[nJm]

I'm new to Mac, and was thinking of formating my iBook G4 in a week or so. I was wondering if Panther runs best with just one partition, or if it is better to store Applications or personal files on a different partition to the system folder. I only have a 30gb HD, and have no real need to partition. I was just wondering if it would improve performance or reliability. I guess I'm just used to Windows and disks getting fragmented and really inefficient virtual memory management.

[megasad]

Originally posted by nJm:
I'm new to Mac, and was thinking of formating my iBook G4 in a week or so. I was wondering if Panther runs best with just one partition, or if it is better to store Applications or personal files on a different partition to the system folder. I only have a 30gb HD, and have no real need to partition. I was just wondering if it would improve performance or reliability. I guess I'm just used to Windows and disks getting fragmented and really inefficient virtual memory management.

It's not really necessary, but so long as you know how much space you're likely to need for the operating system, all your applications, and of course your personal files, then it can be helpful, simply as a way of keeping your stuff and the computer's stuff separate. It should also stop your personal files getting fragmented anywhere near as much, as all the swap files will be located on the system partition. But that's kind of dubious, and not really worth the effort I'm about to describe in far too much detail.

Assuming you want other users to have access to all your applications, keeping them all in /Applications is probably best. If they're just for your use however, putting them in ~/Applications will be fine.

To move your home folder to another partition, use NetInfo Manager. It's best to do this right after you've formatted/installed OS X onto the system partition, as that way you won't have to worry about copying files/settings over from /Users/name to /Home later. In NetInfo Manager, simply go to /users/name and change the home value from /Users/name to /Home.

As an example, on my eMac, the system partition (eMac) is 23.8GB, the home one (Spunk) 125GB. On my girlfriend's PowerBook, system (Mogo) is 10.63GB and home (pBuk) is 45GB. Remember that your iBook's hard drive, though 30GB, will actually be about 27.93GB. So, if you are anally retentive, you'll need to fiddle around in Disk Utitlity for a bit, preferably whilst booted from another Mac running 10.3, that you might partition the iBook's drive into 7.93GB for the system, 20GB for your home, or however else you see fit to distribute the space.

(For some reason, simply telling Disk Utility that you want one partition to be 20GB, the other to work itself out, never actually results in a partition of 20GB and another of the remainder. I always get something like 19.98 GB of 20.02GB. As I say, if you're not anally retentive, this isn't a problem. If you are, I've found that a surefire solution is to first choose 20GB, click Partition, up it to 20.01GB, click Partition again, up it to 20.02GB, click Partition again, and then, finally, downsize to 19.88GB and click Partition one last time. For some magical reason, this seems to result in a partition of exactly 20GB. I have no idea why. Once you've got the correct sizes, as reported in the Finder as the Capacity value (hence it being necessary to do this from another Mac rather than the Panther install disc, as Disk Utility rounds up), erase the partitions individually using the Erase tab in Disk Utility, choosing Mac OS Extended (Journalled) for the system partiton, regular Mac OS Extended for the home.)

All of this is probably really rather pointless. Having the system and home on different partitons does mean you can wipe and reinstall the operating system without having to backup your entire home folder. On my eMac, I've already used 108GB of the 125GB allocated for my home, so I'll appreciate not having to move all that to a FireWire drive, reinstall, move it back. On a 30GB drive this really isn't that much of an issue.

Also, on my own iBook, I recenty wiped its tiny 20GB drive (actually 18.6GB) and didn't bother to partition it at all. Instead, I wanted to see how that new-fangled FileVault thing worked. Since this puts all your home directory into a sparse disk image, having that disk image on a separate partition is even more pointless. So, if you plan on using FileVault on your iBook, you don't even need to think of partitioning its hard drive at all.

[Maflynn]

Instead of monkeying around with the netinfo database which can cause more problems then its worth. I used a symbolica link to point my user folder on the second drive.

Now I've had 2 partitions for a little while and here's what I found. First there's no increase in speed. I did it to keep my home directory seperate from the system drive, so I can plug in a new version of OSX, or if something got hosed on the system drive I could reformat w/o losing my data (and yes I still back up).

Apple's backup utility that comes with .mac doesn't work(because it choked on the sym link). I've heard of people having problems with office and acrobat when the home directory is on a different partition.

The danger in having two partitions is sizing - That is too small. I'm right on the cusp of rebuilding my PB because my systen drive only has a about 8 gig of space free, install a few more apps and that will start shrinking. OSX starts acting weird when you run out of space for VM.

Mike

[Randman]

There almost no reason to partition on OSX. 99% of users don't need to, but many Switchers are used to it.
You're better off using the space in full, especially 30GB, and just having a safe backup not on the same hard drive, be it CD, DVD, iPod or an external hard drive (or even Backup using .Mac).
You can also create a user and only use it if if something wonky happens, then you can log in as the other user and do repairs from there (leave it with admin permissions).

[wataru]

Originally posted by Randman:
There almost no reason to partition on OSX. 99% of users don't need to, but many Switchers are used to it.
You're better off using the space in full, especially 30GB, and just having a safe backup not on the same hard drive, be it CD, DVD, iPod or an external hard drive (or even Backup using .Mac).
You can also create a user and only use it if if something wonky happens, then you can log in as the other user and do repairs from there (leave it with admin permissions).

Agreed 100%.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Randman:
There almost no reason to partition on OSX.

How about if you are a developer? I got this 250 GB drive for the specific reason that I can make lots of partitions if I want to. One for Panther, one for 10.2, one for 10.1, one for OS 9, maybe one for Linux if I feel like playing around with it...

[tooki]

Other than for creating multiple bootable volumes, all the organization that you do with partitions can be done better with a radical invention called a "folder". :-P

Seriously, now that having big partitions isn't inefficient (as it used to be long ago), there are seldom any advantages to partitioning, and there's the serious disadvantage that partitioning breaks up your available space, and it can actually prevent some of OS X's speed optimizations from taking place.

tooki

[Randman]

How about if you are a developer? I got this 250 GB drive for the specific reason that I can make lots of partitions if I want to. One for Panther, one for 10.2, one for 10.1, one for OS 9, maybe one for Linux if I feel like playing around with it..

That's one reason. But how many people are developers and in need of a format such as that? I said there's almost no reason.

[Developer]

I would not suggest partitioning your drive.

[arcticmac]

just curious...

I've heard that some people have a "download partition" which they use so as to prevent the main partition from fragmenting when they want to download something just to try it out (not to mention all the .sit and .dmg files)

Would that be a good idea?

what about the old idea of putting the VM on a separate partition (again, to keep it from the possibility of being fragmented)?

[Randman]

OSX doesn't really fragment like OS9 and Windows do. Repairing permissions is the key to smoothness here.

[nJm]

Ok, a follow up. Reading through some of your (very useful!) posts, I've remembered one of the main reasons I had partitions in XP was so that I could back up all my stuff to a partition and format the system drive if I needed to. I was thinking I might have the same on my iBook. All the junk I download off the internet that you need, and a place to shove all my music and photos just in case I ever need to wipe the system.

I have a problem right now where my system folder now has a quicktime AVI file icon?!?!? I guess this first time I'll just have to zip everything and put it on one of the PCs. I kinda wanted to avoid buying another HD just yet, and burning 10gb to CDs is a real pain.

[wataru]

Originally posted by nJm:
Ok, a follow up. Reading through some of your (very useful!) posts, I've remembered one of the main reasons I had partitions in XP was so that I could back up all my stuff to a partition and format the system drive if I needed to. I was thinking I might have the same on my iBook. All the junk I download off the internet that you need, and a place to shove all my music and photos just in case I ever need to wipe the system.

I have a problem right now where my system folder now has a quicktime AVI file icon?!?!? I guess this first time I'll just have to zip everything and put it on one of the PCs. I kinda wanted to avoid buying another HD just yet, and burning 10gb to CDs is a real pain.

You really don't need to separate your data from the system since there is archive install.

And the icon thing is a know bug with no solution other than to restart.

[Randman]

Plus if you have a hard drive failure (it can happen), you're screwed without a viable backup solution, regardless of how many partitions.