Partitioning the HD for OS X. Yay or Nay?
When you buy a Mac nowadays both systems(OS X+OS 9) are on one drive. I've read alot of comments pro and con on the issue. What do you people feel? If there were an advantage wouldn't Apple sell Macs already partitioned. I have scoured Apples web site and can't find anything specific on the issue. What say yee all?
Comments
It may be a little faster if you setup the swap partitions and all that. My system works fine the way it is though. Can't complain about speed in any way so didn't bother.
FYI
B/W G3 400 576MB RAM
12GB HD
20GB HD
IMO, there are far more cons. <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
<strong>The only "pro" to partitioning a single drive to put OS9 on one part and OSX on the other is the ability to choose which system to boot at startup.
IMO, there are far more cons. <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
What are the cons?
Actually, it might be handy to have two 9 System folders, one for classic mode (with only base extensions on) and one for if you ever boot into 9 with the whole army of extensions.
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Haven't experimented as much with the 600 (just got it ) but have tossed OS 9 and am quite pleased with OS X only and a single volume.
BTW, make your X partition bigger than 2 GB if you do partition... I am always pressed for space
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[ 12-12-2001: Message edited by: breakskull ]</p>
I personally prefer to partition drives for some reasons like defragmenting/erasing them for temporary storage. I setup partitions exclusively for the OS, and dump all non-critical system applications on a shared partition, and general data on another partition. That way, its easier to back up as well.
Also, I have this minor issue with Mac OS 9 truncating filenames to 31 characters. The worse part is that sometimes OSX doesn't expand them again -- leaving them in the 31-character filename.
It is quite convenient.
When I get my second big drive I'll have 4 partitions:
OS 9 System Drive /X scratch
OS X System Drive
Apps/Private Data
Shared Data/Downloads
<strong>THAT is exactly why I do not like partitioning drives. I do not like the restriction imposed by splitting a drive into two parts whose sizes are immutable. I've tried partitioning my drive in the past, but I quickly found that having one was just as easy.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Hard Disk toolkit is doing a fairly good job, letting us changing the partition's size without erasing it.(Like PartitionMagic on a PC).
I have 6 partitions over 2 disks.
WD 100GB, 4 partitions (OS X, OS 9, documents, video)
Maxtor 20GB, 2 partitions ( Emergency OS 9 , copy of documents )
The advantages that I see are:
*I can reinstall any system w/o losing all my settings
*I (and others) can boot into 9 and I can have my X and User volumes not automount, so they are "invisible" to 9 and thus protected from accidental mishaps. Remember 9 don' need no stinkin' permissions. I can always mount the X and User volumes with Drive setup if I need to from 9.
*I've got another volume for running maintenance and diagnostics
*I can feel impressed with myself for figuring it all out and getting to be the head cheese on this iMac used by me, my mom, my niece and the cat.