Ins and outs of partitioning.

der kopfder kopf
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Partitioning your hard drive is about the same as splitting your hard drive into two independent, logical volumes.



However, I've been pondering about the advantages of it.



I have a 20 gig hd in my ibook, and would maybe like to partition it.



I might run Linux on there, or maybe OS 9.



Questions are:

can the formatting schemes be radically different? (even like HFS+ and NTFS).

can I partition a formatted drive without reformatting the used part?

can I erase the partition and join it with the other part without reformatting the used part?

why would I even want to partition my drive?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    i'm not certain about number 1, but i'm fairly sure that they can be different file systems (for different logical partitions on 1 drive). (on the other hand, what person in the right mind would want ntfs?)



    and for 2 & 3 there is a program called fdisk in linux (i think its called pdisk on the mac) which can phuq with drives in all kinds of ways (cutting and rebinding back together logical partitions). it throws all kinds of warnings at you of course, because theres the chance that shit could happen. i'm not thoroughly familiar with its use, but i know of it.



    personally, i had the ingenius idea of keeping my mp3s logically separate from the rest of my files. this ingenius thought led me presently to have maxxed out that partition, and i'm using a piece of my regular partition for the overflow. i, now, don't think there is too much reason for keeping multiple partitions (of the same file system). i hear that there may be an advantage of having an os9 partition separate from osx, but people should be getting rid of that dead operating system anyway. i could understand why someone would keep a hfs+ partition for mac'ing, and something else for gnu/linux'ing. but even that is a reduced benefit since many gnu/linux variants can run on hfs+.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    valisvalis Posts: 19member
    Partitioning can save you alot of time / fustration in the time of a crash. I have for many years now used a simple System, Apps, Files, partitioning scheme. And when the machine crashes and reboots, only the System Partition is scanned, saving much time, who knows if this is really a good thing, but it's faster unless your planning on running the journaling file system of 10.2.2 then you'll appreciate this esp if you have a 160 gig disk or something.

    Also if you do have a "harder" crash and it does effect data on your hard disk, chances are it's only going to effect one partition, and most likely the system partition, the easiest to replace, okay apps might be easier, but definatly easier than that Files partition.



    Yes software does exist that will let you switch around partitions without formatting, but I wouldnt do it. But I'm the kind of person that reformats and installs fresh everything annually.
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