. I don't recall it's name but it was written by one of the bif companies.

VolumeWorks

Originally posted by Randman
Partitioning is stupid anyway.

Oh really? How so?

[DannyVTim]

Originally posted by rambo47:
Even on a pc this is an extrememly sketchy operation. I did it on a Sony Vaio notebook running Win98 and it completley hosed the system. Restore was useless and a total reinstall was needed. I bought Win2KPro then since it was the best that MS had to offer at the time (maybe still is), installed it, and all was well. Then I tried to repartition on the fly again and guess what? Hosed again. I was using Partition Magic and have since thrown the disk into the ocean at Point Pleasant, NJ. If anyone comes across it, washed up on the shore please don't mess with it. Treat it like toxic waste and call the DEP.

You through something into the ocean. Having been raised in the Pt. Pleasent area, I take offense.

[Randman]

Originally posted by Hal Itosis:
Oh really? How so?

Yes. really. OSX has almost no need for partitions. Maybe if you have OS 9 (and not Classic) installed, you might to partition. Or if you're a developer or serious beta tester.
Other than that, there's almost no reason to. You're better off backing up to CD, DVD or external drive and you accomplish the same thing as a safety net by creating another user and only logging in if your main user develops problems.

There's been lots of threads on this already. Partitioning was good in the pre-OSX days but these days, for 98% of all Mac users, there's no need to. And the urge to partition seems to be a carryover from former (and current) PC users who don't know better.

[GENERAL_SMILEY]

I think you'll find there are those of us in the order who can help you with what you seek...

*nudge*

*nudge*

*wink*

*intricate handshake*

Oh sorry, I thought you said Masons.

[stephenh]

Originally posted by Natdragon:
[B]I was given a Powerbook G3 Firewire and the New Adobe CS Professional as a gift. Here I sit not being able to load CS because of the stupid OS 9 partition tying up 4 GB of space. I have been searching all week for a Partition Magic like I use on my 8 PC's. I have only found one comparable program and they want $50 for it. I have not owned a Mac since the Classic many years ago, and I'm remembering why now. While kewl looking they are expensive to do anything on, very discouraging. I can't even get Norton Anti-virus for Mac to download properly, so I'm without anti-virus software, too.
I LOVE partition magic, and have never had any problems with it, why does regaining that unusable 4 GB have to require an act of congress?


I am jealous of the PC geeks - they can so easily change partition sizes all the time...

Fifty (50) dollars sounds like a steal when Partition Magic is around seventy (70) dollars. Sounds like it is more expensive to resize on Windows to me.

If you really want cheap(free) download a gentoo PPC live CD. It has a utility that can resize HFS disks. It requires command line skills but it is free.

[almaink]

Check this out
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23512

[tooki]

The ONLY thing a partition can do that a folder can't do better is let you put multiple versions of OS X and/or Linux/BSD/Darwin on the same drive.

That's it. For any other use, just use folders.

tooki

[Natdragon]

I purchased it for $19.95, you just have to know where to shop, and since I have been a PC geek I am familiar with good suppliers. _ID=39910]Symantec Store[/URL] and the want $69.95 for Partition Magic. So how are Macs more "expensive to do anything"? [/B][/QUOTE]

I am admittedly stumped with Macs and where to get anything! and because I am accustomed to doing everything on the PC myself, it is difficult for me to have to step up and pay someone either $80 for them to regain my 4 gig, or about $450 to install a new hard drive and transfer the current info on it. I'm just looking for guidance here from experts. I want people WITH experience to guide me through this and help me get MACtized.

[Vax]

Hmm, how about your nice music collection? Or your videos, or anything else? I mean, if you want to reinstall and you don't have another computer or external hard disk for backup then you are toast....

[Randman]

Originally posted by Vax:
Hmm, how about your nice music collection? Or your videos, or anything else? I mean, if you want to reinstall and you don't have another computer or external hard disk for backup then you are toast....

And if your hard drive goes out, which it can, you're still toast. A partition won't save you from that.
If you don't have an external (which are getting cheaper and cheaper these days (not to mention that one can use an iPod), burn a DVD or CD. Almost every Mac can burn a CD these days and they're quite cheap.
And if you don't have any kind of external backup, you're taking a big risk and a partition isn't going to save you one bit.


And if it's simply a resinstall, do a save and archive.

[Powaqqatsi]

Originally posted by Natdragon:
I can't even get Norton Anti-virus for Mac to download properly, so I'm without anti-virus software, too.

doesn't matter

[monkeybrain]

Originally posted by Natdragon:
$80 for them to regain my 4 gig, or about $450 to install a new hard drive and transfer the current info on it. I'm just looking for guidance here from experts. I want people WITH experience to guide me through this and help me get MACtized.

$450 for a hard drive? I don't live in the US but that sounds like a huge amount even for a huge and very fast drive, which only video editors and their ilk would need.

[Chuckit]

I recently bought an 80 GB 7200 RPM Maxtor FireWire drive for $80. I can't imagine you'd need anything better than that for a simple backup.

[klinux]

Originally posted by Randman:
Partitioning is stupid anyway. And almost useless with OSX.

Hey, that's what people say what a product is missing a certain feature and than they try to convince you do not need it anyway.

Look, people partition for different reasons and generalization is what is stupid.

I have a 160GB external FW drive that I use to back up my 20GB iBook. I now want to create a a 20GB HSF+ partition and one or more FAT32 partition for shared storage but of course cannot do that without buying 3rd party software.

BTW, rambo 47, PartitionMagic is pretty easy to use not to mention widely used and praised. Are you sure it's not an user error?

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by Natdragon:
I am admittedly stumped with Macs and where to get anything! and because I am accustomed to doing everything on the PC myself, it is difficult for me to have to step up and pay someone either $80 for them to regain my 4 gig, or about $450 to install a new hard drive and transfer the current info on it. I'm just looking for guidance here from experts. I want people WITH experience to guide me through this and help me get MACtized.

Well, there is the commercial GUI solution other people mentioned, and there's pdisk which comes with the system for free. But personally, I'd just get a nice secondary drive -- it sounds like you could use more space anyway. No matter how many people have managed not to get burned, mucking around with your partition map is not the safest operation in the world. I've heard nightmare stories from both Partition Magic and pdisk.

[Boondoggle]

Originally posted by Natdragon:
[B]I was given a Powerbook G3 Firewire and the New Adobe CS Professional as a gift. Here I sit not being able to load CS because of the stupid OS 9 partition tying up 4 GB of space. I have been searching all week for a Partition Magic like I use on my 8 PC's. I have only found one comparable program and they want $50 for it. I have not owned a Mac since the Classic many years ago, and I'm remembering why now. While kewl looking they are expensive to do anything on, very discouraging. I can't even get Norton Anti-virus for Mac to download properly, so I'm without anti-virus software, too.
I LOVE partition magic, and have never had any problems with it, why does regaining that unusable 4 GB have to require an act of congress?


I am jealous of the PC geeks - they can so easily change partition sizes all the time...

This is easy. Just insert your system disks, reboot from the install disks, use the Disk Utility to reformat the drive as one partion then reinstall your software including Adobe CS. You should do that anyway if you're not useing OS9. Since it is a gift computer there are no files of yours on it to loose. This will take you about an hour but you don't have to be in front of the computer the whole time.

I'm assumijng you have install disks for the OS and Adobe. if not, you're hosed. And a pirate. At least as far as the Adobe goes. Macs always ship with OS disks so you should have them.

bd

[Natdragon]

$450 for a hard drive? I don't live in the US but that sounds like a huge amount even for a huge and very fast drive, which only video editors and their ilk would need. [/QUOTE]

No, by that I mean they want $250 for hard drive and the balance is for installation and data transfer, and they told me that would be a minimum estimate.

[Natdragon]

I'm assumijng you have install disks for the OS and Adobe. if not, you're hosed. And a pirate. At least as far as the Adobe goes. Macs always ship with OS disks so you should have them.

>>>My, my, aren't we quick to accuse! Can I presume you've been a pirate since the fox smells his own hole first?

I thought I was merely asking a simple question of whether someone knew of a free utility to repartion the hard drive. Apparantly there is no such thing because it sounds like most people are accustomed to using two drives on a regular basis, if this is the route I must go, then that's fine, but not knowing whether I will stick with MAC, I didn't want to put a lot of money into it yet.

[hudson1]

I think the most important point that's surfaced is that you need to recover 4GB of disk space to even install Adobe CS. Just about anyone will advise you that that's an indicator that your hard disk drive is simply too small. Yes, you can repartition but that really only solves your secondary problem (CS installation) while not touching the fact that it's risky to start bumping up against the size limit of the drive itself. A search of this forum will turn up some threads that talk about the things that can go wrong such as losing preferences, etc.

Take a look at buying and installing a larger drive. If you have a PowerMac, then you probably have an empty bay to do a simple addition. And the drive itself shouldn't cost anywhere near the $250 that you were quoted unless it's some kind of monster size that's likely to be many times the size of your current drive. Shopping around will likely result in several options for under $100 - $125. After installation (and this is simple on a Mac), you can clone your current drive over to the new one with a utility such as Carbon Copy Cloner and you will be good to go.

The good news in this is that you'll have two drives and the older/smaller drive can serve as a backup of your Users directory. Yes, even Windows users must or at least should backup their critical data and that rule of thumb goes for Mac users, too. With two drives, you have an ideal setup to accomplish routine backups with virtually zero effort and pain.

[Natdragon]

Take a look at buying and installing a larger drive. If you have a PowerMac, then you probably have an empty bay to do a simple addition. And the drive itself shouldn't cost anywhere near the $250 that you were quoted unless it's some kind of monster size that's likely to be many times the size of your current drive. Shopping around will likely result in several options for under $100 - $125. After installation (and this is simple on a Mac), you can clone your current drive over to the new one with a utility such as Carbon Copy Cloner and you will be good to go.

Thank you. After reading many posts, I believe you are absolutely correct. I have a Powerbook G3 Firewire, and while I have put together PC towers from the ground up, I have never cracked a laptop, and certainly nothing on a MAC. It seems that the two places I have spoken to about the hard drive and installation are outrageously priced according to comments here, The $250 price was for a 40GB. I have located a 60.0 GB 5400 RPM Universal Drive for $155 online, is this a good price or can you direct me to a good site? Since I am left to taking the plunge on my own due to local shop quotes, I now have to ask what else I will need besides the new HD and CCC. Data transfer cable surely, anything else? Much obliged for your kind to the point reply.

[Apfhex]

I paid almost $300 for a 60GB 7200 RPM IBM to replace the failed drive in my PBG4, but that's probably more than I could have found one for (I needed it FAST and didn't want to take any chances with cheaper brands). So $155 is a good deal. Make sure it's right for your PowerBook (assuming you're looking to replace the current drive, and not just add an external one).

External cases aside, I wonder if there is such a thing as an ATA (or whatever these PowerBooks use to connect the hard drives) to Firewire or USB adapter cable that can plug right into the drive, supplying both power and data transfer. That'd be neat. Probably doesn't exist.

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by Apfhex:
External cases aside, I wonder if there is such a thing as an ATA (or whatever these PowerBooks use to connect the hard drives) to Firewire or USB adapter cable that can plug right into the drive, supplying both power and data transfer. That'd be neat. Probably doesn't exist.

Not if you don't count external cases, I'd think -- since that's what they do.

The DriveDock is the closest thing I've found to a pure adaptor, but even that is basically just a case that doesn't offer much protection. And it's not much cheaper than other cases, either, because it isn't the protective casing that really ups the cost.

Unless you actually want USB. I've seen those. But...er...USB is a little slow for a full-time drive.

[Brass]

Originally posted by Natdragon:
I thought I was merely asking a simple question of whether someone knew of a free utility to repartion the hard drive. Apparantly there is no such thing because it sounds like most people are accustomed to using two drives on a regular basis, if this is the route I must go, then that's fine, but not knowing whether I will stick with MAC, I didn't want to put a lot of money into it yet.

Whether you can resize partitions or not, a second HD (or other backup device) is essential anyway. Even when using a resizing tool, such as Partition Magic, you'd be crazy to do it without a good backup. Although these tools may work most of the time, the risk of destroying all data on the disk is far too high to risk without a backup. Even the distributors of the resizing tools themselves will recommend you do a backup first.

So, if you've got to go to all that trouble anyway, the resizing tool becomes a little useless (at least not reliable enought to be dependably useful).

Having said that, I have used such tools in the past, and it would be nice to have a nice GUI version of such a thing available for Mac OS X a bit cheaper. So long as it warned people to back up before using.

[goMac]

Virus software?

On a Mac?

We don't need no stinkin virus software...

You might as well take your $50 your spend on virus software, set it out in the middle of the street, and burn it. It's about as useful as buying virus software on a Mac.

[Natdragon]

We don't need no stinkin virus software...

>>>>Ok, thank you, I will not worry about virus software. Again, as a PC user, you can't live a moment without it. That is one less thing to worry about.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally posted by tooki:
The ONLY thing a partition can do that a folder can't do better is let you put multiple versions of OS X and/or Linux/BSD/Darwin on the same drive. That's it. For any other use, just use folders.

So... there's at least one good reason why partitioning isn't "stupid and useless."

Whew... thank goodness.

[Randman]

Originally posted by Hal Itosis:
So... there's at least one good reason why partitioning isn't "stupid and useless."

Whew... thank goodness.

Yes, and so many people fit that category.

[mbryda]

Originally posted by klinux:
Hey, that's what people say what a product is missing a certain feature and than they try to convince you do not need it anyway.

Never understood or partitioned on the PC side either. Realy becomes a PITA when you start filling up your drives. I have 1GB here and 1 Gb here and this new software needs 1.25GB to install. Oops, with a partition you can't install it. Without I can....

I have a 160GB external FW drive that I use to back up my 20GB iBook. I now want to create a a 20GB HSF+ partition and one or more FAT32 partition for shared storage but of course cannot do that without buying 3rd party software.

You still can't do it, regardless of the partitions. PC's can't read Mac partitions and I'm not 100% sure, even if you partition on the PC side that the Mac will understand it either. About the best you can do is format the drive FAT32, make a backup folder for backing up the Mac data and use the rest for the PC.

[mbryda]

Originally posted by malique:
I am jealous of the PC geeks - they can so easily change partition sizes all the time...

Easily? Last time I looked at PartitionMagic, it was:
1) Fire up app, set partition sizes
2) Reboot and wait about an hour or so to reorganize
3) Reboot and let it check things again
4) Reboot and have the patrition available, hoping things didn't get hosed.

It can be done, but not what I would call easy.

[booboo]

Why not spend the money on another drive?

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by mbryda:



You still can't do it, regardless of the partitions. PC's can't read Mac partitions and I'm not 100% sure, even if you partition on the PC side that the Mac will understand it either. About the best you can do is format the drive FAT32, make a backup folder for backing up the Mac data and use the rest for the PC.

PCs can read Mac partitions with 3rd party software like MacDrive. OS X can read FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 that was used with Windows 98 and lower. The NTs (Windows NT, 2000, XP) used NTFS, which Panther can read but not write too. Here it is from Apple.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally posted by Randman:
Yes, and so many people fit that category.

Time to reformat... the current volume has insufficient headroom.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by Natdragon:
I am admittedly stumped with Macs and where to get anything! and because I am accustomed to doing everything on the PC myself, it is difficult for me to have to step up and pay someone either $80 for them to regain my 4 gig, or about $450 to install a new hard drive and transfer the current info on it. I'm just looking for guidance here from experts. I want people WITH experience to guide me through this and help me get MACtized.

Here in the mac world:
1) We don't need anti-virus
2) We don't need partitions

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Here in the mac world:
1) We don't need anti-virus
2) We don't need partitions

1 is true, 2 is false. I need partitions and use them ALL the time.

[chalk_outline]

Originally posted by Natdragon:
[B]I was given a Powerbook G3 Firewire and the New Adobe CS Professional as a gift. Here I sit not being able to load CS because of the stupid OS 9 partition tying up 4 GB of space. I have been searching all week for a Partition Magic like I use on my 8 PC's. I have only found one comparable program and they want $50 for it. I have not owned a Mac since the Classic many years ago, and I'm remembering why now. While kewl looking they are expensive to do anything on, very discouraging. I can't even get Norton Anti-virus for Mac to download properly, so I'm without anti-virus software, too.
I LOVE partition magic, and have never had any problems with it, why does regaining that unusable 4 GB have to require an act of congress?


I am jealous of the PC geeks - they can so easily change partition sizes all the time...

How big is the drive? Can't you throw away all the OS 9 crap and move some things from the OS X partition to the other partition. Like any MP3's or movies sitting on the OS X partition. You might want to try throwing away unused localization files and unused printer drivers too. You might be able to trim some fat from the CS install if you do a custom install and only install what you know you need.

</OS 9 users ideas. So I could be wrong.>

[Randman]

Originally posted by SMacTech:
I need partitions and use them ALL the time.

You don't need even if you do use them.