[slider]

Hello all,

This is regarding an iMac 333 upgraded to a 500Mhz G3, 512MB Ram, 60GB 7200rpm HD.

This machine has been running Mac OS X Panther, but it seemed to be losing HD space. In fact, the user had to deal with a message telling her the HD was full and that she needed to clear up some space. I was never able to figure out what was going on with it, however I replaced this iMac with a new eMac and am in the process of a clean install on the iMac.

I know about the 8GB partition.

I am reinstalling Panther, but I have Tiger. I had assumed Tiger would be too much, but perhaps I am wrong? Thoughts?

Now I know that the OS has to be contained on the first 8GB, but is there away to use the larger partition for users? So something like, all apps plus the OS would be on the smaller partition, but any documents or files of any sort are transparently written to the larger partition. This little machine is great for word processing and email, but the HD limitation is a problem. Does anyone have a solution of different suggestion?

Thanks in advance

[Big Mac]

I'm pretty certain that iMac does not have Firewire and thus falls below one of the minimum requirements of Tiger. The most likely reason why the user was seeing those out of hard drive space messages was there was insufficient space for the virtual memory swap file.

[Dave B]

I have heard it is possible to move your home folder to a different drive or partition.
It might be as simple as creating an alias to the home folder -- while moving the content.
As long as the alias has the same name as the original and is in the same place, it should work.
If not, there is surely another way to do it.

As far as installing Tiger on a machine with no firewire goes, People have made an image
of the DVD, and removed a file called Installation Check -- or something to that effect.
Since your machine doesn't have a DVD-ROM, you would have to get the CD's and make
an image of Disc 1.
What might prove to be simpler would be to remove the drive from the iMac and put in
a firewire case, install Tiger, then reinstall the drive in the iMac.
I have Tiger running on a 400 MHZ iMac DV with 320 MB RAM -- it runs great with the original
slow 10 GB drive. I am curious to see how it would run on my Rev A 233 Mhz iMac with 384 MB,
an 80 GB 7200 RPM drive -- so I might just pop the HD out and throw it in one of my firewire cases to install.

[slider]

Thanks Dave,

I would really only be interested in installing Tiger in this machine if it would give me performance improvements, plus there is the space issue; how much bigger is Tiger than 10.3.9? As for moving the home folder to the other partition and having aliases on the 8GB partition, it worth a try. I'll post my results when I get a moment to try it.

slider

Originally Posted by Dave B

I have heard it is possible to move your home folder to a different drive or partition.
It might be as simple as creating an alias to the home folder -- while moving the content.
As long as the alias has the same name as the original and is in the same place, it should work.
If not, there is surely another way to do it.

As far as installing Tiger on a machine with no firewire goes, People have made an image
of the DVD, and removed a file called Installation Check -- or something to that effect.
Since your machine doesn't have a DVD-ROM, you would have to get the CD's and make
an image of Disc 1.
What might prove to be simpler would be to remove the drive from the iMac and put in
a firewire case, install Tiger, then reinstall the drive in the iMac.
I have Tiger running on a 400 MHZ iMac DV with 320 MB RAM -- it runs great with the original
slow 10 GB drive. I am curious to see how it would run on my Rev A 233 Mhz iMac with 384 MB,
an 80 GB 7200 RPM drive -- so I might just pop the HD out and throw it in one of my firewire cases to install.

[Randman]

Why is there partitions to begin with?

Get an external drive and move apps there.

[slider]

Originally Posted by Randman

Why is there partitions to begin with?

Get an external drive and move apps there.

Thanks for your reply Randman.

I might be missing something, but the HD is partitioned due to the limitations or this model iMac. And as far as moving Apps to an external, another limitation with this model is it only has USB 1.1 for ports; I am not sure how practical that would be. One other important point is that this machine would not me used my me, but someone who is not savvy enough to manage little issue that might arise; any solution has to be transparent.

[Dave B]

Originally Posted by slider

I would really only be interested in installing Tiger in this machine if it would give me performance improvements, plus there is the space issue; how much bigger is Tiger than 10.3.9? As for moving the home folder to the other partition and having aliases on the 8GB partition, it worth a try. I'll post my results when I get a moment to try it.

slider

Tiger seems to have a lot more printer drivers than Panther. I think it's 1.1 GB. The language
files take up a bunch of space as well -- it's 1.6 GB for both. What I have done is to select
Custom Install and deselect all the printer drivers and extra language files. If you are doing a
simple upgrade, you might still have a bunch of extra stuff you don't need; you could get rid
of it to save space. The drivers can be found by navigating to Hard Drive > Library > Printers
if you want to dump them. Specific drivers can easily be re-installed by using Pacifist™.
To get rid of language files, try running the freeware app Delocalizer, which will allow you to
get rid of extra languages. Finally, Disk Inventory X is a great freeware app to see what's taking up how
much space on your drive, and you can then get rid of stuff you don't really need.
I really like it -- and use it all the time.

[slider]

Thanks again Dave.

I think Panther will suffice. I have been able to move the user's home folder to the larger partition and it all runs pretty smooth so far. One issue remaining is that none of the preferences I change hold after a restart. I'll give repairing permissions a shot, but beyond that I am clueless.

slider

[slider]

This Link takes you to a thread dealing with moving home folders to another partition.

Edit: OK I tried the thing below and the guide was meant for Jaguar, further research found that there use to be apps that did this for you, but all of them seem to have stopped development after 10.3.3 due to a major change in the OS. None of the 3 guides I found were clear for none terminal user like me though I tried, believe me. My understanding is that subsequent OS releases handle the VM much better than their predecessors.

Also, a link contained within the thread takes you to a page which gives you a terminal "how to" plus, what appears to be, a nice hack for dedicating a small partition for swap files. I have that since the inner most portion of the HD is smaller, if you use that part of the HD as for the virtual memory swap files, you'll get a little bit of performance improvements. Weather true or not, the page linked to offers other reasons to dedicate a portion of the drive for virtual mem. Without a doubt, this little machine would benefit from it.

Anyways, added this link for people searching the forums.

[slider]

This appears to be a more updated method.

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...lder+partition

[Arty50]

I'm typing this on a tricked out Rev. A. I had the same problem as your friend a couple of months ago, and it was due to a small partition I set up on this machine a couple of years ago. I backed everything up (which takes forever on USB 1, repartitioned my 45G drive so the first partition was 8M, reinstalled Panther, and moved my User files over to another partition. Right now, my Users folder is over 5 1/2 Gigs. This would have crippled my first partition. Plus this has the advantage of putting your user folder on another partition. So in the extremely unlikely event your OS would get hosed, your user files would still be intact.

You could also move the swap file to another partition, but it's not necessary. Just keep the 8G partition lean and mean (OS and apps only) and store all your files in a separate partition(s).

I almost forgot, an external drive is not really an option. The early iMacs cannot boot from USB. Even if they could, you wouldn't want to except in an emergency. It's really, really, really, really slooooooowwwwwww.

I say "not really" because this would require another major upgrade. You can buy the HARMONi which gives you a 600 MHz G3 and, more importantly, firewire.