[kevs]

I had some big problems a few months ago and decided that if I needed to reinitialize the HD, I would partition off the OS10, and OS 9 and even more.

An Apple technician recommended something like 7Gbs for the OS10, 3GB for OS 9. and the rest for data. I can't remember exactly.

I would love to hear various opinions on this.

Also, Once you've done this, from what I understand, you cannot just drag your old home or users folder which you have saved over, correct? I can't remember the details on that one.

But if you made a "data" partition, at that point you probably would not want to use Apple's per-made folders for music, documents, and photos anyway, correct? thanks

MAC OS 10.2.6;
G4 DUAL 533 1.12 GB RAM

[Jellytussle]

18 partitions:

January..December

Pr0n

Badgers

OS 9

More Badgers

OS X

Cheese



and there you go.


/tired and drunk

[eevyl]

I usually go the LOTR way, that is "one partition to rule them all".

[Stradlater]

Do you really still startup with OS 9? If you just need Classic, you can always keep things clean by installing OS 9 on a .dmg file that will automatically mount itself when Classic starts up.

Some people say this is a good partition scheme:

1 - Swapfile - 0.5+ish gigs
2 - OS X - 5 to 10ish gigs
3 - Users directory, extra applications - remaining space

You can cleanly install OS X with each update...sounds handy.

[chabig]

Keep it simple--one partition for everything. There is little reason to do anything else.

Chris

[ZackS]

Seriously, partitioning sucks if you don't need it. I did the 9, X, Data thing and just ended up shooting myself in the foot. You run out of room on one, then you have to actually copy the file... it just plain sucks. You start making symlinks for your music folder because the OS X partition is running low then something gets confused and overwrites it.. ugh. Don't do it.

[kennedy]

Do a search... there's some long threads with lots of opinions on this. Before 10.2, I would've strongly recommended multiple partitions... but 10.2 is so much more stable that its not nearly so valuable anymore.

If you have limited HD space (like a standard 40GB PB disk), then stick with one partition.

If you have plenty of HD space, then I recommend separate OSX, OS9, and the rest partitions. You need to size the OSX partition based on whether you have a combo drive or a superdrive (7GB or 10GB, respectively). If you have a separate OS X partition, I don't believe there's any need to worry about a swap partition.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by Jellytussle:
18 partitions:

January..December

Pr0n

Badgers

OS 9

More Badgers

OS X

Cheese



and there you go.


/tired and drunk

Best. Partitioning. Scheme. EVAR!

[kevs]

I never use OS9, but have decided I may go back to it for printing with Epson printers if they can't improve their driver.

This whole idea came about when I had to re-initialize drive 4 times in two week period. It turned out the HD was bad.

It's nice to be able to re-install the OS without affecting anything else.

[kevs]

A partition for swapfile? what is that??

[suthercd]

3 partitions.

10.3 beta
10.2.8 beta
10.2.6

The 10.2.8 is my working partition. I always do a clean install of the latest 10.3 build, so use aliases for my documents and other folders in 10.2.8 on the Panther Partition. 10.3 and fink are still a work in progress, so my /sw fink directory stays on the 10.2.8.

Regular scheduled FolderSync backup/syncs to the 10.2.6 partition in a ~/Backup of Home folder. Twice a week Carbon Copy Cloner image of each partition to a firewire external HD.

The 10.2.6 partition is clean, i.e. no 3rd party system/UI/ that loads at startup and login.

OS 9.2.2 is on a disk image on each partition that mounts when needed as was suggested above. Very slick way to handle OS 9.

When 10.3 goes golden, I will make an additional backup to another firewire drive, then reformat my HD and do clean installs. That way I have two identical backups on different physical devices. I used to see the time involved as a hassle, but I've figured out how to make a schedule that lets me work on other tasks for the backup periods.

I keep a list of the apps that are not installed in a clean install and that I use the most. After the systems are installed, I use the orginal disk images for apps where available to re-install them. That list has all the serial numbers, etc and is kept up to date. To format and reinstall all systems w/the A list apps (about 25) and restore documents, support files, mysql, etc takes about 3 hours, maybe a little less.

There has been lots of discussion about moving swapfiles and/or data files to a partion vs a separate HD. Most say that there is no gain if they are moved to another partition, but moving them to another HD moves activity and load from the System disc and thus is faster.

HTH
Craig

[kevs]

The main nut of why I was thinking of partitioning is that if I had future meltdowns, I would be able quickly re-install the OS boom!

Now I read some past thread on this subject. Great tip!

Boy, I was not aware of the debate; I thought everyone gets to a certain level and does partitions for this very reason. But many are against it. And if I think about it, it's really not that much of a deal to drag all my important stuff to one of my two other HD's and then drag the stuff back. I guess once you get used to doing that. In the pre-multiple HD era, that would be terrifying.

But one person said something very interesting. He said he like partitions cause it made doing your maintenance, permissions, running disc utilities etc easier. I would think it would be just the opposite! Every month (or more if I have troubles) I run Disk Warrior, Norton, and apples' utilities. If I had partitions, even two, then I would have to do all that twice! And even once it takes a long time. Am I right?

[suthercd]

Some of the utilities you mentioned deal with the entire disk, not just partitions, so you run them once. If you boot from the utility's CD the tools are being applied to the entire disk.

Heads up on Norton. It has caused a bunch of headaches with OS X. There is a new version that is supposed to be OK, but verify that here before using it.

HTH
Craig

[kevs]

Thanks, that's good to know. I've on NOrton 2.0 it's been fine, but takes long time.

[cc_foo]

On my iBook which can boot into OS9, I have a main partition and a 2nd partition about 1.5G in size.

This is so that I can install OS 9 onto it, and run disk utilities from the 2nd partition without touching the OS X stuff on the main partition. As of now, I haven't had to do that, and the 2nd partition is empty.

I figure I won't miss the 1.5G, and it's worth playing it safe.

[beverson]

I fooled around with crazy partitioning schemes when X first came out because I was booting back a lot. And also because my nearly 5-year-old iMac won't boot from a volume over 8 GB (thus on my various replacement drives over the last few years, one 8 GB X partition, one 8 GB 9 partition, and one data partition -- later, just one 8 GB X/9 partition, and one data).

When I get my new 17" iMac next week, no more partitioning. Too much of a hassle. Your typical power-user won't really gain much, if anything, from partitioning, and you lose flexibility. About the only reason I'd do it if I were testing a lot of software, esp. Panther betas.

[nforcer]

If you are going to be the only person using the comp, it probably won't matter too much. A single partition should be okay, and keep things simple.

If you do a lot of multimedia stuff (image/video/music editing, etc.) it might be good to do two partitions, just to keep a good part of disk fragmentation on the second partition where you will presumably be doing the editing. It should help to keep the primary drive where your applications and smaller documents are located, somewhat faster.

Furthermore, if you have to share the computer with someone else, using 2 partitions might also be a good idea. Users can store files for everyone to use (such as music and movies) on the second partition. I have this type of setup right now.

A second partition can also be useful if something happens to your first, and you need to get out of jam quickly... like what happened to me tonight.

[legionare]

Three partitions: 20gb for OS 9, 20gb for OS X, 34.3gb for data. Yeah, lots of storage on board my Powerbook

[chabig]

20gb for OS 9

I don't think I've ever seen an OS 9 System Folder take more than 1 gig. Anything over that is wasted space, in my opinion.

Chris

[kevs]

Look,
next time I need to reinitialize HD I will try archive and install. But after that, when I really need to erase the HD, I'm going to partition for one reason and one reason only:

SO I DON'T HAVE TO REINSTALL ALL MY SOFTWARE.

This seems to get lost in the debate. That is the main nuisance where you reinitialize and have no partitions.

This thread really goes out to those who have had computer meltdowns and have had to reinitialize their hardrives several times.

Couple of questions.
I'm thinking of something like this:
OS 9.2 500 MB
OS 10.2.6 or panther later... 5BG
Applications .. (undetermined)
Data

The 10 system is less that a 1GB, do I really need even 5 GB?

I'd like to ask to those in the know and have done this. What are pros and cons of either making a partition for applications, or just dragging applications folder over to your new data partition? Also, if you have your application folder away from OS, when you re-install OS10, you will momentarily have two applications folders, any danger in that? I assume you would just quickly delete the new one.

Also people have mentioned using net manager or something like that to move you users or home folder? what are pros cons on that?
Where is net manager? thanks.!

[legionare]

Originally posted by chabig:
I don't think I've ever seen an OS 9 System Folder take more than 1 gig. Anything over that is wasted space, in my opinion.

Chris

True. As bloated as my System Folder is, it's only 709MB. However, I find most of the applications are much easier to manage/migrate when residing on the boot partition. To this date, my iTunes 4 music library is still a symbolic link to the Documents:iTunes folder on the OS 9 partition.

[chabig]

So you have applications and data on the OS 9 and the OS X partitions? I know it can work, but doesn't that get confusing? One of the reasons people give for paritioning is to keep things separate.

I guess the bottom line is that paritioning is not required. But it can work. If you want to do it for personal reasons, go for it.

Chris

[kevs]

NO, listen. I don't use OS9 for anything ever.

[barbarian]

I think your partitioning scheme really depends on what you are doing, but for most of the users in this office I recommend

1. Keeping OS X and OS 9 on totally separte partitions. This simplifies directory structure and keeps everything nicely segregated.

2. If you are an experimenter with access to dev builds and betas, a beta partition.

3. A data partition.

My 2 main machines look like this.

Machine 1 (desktop)

Drive 1
OS 9- 6 Gigs
OS X- 44 Gigs
dev - 10 Gigs
data -140 Gigs

Drive 2 Firewire Backup

OS X - 12 Gigs
Backup - 138 Gigs

Machine 2 (portable)

OS 9 - 4 gigs
OS X -20 gigs
Data -36 gigs

--------------------
If you never use OS 9 and don't have it installed just ignore the os 9 partitions.

Look on macosxhints to see the proper procedure for moving your home folder over.

I actually keep my home folder and just make aliases to the data which lives elsewhere.

[kevs]

Thanks,
I'm going to repeat my question, as I think it's getting lost in the shuffle, please for anyone who knows....

1) The 10 system is less that a 1GB, do I really need even 5 GB?

2) What are pros and cons of either making a partition for applications, or just dragging applications folder over to your new data partition?

3) If you have your application folder away from OS, when you re-install OS10, you will momentarily have two applications folders, any danger in that? I assume you would just quickly delete the new one.

4) People have mentioned using net manager or something like that to move you users or home folder? what are pros cons on that?

5) Where is net manager? thanks.!

[ginoledesma]

My setup right now:
G4/400/1.5GB RAM
1 x 40GB HDD
1 x 20GB HDD
1 x 10GB HDD

I'm getting annoyed with my current setup so I'm junking all three and getting an 80GB drive. The above setup forces me to have "partitions" (not on a per physical drive basis, but disk partitions in the conceptual sense).

As it is:

Mac OS X - 10GB - System stuff, third-party Unix tools (e.g. fink)
Mac OS 9 - 2GB
Applications - 15GB - for all my apps
Documents - 10GB - All my personal "data" really, like downloads, work stuff, etc

Data (20GB HDD) and Data2 (10GB HDD) -- misc stuff (such as temporary ISOs, scratch space, movies, archives, etc)

Lessons learned:
- Giving 2GB for Mac OS 9 is a waste. It's only using around 900MB right now and I think it's quite fat. I boot to MacOS 9 when I play games or run disk utilities (Norton, DiskWarrior, SpeedDisk). Next time I'll shrink it to 1GB -- I'd love to do the disk image trick, but I really need to boot to it.
- Still really debating about keeping a "Documents" partition. I'm the only true user of my Mac and so I don't have to worry about other people keeping their stuff on my computer.
- Same goes for the Applications partition. Several apps insist on installing in /Applications, and I still haven't considered how much of an impact moving the /Applications to a separate partition is, and just leaving a symbolic link. For this reason I still prefer the "real" BSD/Unix/Linux way of partitioning and mount points.

The only advantage I find with having the partitions:
- I don't have to worry about existing data and all that when reformatting the main OS drive. My documents are in their own partition and apps in their own partition. Only thing I really lose is my preferences, but I keep a backup of my home folder anyway, so what I really lose are System-level customizations -- that I never backup because I can always restore it.
- Disk utilities "run" faster because I can narrow down problems to specific targets. My Documents folder never has block/cluster/catalog problems or whatnots, but my Applications and System partitions often do. I only defragment my Documents and System partitions because they're the ones that get fragmented most of the times.

I personally like keeping my documents and apps on separate "partitions" (even if they are on the same drive), as that gives me some amount of "protection" from reformats. Anyone have problems with doing symlinks for /Applications and /Users?

[ginoledesma]

Originally posted by kevs:
Thanks,
I'm going to repeat my question, as I think it's getting lost in the shuffle, please for anyone who knows....

1) The 10 system is less that a 1GB, do I really need even 5 GB?

Curious, how'd you manage to keep the "fat" down? Did you move the apps and users folder onto different partitions? I usually give Mac OS X a minimum of around 10GB because I install apps/stuff on it that either refuse to be installed on other partitions (or "look" terribly wrong in other partitions).

2) What are pros and cons of either making a partition for applications, or just dragging applications folder over to your new data partition?

Hmmm... I think that's more of a personal choice, that is, whether you want to "mix" your applications with other stuff. I doubt there's any technical merits/demerits with either setup.

3) If you have your application folder away from OS, when you re-install OS10, you will momentarily have two applications folders, any danger in that? I assume you would just quickly delete the new one.

If installing a new version, differing versions could be a problem. Is the separate apps partition going to be symlinked with /Applications?

[b]
4) People have mentioned using net manager or something like that to move you users or home folder? what are pros cons on that?

Read this discussion: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...0619195610633.

5) Where is net manager? thanks.!

Inside the Utilities folder within the Applications folder.

[kennedy]

Originally posted by kevs:
Thanks,
I'm going to repeat my question, as I think it's getting lost in the shuffle, please for anyone who knows....

1) The 10 system is less that a 1GB, do I really need even 5 GB?

You need space for the system, plus any apps that demand to be added there (like Keynote, for example), plus swap space, plus burn space (800MB for CDs, 5GB for DVDs), plus temp file space). Based on my experience, that's 6GB with combo drive or 10GB with superdrive.

2) What are pros and cons of either making a partition for applications, or just dragging applications folder over to your new data partition?

Don't drag your Applications folder out of the system... defeats the point of keeping your apps separate from the system... you want to be able to do a clean system install without affecting your apps. Instead, create a second Applications folder on your data partition for your non-system apps, and then create a link "Additions" in your system Applications folder that is a symbolic link to your data Applications folder. Works well.

3) If you have your application folder away from OS, when you re-install OS10, you will momentarily have two applications folders, any danger in that? I assume you would just quickly delete the new one.

See above... the more important issue is that you'll have all the system apps twice... then what do you do... you have to merge the one into the other by hand... that's exactly what you want to avoid.

4) People have mentioned using net manager or something like that to move you users or home folder? what are pros cons on that?

NetInfo Manager... yes, you can specify your user's home directories there. OR, you can just move the Users folder and then create a symbolic link at its old location that points to the new location over on your data partition. That's probably the easiest solution as then the system doesn't really notice that anything has moved and it works happily.

Even easier if you have OS X Server... they set it up expecting that you'd do such things.

5) Where is net manager? thanks.!

NetInfo Manager is in /Applications/Utilities.

[barbarian]

>1) The 10 system is less that a 1GB, do I really need even 5 GB?

Yes. Even with a small system you have to leave plenty of room for updates.

> 2) What are pros and cons of either making a partition for applications, or just dragging applications folder over to your new data partition?

It's usually just more of a headache to put apps on a sep partion. Many apps and the apple updates expect apps to be in the applications folder.

3) If you have your application folder away from OS, when you re-install OS10, you will momentarily have two applications folders, any danger in that? I assume you would just quickly delete the new one.

No danger... If you have the developer cd installed you have another applications folder. Also you can have one in your home directory.

> 4) People have mentioned using net manager or something like that to move you users or home folder? what are pros cons on that?

Just keeping track of things can become difficult.

You shouldn't offload things onto partions unless you have a specific reason.

These are the reasons I keep things on the various partitions:

OS 9 partition - to keep the directory structure simpler on OS X...

OS X partition - all apps and system on this partition... allows for easy backup

data partition - for easy portability and backup

dev partition - so that if something f*cks up it doesn't kill me.

In my view creating a sep partition for apps just makes things more complicated.

Same deal for people who create partitions for music and movies and the like. Just use folders. It's the same drive and navigation will be simpler.

Some people are religious about creating a swap partition, but at least on my system it didn't make a bit of difference speed-wise... want a better OS X experience with a noticable speed bump:

1) max out the RAM
2) buy a faster machine
3) buy the fastest video card and HD you can afford.

[- - e r i k - -]

I can see your reasoning for not wanting to install your applications over again, but ask yourself this:

How often do I reinitialize?

Believe me, the butt-pain that is partitioning overshadows any functionality you might think it gives you...

Get a second HD instead. Oh, and use archive and install. Fragmentation in OS X is trivial, there should hardly be a reason to reinitialize (unless you want to get RID of the damn partitions...)

[Simon]

My philosophy is rather simple:

- You need one partition for OS X.

- If you're a dev, tester or geek a devl partition is nice in order to keep production and fooling around seperated.

- If you really want to and you know what you are doing you could have a dedicated swap partition. The benefit is highly debatable, but it is quite common on other UNIX systems.

- You need another partition or better another disk as a backup. External FireWire drives are very good for this (since they can be turned off when not needed or physically seperated from the Mac if necessary)

- You can put Classic on its own partition, but it is not necessary and it's a rather tedious compared to the small benefit. Better is of course to drop it all together.

- You don't need to put data on it's own partition, because:
a) This isn't OS 9 anymore. Disk corruption is very unlikely.
b) OS X has a default layout that makes sense, is simple, and does not foresee seperate data partitions.
c) Seperate data normally goes with seperate application partitions (because you want non-system-install stuff away from your own custom stuff), but under OS X seperate app partitions are a very bad idea. There are many reports about bad installers that get fooled by this scheme or problems that arise due to such a layout.
c) It takes time and work but the benefit is very small.

The bad thing about partitioning is that it takes time, has to be changed from time to time (which can't be done dynamically on a Mac!), makes copying necessary where otherwise moving would work, and doesn't lead to a real benefit. It can on other plattforms, but under OS X it hardly does.

Much more important is a good, working backup. It should enable you to boot from it in case of emergency and it should be up-to-date. A great tool that does all this quickly, correctly and on top of it is free is CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner).

All in all, I'd stick to the moto KISS: Keep it simple stupid.

[barbarian]

a) This isn't OS 9 anymore. Disk corruption is very unlikely.

I would disagree with this... maybe I'm just unlucky but from 1986 untl last year I had never had a Mac file system fail so badly that I could not read the data off it. Since switching to OS X I have had 2 massive failures that required an expensive data recovery firm to get the data (nothing wrong with the HD, just a massive failure of the file system).

Keeping the data separate allows is some small protection against this and also makes for cleaner backups. (on my main computer I now have all my data on a sep drive that allows me to unplug and lock it up or to move it easily to another machine).

[Boondoggle]

>1) The 10 system is less that a 1GB, do I really need even 5 GB?

Don't forget that you need space for whatever disk burning you will do and VM. So if you're burning DVD's you'll need at least 4.7gig of free space....

[Simon]

Originally posted by barbarian:
I would disagree with this... maybe I'm just unlucky but from 1986 untl last year I had never had a Mac file system fail so badly that I could not read the data off it. Since switching to OS X I have had 2 massive failures that required an expensive data recovery firm to get the data (nothing wrong with the HD, just a massive failure of the file system).

That's interesting. I experienced the opposite. Under OS 9 I had a hosed disk once or twice. Under X I have yet to see real problems.

Under X DiskUtility isn't even showing anything to fix (other than permission issues) whereas under OS 9 DiskUtility often couldn't even fix all the stuff it was showing.

Originally posted by barbarian:
Keeping the data separate allows is some small protection against this and also makes for cleaner backups. (on my main computer I now have all my data on a sep drive that allows me to unplug and lock it up or to move it easily to another machine).

Physical seperatation is of course an additional security measure. I just question the benefit.

I can backup my personal documents every night onto an external FW disk with very simple scripts and fully automatically. That gives me safety and hardly requires any effort or cost at the same time.

But of course, that's just my strategy. It's certainly not the only good strategy.

[tooki]

If you have to ask whether to partition or not, PLEASE DON'T DO IT!

If you look at the suggestions here for reasons why you'd want to partition, they're all advanced uses that (if you have to ask to begin with) you are really unlikely to need.

So KISS (keep it simple, silly), and just don't partition. Folders will do anything you need them to do. (Since I think it's highly unlikely that you need several versions of OS X installed concurrently.)

tooki

[kevs]

Thanks, a lot of great replies. I have never partitioned yet. But this is my set up currently:
One 40 GB internal -- right now unpartitioned.

One 80GB external FW -- this I back up the users folder each month and then take it and swap it with another at safety deposit box.

3rd 300 GB FW is coming soon, mainly buying it to store music, but it could come in handy also as you will see.

I'm thinking of doing this now:

On the 80GB external, make a folder for all the commercial applications I've put into the machine myself and leave all other OS 10 generated apps where they are.

Kennedy, you mentioned a symbolic link. What is that, how do you do it, is it even necessary?
(It may not even be necessary, but if it is, it certainly seem a lot nicer than using net info manager...)

IN the future, when I have to re-install OS10, for whatever reason, I will make 1GB partition for 9.2, and perhaps a 12- 15GB partition for Panther. Maybe I'll make OS even larger being what people say about needing space for burning cd's and dvd. I assume this is what is referred to as swap.

I will make a folder called "my files" and put all my important data there on the 300 GB external, and also perhaps some of it on the 25GB partition that remains on the primary 40 GB internal drive. And once a month back it all up on the 80GB external.

Also, I have idea, of perhaps putting a second copy of Panther on the 300 GB external in case the primary internal HD would go bad. In this scenario, then I really would not need carbon copy cloner, correct?

IN the future, as far as new software reaching for Applications folder, I don't think that's a problem, it could just go there and then be dragged to my App folder, correct?

I think this could all be done keeping it very simple and easy. thanks!

[skio]

I used to partition my drives as much as possible, but now do the exact opposite for some reason, hate running out of room on one, and then having to split things over several partitions. Here's how I have my network.

PB Pismo, 40GB - 1 Partition.

Dual G5 - Currently being upgraded with new disks, but the OS, and apps will be on one disk, the other disks will be for video and film grabs.

SGI box: half terabyte, multi partitions.

Dual G4 2 partitions

[kevs]

Kennedy:
are you out there? I did want to hear about the idea of the symbolic link -- how one does that -- and how that differs from just making an alias, or ramifications of just not doing either.

thanks!!!

[ZackS]

Originally posted by kevs:
Kennedy:
are you out there? I did want to hear about the idea of the symbolic link -- how one does that -- and how that differs from just making an alias, or ramifications of just not doing either.

thanks!!!

A symlink is like an alias but it is generally recognized by command line apps (and therefore the OS X underpinnings) as a legitimate path. Just try making aliases to folders inside the sharing directories! You'll try to open them but they'll just look like files. You create a symlink in the terminal by typing

ln -s /path/of/source/folder/ /place/where/you/want/the/link/name-of-link

Obviously you replace the two paths with real posix paths. The easiest way to do this is to this is to drag folders in to the terminal.

[kevs]

Thanks Zack for lucid reply.

Someone just showed my a software called Symbolic link which I may try. I hate going to terminal. Let me ask:

1) Why does Apple not support moving the home or users folder?

2) What are pro's and cons of using symbolic link method as opposed to just moving whole/users or home folder with net info manager?

thanks!!!!!