partitions

andrewlondonandrewlondon
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hi,



Im expecting my new iMac next week and because of this i went out and got myself a nice big hd to put in it.



Being new to the apple way of thinking i was wondering how to best set up my HD. I'd like a main partition for applications and user data and another for media, things like mp3's and movies etc... Now does this pose any security risk, i mean isn't it best to store frequently used things in your user folder so you dont need root privelages to access it and so it can only be accessed by that user account? Also would it make it any easier to share between windows pc's on my network if data is on its own partition rather than in a director in my user folder.



I hope this makes sense, if anyone out there could tell me what they think this would be very helpful.



Regards

Andrew

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    whisperwhisper Posts: 735member
    The iMacs come with their own hard drives. What do you need another one for? Unless of course you've already got enough data to fill up the internal drive.



    Edit: I just reread your post... You're planning on putting this drive inside your iMac? Not gonna happen. There's only one drive bay in there. You could take out the iMac's drive and replace it with the one you just bought, but why not get an external enclosure so that you can use both drives?
  • Reply 2 of 10
    zapchudzapchud Posts: 844member
    Whisper: I think AndrewLondon purchased a bigger-assed harddrive than that's standard in the iMac (which is sensible to do, as they're quite small if you're planning to store movies and a ton of music on them).



    However, I realized some time ago, that partitions are the most evil way of arranging an HD. You're, for little gain, limiting each partition to be able to store a fixed amount of data, even though your amount of data really is not fixed for the data types you want to store. It's IMHO like the retarded way of distributing memory on OS 9.



    My recommendation is to keep the drive-original partitioning scheme (iow. one big partition) and put your data in either your home folder or equivalent folders on the root level of the harddrive or something similar to that.
  • Reply 3 of 10
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
    There's no good reason to partition on OSX, and several reasons not too. Among these are that you have no idea which partition will fill up fastest, and the only way to re-partition is to re-format. Another is that extra partitions lie outside of OSX's permissions scheme by default (anyone can access it). Permissions are your friend. Your very very good friend who can save you from nasty things, even if he sometimes tells you something you don't want to hear. For the same reason, don't screw around with keeping files outside of your Home directory, on the root level of the HD for instance. All this stuff exists to make your life easier; let it do its thing.



    Sharing your home directory to a Windows box via Samba is easy-as-pie. Easier, probably, than sharing a separate partition or (god forbid) a root-level folder. Just click on "Windows Sharing" in the Sharing control panel, and map a Windows drive to \\\\yourMac'sNetworkAddress\\yourUserName. Thats it. Works great for folks in my lab. You can also, of course, enable remote access on the Mac and do scp/sftp/whatever from your Windows box.



    Another tip, since you mentioned root. There is (almost) no good reason to ever enable the root account on OSX. If you think you need to log in as root frequently to do something, there's a better and safer way to do it.
  • Reply 4 of 10
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Partitions aren't going to help with security any. If you're worried about security, or data loss through accident, put it on an external drive, disconnect it, and take it an offsite location.



    What partitions *are* good for is multiple-booting. I have a server that has three boot partitions - one for Classic, one for the current MacOS X Server, and one for testing the 'next version'. When 10.4 comes out, it will go onto the 'next version' partition (which currently has 10.2.8). I can thereby do a clean install, move settings over as I need to, test the thing, and only when everything is 100%, migrate. Until then, I always have a pristine and known to work install ready to fall back on. (/Users is actually on another whole drive.)



    But I'm weird.
  • Reply 5 of 10
    whisperwhisper Posts: 735member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kickaha

    [...snip...] But I'm weird.



    What's so weird about that? It makes perfect sense to me.
  • Reply 6 of 10
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Whisper

    What's so weird about that? It makes perfect sense to me.



    Alright, let's just say I'm a paranoid geek with a much more complex home setup than most folks.
  • Reply 7 of 10
    andrewlondonandrewlondon Posts: 83member
    Thanks for your help guys that was all spot-on.



    One final question, say i was to buy an external drive sometime in the future would it be possible to grant certain accounts access and block all others i.e root?



    Also, is it possible to mount it as a folder rather than a whole seperate drive?



    Sorry for the stupid questions, i just want to get everything set up right away so i dont have to do it all a few months down the line and make more work for myself.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    amoryaamorya Posts: 1,103member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by AndrewLondon

    Thanks for your help guys that was all spot-on.



    One final question, say i was to buy an external drive sometime in the future would it be possible to grant certain accounts access and block all others i.e root?



    Also, is it possible to mount it as a folder rather than a whole seperate drive?



    Sorry for the stupid questions, i just want to get everything set up right away so i dont have to do it all a few months down the line and make more work for myself.



    You can't block root from anything really. (It's best not to even enable the root account - there's next to nothing you'd ever need to use it for.)



    How do you mean mount it as a folder? It'll show up like another drive, but mount as a folder in /Volumes/Drivename behind the scenes...





    Amorya
  • Reply 9 of 10
    jellytusslejellytussle Posts: 86member
    Well, you can play with /etc/fstab and mount the volume wherever you like. I used to mount a partition at /Applications, so that i could reinstall the os without touching the apps - pointless really, but i thought it was cool at the time.
  • Reply 10 of 10
    sc_marktsc_markt Posts: 1,402member
    Partitions also come in handy if your system crashes and won't boot and running the disk repair ultility from the install disk doesn't help. If you only have one computer and this happens, you cannot access the web to get help. I recently had this happen to me and all I had to do was to boot off the OS X disk and then select the other partition as the startup disk.
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