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scairns · Jun 20, 2005, 10:07 AM

I've seen it mentioned that spindle speed can count for a lot when it comes to the performance of a machine.
Taking it a step further, is it possible/beneficial to partition the HDD for certain purposes?
Assuming that formatting is carried out from the centre of the disc out, and the "fastest" parts of the disc are on the rim, it seems that it would make sense to locate caches, "swap files" (or whatever the appropriate term is in lingua-Mac) OS and apps in this area.
So in the case of a laptop with a 60GB HDD you might start with a 40GB partition (data) followed by a 10GB partition (Apps and OS) , then a 5 GB partition for a scratch disc for Photoshop and the like, and round it off with the remainder on which can be placed the memory swap file.
This would have the added advantage of being able to blow away the OS partition when required for "clean" OS upgrades, without compromising the rest of the disc.
Is there any merit to these thoughts, or are they the ravings of a mad man who REALLY should be getting to bed as he has to be up in less than 5 hours?

TETENAL · Jun 20, 2005, 10:59 AM

Optimum is 1 partition (except for rare cases like when you need multiple operating systems installed). Partitioning is fragmentation. It should be avoided.

Mac OS X does move frequently used files automatically to the fastest area of your hard disk. You have the option to do an "Archive & Install" to cleanly reinstall the operating system. That's just as good as a format & install but much less effort.

Sven G · Jun 20, 2005, 12:06 PM

Personally, I have one "partition" for the system and shared apps (on a 40 GB disk), and another one for the users and personal apps (on a 120 GB disk): not that this is necessary, but it's always good for re-installing, etc.

("Archive and install" isn't exactly the same thing, anyway...)

Randman · Jun 20, 2005, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

Optimum is 1 partition (except for rare cases like when you need multiple operating systems installed).

chabig · Jun 20, 2005, 02:41 PM

One partition is the best. You can't control where data is going to be stored on platters, so there is no way to direct data to the rim.

yukon · Jun 22, 2005, 01:09 AM

Multiple partitions can be really handy, but not so much with OS X (anyone here like OpenBSD?). I suggest two partitions, one for your general data and one for your OS X system. This won't speed things up, in fact it'll slow some things down and complicate others. For example, if you have a small startup volume, some programs are too stupid to check for or change their temporary storage area so some things break (I'm thinking of a few tgz making applications, almost blamed Roxio Popcorn unfairly), you also have to predict how much space you can give up for what you'll need on your system volume (how much any given installer package will demand or how much swap space you'll need).

There is a benefit though and you mention it, OS 9 I could always fix, it wasn't hard....but you can take down OS X beyond feasable repair, it's taken itself down a couple times on me. If that happens, all your files are on another partition, so you can wipe the system partition at any time, when I upgrade the system I can just pop in the CD and reformat the partition (though I do like to keep some preference files)...install a whole different system if you want, a /homes partition is often a good thing on a desktop system.

You're wanting speed though. I'd suggest degragmenting, but only if the fragmentation is excessive (playing with large files a lot), if you have large blocks of time to waste (like night), and you don't do it often (rewriting stuff on the drive can be good, it forces the drive to pay attention to every block and diagnose them, but rewriting everything often will put wear on the drive), what you want I believe is something that can sort files on the drive by useage, I don't know of a Mac program that does this other than SpeedDisk (stay away from Norton). What I would suggest though is that you should upgrade your HD, put your current HD as a slave drive and add a swap partition to it, you'll get a speed boost with the new boot drive, more space, and another drive doing the swap (a small but tangible benefit)....more RAM would reduce the need to use swapspace so you'd get a boost there, tradeoffs you can decide on, I have enough RAM and PC100 is still expensive so I like new hard drives.

eevyl · Jun 22, 2005, 02:39 AM

Since Mac OS X Panther the OS takes care of this and puts most used files (under 20MB) in the "hot" zone of the HD, the fastest zone. Part of this process involves defragmenting files over 20MB too, except those put on the hot zone that are defragmented too.

Millennium · Jun 22, 2005, 05:04 AM

For Tiger, the optimum is one partition. You only need to use other partitions if you use other operating systems. Technically you don't even need a separate one for OS9 if your machine is old enough to be able to boot it, though the filesystems will be a bit less cluttered if you keep OS9 on its own partition.

OreoCookie · Jun 22, 2005, 05:23 AM

There is usually no need for more than one partition. If you want more speed, add separate disks, and it doesn't offer any additional security.

Maflynn · Jun 22, 2005, 06:25 AM

One danger with multiple partitions is making the system partition too small. I think a lot of us have seen a number of threads asking how to increase a partition size w/o losing data.

If you move your home folder to a different partition some applications don't behave too well. I tried this for a while and found that adobe was balking at having the home fold on a different partition (I think it was acrobat but I forget now). Apple's backup wouldn't even run. I'm sure the majorty of apps will run fine but why do it.

Mike

yukon · 08:02 PM

That's unfortunate, that making ~/ it's own partition causes applications to have problems. I hate that about many applications in OS X, they assume so many things. I just had Fink 8.0 installer package spit out "Unable to install, this volume does not support symlinks" bollocks, works when I run it as root...wouldn't want to ask me to authenticate to write to / or anything. Not to rag on Fink, iWork continually asked me for my serial number until I entered it as an administrator, the Finder can't change permissions at all even after reformatting, gotta be administrator to authenticate to administrator to do that I guess.

Anyway, my point is that by the time my system partition is too small, I've already upgraded to a drive that's double the size and reformatted the original.

scairns · Jun 23, 2005, 04:52 AM

Thank you all, for your input.

Until I know more about how to resolve any possible difficulties, I'll go with the "one partition" approach.

Regards,
Stu.

toadpunk · Jul 14, 2005, 12:48 PM

I'm tryn to put an 120Gb HD on my Mac. I use today an 60Gb. I copy all system (60Gb -> 120Gb), and start my mac, that work very well. But just let work with 60Gb... How can I create another partition??

Randman · Jul 14, 2005, 03:54 PM

Originally Posted by toadpunk

I'm tryn to put an 120Gb HD on my Mac. I use today an 60Gb. I copy all system (60Gb -> 120Gb), and start my mac, that work very well. But just let work with 60Gb... How can I create another partition??

You will have to reinstall everything.

Boondoggle · Jul 14, 2005, 08:58 PM

Originally Posted by Millennium

For Tiger, the optimum is one partition. You only need to use other partitions if you use other operating systems. Technically you don't even need a separate one for OS9 if your machine is old enough to be able to boot it, though the filesystems will be a bit less cluttered if you keep OS9 on its own partition.

For a non-booting 9 partition an image is a clean solution.

bd

Tyler McAdams · 10:09 PM

More advanced filessytems such as SGI's XFS filesystem offer some features for advanced usage such as DV editing that can significantly speed applications that are disk intensive. Options such as moving the journal to a different disk/array to decrease the amounts of writes, "garanteed I/O" through the use of what's called "realtime sub volumes". Basically the faster parts of the disk are set aside for the applicatios that need the garanteed I/O to insure the data throughput is good enough for real time work. This type of configuration involves more than one disk created in a LVM style raid array. Basically the realtime volumes are moved to a striped section of the array, usually raid 0 and things like the journal are moved to a different disk. Disk systems get extremely complicated quick since many things can be altered such as the stripe size, block or bit level I/O... etc. Getting the most out of your disks can be quite an unddergo but educational none the less. If you are really just worried about the speed of your disks you can disable journaling to kick the speed up somewhat.