Partitioning

alexiusalexius
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
In preparation for a backup and install of pather on a fresh drive, I was wondering if it is a good idea to leave my 30 gig drive whole or split it up?



I remember hearing something about having the system on the first few gigs of the drive, or something along these lines.



Any suggestions?



Thanks!
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 21
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by alexius

    In preparation for a backup and install of pather on a fresh drive, I was wondering if it is a good idea to leave my 30 gig drive whole or split it up?



    I remember hearing something about having the system on the first few gigs of the drive, or something along these lines.



    Any suggestions?



    Thanks!



    on some old computers (original imacs i believe) the system has to be in the first 8 (maybe it was 6) gigs of the hard disk, so you had to partition. often, i find, partitioning is very annoying, particularly when it isn't necessary. i had a 5G partition a few years ago, which i thought would be ample space for my growing mp3 collection. now i have more than 10G, and its split over 3 different disks. i cant think of a good reason to partition ur disk, unless u are going to install a separate OS on it (like GNU/Linux, or another BSD variant).
  • Reply 2 of 21
    giantgiant Posts: 6,041member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by alexius

    In preparation for a backup and install of pather on a fresh drive, I was wondering if it is a good idea to leave my 30 gig drive whole or split it up?



    I remember hearing something about having the system on the first few gigs of the drive, or something along these lines.



    Any suggestions?



    Thanks!



    Leave it whole.
  • Reply 3 of 21
    1337_5l4xx0r1337_5l4xx0r Posts: 1,558member
    Seriously, leave it whole unless you have a good reason to do otherwise. You'll kick yourself if you do not heed these words.



    The only reason to partition now would be if you plan on installing another OS on the same drive, such as netBSD or Linux.
  • Reply 4 of 21
    gsxrboygsxrboy Posts: 565member
    If I succumb to a new pb i will partition the drive in to 3, 1gb for d/ls to keep them sep while I go thru them, one that is 5gb for a superdrive burn size (archives or dvd burning) and the rest for osx and apps
  • Reply 5 of 21
    francisg3francisg3 Posts: 168member
    I used to partition my drive 2 ways. Essentially, my home folder was the second partition. I loved it! Searches were faster, data was easier to back up.



    I stopped doing it after iDVD2 wouldn't work with iMovie, because of it. I'm debating whether to attempt it with iDVD3, because I liked the setup so much.
  • Reply 6 of 21
    alexiusalexius Posts: 38member
    Alright, so I won't partition, but I just bought an external drive of about 80 gigs. Is there a way to get my home folder onto that drive without getting too much grief from OS X?



    Thanks again
  • Reply 7 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Is there a way to partition a drive that has OS X and lots of stuff on it without reformatting?
  • Reply 8 of 21
    mac writemac write Posts: 289member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by alexius

    Alright, so I won't partition, but I just bought an external drive of about 80 gigs. Is there a way to get my home folder onto that drive without getting too much grief from OS X?



    Thanks again



    That's a good idea is to keep your home folder on your 80GB, and to then leave the 30GB for OS and Apps. Maybe partition the 30GB so you can have a couple OS's on there.



    To move your home folder to the 80GB:
    • Open Net Info Manager located in Applications>Utilities

    • Click the lock to authenticate yourself as an admin

    • Cick Users in the middle column

    • Click your user name

    • In the bottom pane, scroll down to "Home Folder" and double click the field on the right /Users/username

    • Change it to /Volumes/80GB name/Users/username

    • Click a different username clock ok on the 2 dialogue boxes

    • Logout and back in again

    That's it. You might want to first crate the Users/username on your external drive first and move your files over before you change the location in netinfo. This is not required though.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    Is there a way to partition a drive that has OS X and lots of stuff on it without reformatting?



    No you can not do this with any software on the Macintosh. You will need to backup first and then format and partition your drive.
  • Reply 9 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Quote:

    No you can not do this with any software on the Macintosh. You will need to backup first and then format and partition your drive



    That is very annoying. I believe Partition Magic can do this on a PC? Would it really be that hard to have Disk Utility create a partition out of most of the unused space on a drive?
  • Reply 10 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    So it must be possible in OS X. Does anyone know how?
  • Reply 11 of 21
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    So it must be possible in OS X. Does anyone know how?



    i'm about 95% sure that its not possible on osx. from my understanding, you can alter the partition table, and risk not ruining some partitions, but you can't mess with a partition and expect it to remain. in altering the table, you would delete/move/add/whatever to affect partitions, but not live data-holding partitions, because in affecting them you have to delete/recreate them.
  • Reply 12 of 21
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by thuh Freak

    on some old computers (original imacs i believe) the system has to be in the first 8 (maybe it was 6) gigs of the hard disk, so you had to partition. ...



    It's true about the first 6 Gigs, mine came with a 6 Gig drive, but you don't have to partition it. I installed a larger drive and put the OS on it. It seemed to me that as long as the OS was in the first 6 gigs it was okay. I put dual boot linux on it and had to fit Mac OS, the boot partition and Linux all in the first 6 gigs. That was fun to figure out.
  • Reply 13 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Freak that doesn't sound very advanced. If OS 9 and Windows can do it why can't OS X? Panther is going to be a pain in the ass if I can't make a new partition out of empty space. Surely there must be a way! Amorph, anyone else shed any light on this?
  • Reply 14 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
  • Reply 15 of 21
    drumsticksdrumsticks Posts: 315member
    The two main benefits of partitioning a hard drive (other than to support multiple OSs) are:



    Firstly, it is easier to backup and [mentioned earlier] faster to search. If your system partition breaks (or you want to do a clean upgrade), it leaves your data partition intact - you can always reinstall your system partition.



    Secondly, if a program creates large files, overfilling its own partition will not affect other programs, which use their own partitions. This is mainly applicable to [typically server] programs that generate lots of log files.



    Say your webserver gets particularly popular (or is under a DoS attack), the web access logs may be so large that it could cripple the entire system if it fills up the whole hard drive.



    If the webserver has its own partition and it fills that up, the only program it is hurting is itself, your proxy program (which also generate lots of logs), mail servers or any other program will still function.



    You may be able to set quotas and stuff, but this is by far the easiest method. Lessons learnt from running a Linux server on an OLD machine.



    EDIT: I forgot to mention that the second argument required some foresight to how much disk space each program needs though. Note that this is useful only for programs that create lots of files, not all programs.
  • Reply 16 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    But how do we partition a drive without erasing it? There must be a way. It would be nice if Apple would build that into Disk Util.
  • Reply 17 of 21
    123123 Posts: 278member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    But how do we partition a drive without erasing it? There must be a way. It would be nice if Apple would build that into Disk Util.



    http://www.fwb.com/html/partition_toolkit.html



    I would recommend to back up your data first



    (only works with OS 9, remove your HD and put it into a OS 9 bootable Mac if you have a new model)
  • Reply 18 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Nope that won't help me on a PowerBook 12". I definitely am not taking apart my baby! I completely took apart my iBook and that was not good.
  • Reply 19 of 21
    123123 Posts: 278member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    Nope that won't help me on a PowerBook 12". I definitely am not taking apart my baby! I completely took apart my iBook and that was not good.



    Get yourself an external firewire drive, then.
  • Reply 20 of 21
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    I want to know how to partition a drive with something already on it. It's complicated regarding my other drive that is a last ditch solution.
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