Yeup, from Halo, baby! <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> That's for my single-partition 20GB PBG4 550, btw...
As far as the other machines in my house, the Sage iMac (1 partition) Turbonium, the PMG4 450 (2 drives, 1 partition each) has Gurthang and Orcrist, and the iBook has Snow White. I'm going to be buying a new dual GHz machine, so I'll probably name it one of the computers from the Marathon trilogy... (either Tycho or Leela - Durandal is the name for my Xbox). Or maybe something else from LotR... I'll have to see...
That disk icon (along with some other cool ones like branded leather and other types of fur) can be found on <a href="http://www.iconfactory.com"; target="_blank">www.iconfactory.com</a> It's called "Xtra Drives" or something, and it's one of the newest ones (perhaps the newest).
My HD has to have partitions because it's one of the older OS X supported computers and the HD is over 8GB. I have an 8GB OS X partition called Deep Blue and a 4GB OS 9 partition called Deep Thought (the first named after that IBM chess computer, and the second named after that giant computer in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy that came up with the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything). When I get my new (used) PowerMac G4 I'll probably name its HD something like Zaphod or Trillian. The 2GB drive I used to have in my PowerBook was called Mouse, because it's so small, and it'll be going into my PowerMac when I get it.
Well mines pretty simple too. No partitioning yet, and I named it:
"My iBook"
So to make it a bit more "personal" I took a digital photo of my iBook and cropped it out, fixed the size and coloring, and got an icon creator. Now the icon for my hard drive named "My iBook" has a picture of my actual iBook! It's a pretty good icon too.
If anyone wants to see it, or would like a copy of it, let me know.
Actualy, Kalie, I suggest you search these forums. Several times I have dealt with people asking about partitioning and I *always* recommend keeping it to a minimum, because it isn't necessary. FYI, moving swap to a dedicated partition will give you a negligible improvement in performance, if any at all. Moving swap only helps in two cases: your hard drive is extremely slow and you move it to a much faster drive or your drive is very full and/or extremely fragmented. I don't think I've ever read someone claim that *four* partitions is the best setup, and certainly not anything about configuring Unix like that. Ugh.
The main reason I recommend *against* partitioning a drive is because the size can be very restricting. What if a few weeks down the line you find you'd rather have a few more gigabytes in the apps partition rather than the scratch? Or vice versa? You'll have to reformat it all and start over again.
The only "pro" to partitioning, in my opinion, is that you can install a copy of OSX on each one and tinker with and hack the system (if you like that kind of thing). If something ever screws up, you can start up from the second partition and repair the first. I have an OSX install on both my drives for this very reason.
There are other reasons for and against partitioning, but I won't go off-topic and cover them here. You can start another thread for that if you wish.
Actually, I partitionned the HD of my old Mac and that was one of the best actions I made on it. Partitioning accelerate disk access, there is less fragmentation, and if a partition goes bad (for whatever the reason), the others are not affected. About fragmentation, it's not so obvious but it really help. Partitioning is a good protection strategy for your precious documents (sorry for the wrong English here). There are much more good reasons to make partitions than not to do so, believe me. I can't go over all the technical details here, but it's better to make partitions even in OS X. The age of the systeme doesn't matter.
I worked in the computer departement of an university some years ago, full of Unix boxes (mainly Sun, SG and NeXT computers), and they were all partitioned for security and maintenance reasons. In another departement, something went wrong on some HD without partitions and they lost ALL data (it wasn't a head crash). Partitions are safer (I don't say absolute protection, of course).
The only drawback of partitioning, is the limitation in size. Like you implied, if you want to put some file bigger than your partitions, well, you can't ! This doesn't concern me.
However, I know by experience that it's better (safer) to have some partitions (any kind of OS). If corruption attack one partition, the others aren't affected. Personnally, I don't care much about accelerating disk access and fragmentation. I'll make some partitions mostly for security reasons. My data (documents), OS and applications are safer when they don't reside on the same partition. Of course, it's better to have several HD than several partitions on the same HD. But partitions are good if you only have a single HD.
O my ! I read my own stuff and my English is so terrible I should just shut up. It's too hard to express myself in another language, especially with the the poor computer I'm using right now at work (first generation iMac, which isn't partitioned and which suffered many HD problems and file lost, by the way).
At any rate, perhaps you'd be interseted in a conversation I had with an Apple engineer friend of mine.
Me: "...Should I partition my drive at all?"
Apple engineer: "Don't do it. Just don't do it. There really is no point."
I tend to agree with him. You want redundancy? Use a CD or twelve. You need more than that? Buy another drive. Or twelve.
OS X likes for things to be in certain places. For example, if something isn't in /Applications and it's supposed to be, odds are it won't update properly.
I already said partitioning isn't an absolutely secure strategy. Of course, if the HD fail (head crash for example), you lose everything. This is obvious.
But I do know that it's safer to have some partitions than having only one HD without partitions. I know, because I experienced this several times, at home, at work, and I saw many other workers suffering data lost because of corruptions on the HD content file (sorry, I don't remember the English term for this). Since the last 6 years (when I began partitioning), I never had a single lost because of my partition strategy.
I have read many books which suggest partitions and I know by experience it's a good strategy when you only have one HD.
If you don't want any partitions, just don't make any. Apple doesn't suggest partitions because they want people to use their Applications and files folders. I'm using the Apps folder only for Apple's apps, but I prefer to put all my serious stuff elswhere. Is this about the Macintosh way or not ? Apple's politics aren't sacro-saint, dammit. I wont argue more on this.
Don't worry, you're English is better than some of the "native" English speakers here.
Okay, I understand all of your point except this one:
Partitioning accelerate disk access
I'd *really* like to know why you say that. It's the same drive, only data is stored in a different location. If the drive is optimized and not fragmented much (I very rarely encounter fragmentation in OSX), why would disk access on a partitioned drive be faster?
>why would disk access on a partitioned drive be faster?
Because there is less head movements ! Just because of that !
When the computer access several files ON THE SAME PARTITION, the little arm inside the HD do not have to move far away. Files on the same partition are physicaly closer. Of course, for a single file, you wont notice any differences. But if you do lots of stuff and many disk access, the difference CAN be pretty noticeable. I personally experienced this on a slow drive and it was obvious (well, okay, almost).
This is related to fragmentation in some way. If you scatter a big file over a very big HD with a single partition, the arm must do many movements (back and forth) to read the file. This is a slow process. People tend to forget the importance of disk access on their computer on overall system performances. If you put your documents on a separate partition, you reduce this oscillation movement and you also reduce the risk of fragmentation.
There was an interesting file on this, made by APS, and another one from LaCie, some years ago. I don't know if I can find them. They are justifying the partition strategy (whatever what Apple enginneers are saying).
<strong>>why would disk access on a partitioned drive be faster? Because there is less head movements ! Just because of that !</strong><hr></blockquote>
Kali,
I'm sorry but I gotta disagree. This might have been true at one time but with todays drives it isn't... also when it comes to RAID systems (I have 1.4+TB rack system on a dual fibre channel) the LESS you partition the BETTER.
Worst part about that much storage is tape back-up.
If you are using a file, it's not like the hard drive only uses that file. It will also be swapping things around, grabbing various sytem files, etc. On a new drive, the partitions could actually be slightly (but probably not noticeably) slower because to move the head from the file you're using to the swap means it has to move all the way to a different partition which is further away than the swap file would have been if the drive was not partitioned.
If you're really serious about this, you should get 2 or more hard drives even if they're smaller. At least that way you will see a performance increase. Partitioning is just pretending.
Comments
roxanne (love interest in Cyrano De Bergerac)
cyrano (see above)
helly (wifes laptop)
deefer (wifes 2nd drive and dogs name)
Yeup, from Halo, baby! <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> That's for my single-partition 20GB PBG4 550, btw...
As far as the other machines in my house, the Sage iMac (1 partition) Turbonium, the PMG4 450 (2 drives, 1 partition each) has Gurthang and Orcrist, and the iBook has Snow White. I'm going to be buying a new dual GHz machine, so I'll probably name it one of the computers from the Marathon trilogy... (either Tycho or Leela - Durandal is the name for my Xbox). Or maybe something else from LotR... I'll have to see...
My HD has to have partitions because it's one of the older OS X supported computers and the HD is over 8GB. I have an 8GB OS X partition called Deep Blue and a 4GB OS 9 partition called Deep Thought (the first named after that IBM chess computer, and the second named after that giant computer in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy that came up with the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything). When I get my new (used) PowerMac G4 I'll probably name its HD something like Zaphod or Trillian. The 2GB drive I used to have in my PowerBook was called Mouse, because it's so small, and it'll be going into my PowerMac when I get it.
[ 08-30-2002: Message edited by: Luca Rescigno ]
[ 08-30-2002: Message edited by: Luca Rescigno ]</p>
"My iBook"
So to make it a bit more "personal" I took a digital photo of my iBook and cropped it out, fixed the size and coloring, and got an icon creator. Now the icon for my hard drive named "My iBook" has a picture of my actual iBook! It's a pretty good icon too.
If anyone wants to see it, or would like a copy of it, let me know.
The main reason I recommend *against* partitioning a drive is because the size can be very restricting. What if a few weeks down the line you find you'd rather have a few more gigabytes in the apps partition rather than the scratch? Or vice versa? You'll have to reformat it all and start over again.
The only "pro" to partitioning, in my opinion, is that you can install a copy of OSX on each one and tinker with and hack the system (if you like that kind of thing). If something ever screws up, you can start up from the second partition and repair the first. I have an OSX install on both my drives for this very reason.
There are other reasons for and against partitioning, but I won't go off-topic and cover them here. You can start another thread for that if you wish.
Actually, I partitionned the HD of my old Mac and that was one of the best actions I made on it. Partitioning accelerate disk access, there is less fragmentation, and if a partition goes bad (for whatever the reason), the others are not affected. About fragmentation, it's not so obvious but it really help. Partitioning is a good protection strategy for your precious documents (sorry for the wrong English here). There are much more good reasons to make partitions than not to do so, believe me. I can't go over all the technical details here, but it's better to make partitions even in OS X. The age of the systeme doesn't matter.
I worked in the computer departement of an university some years ago, full of Unix boxes (mainly Sun, SG and NeXT computers), and they were all partitioned for security and maintenance reasons. In another departement, something went wrong on some HD without partitions and they lost ALL data (it wasn't a head crash). Partitions are safer (I don't say absolute protection, of course).
The only drawback of partitioning, is the limitation in size. Like you implied, if you want to put some file bigger than your partitions, well, you can't ! This doesn't concern me.
However, I know by experience that it's better (safer) to have some partitions (any kind of OS). If corruption attack one partition, the others aren't affected. Personnally, I don't care much about accelerating disk access and fragmentation. I'll make some partitions mostly for security reasons. My data (documents), OS and applications are safer when they don't reside on the same partition. Of course, it's better to have several HD than several partitions on the same HD. But partitions are good if you only have a single HD.
O my ! I read my own stuff and my English is so terrible I should just shut up. It's too hard to express myself in another language, especially with the the poor computer I'm using right now at work (first generation iMac, which isn't partitioned and which suffered many HD problems and file lost, by the way).
<a href="http://xicons.macnn.com"; target="_blank">http://xicons.macnn.com</a>; is very nice,
thanks again !
At any rate, perhaps you'd be interseted in a conversation I had with an Apple engineer friend of mine.
Me: "...Should I partition my drive at all?"
Apple engineer: "Don't do it. Just don't do it. There really is no point."
I tend to agree with him. You want redundancy? Use a CD or twelve. You need more than that? Buy another drive. Or twelve.
OS X likes for things to be in certain places. For example, if something isn't in /Applications and it's supposed to be, odds are it won't update properly.
Oh well. Enjoy.
The small, 20GB drive: "Littlefish"
I've always named my drives <something>fish
But I do know that it's safer to have some partitions than having only one HD without partitions. I know, because I experienced this several times, at home, at work, and I saw many other workers suffering data lost because of corruptions on the HD content file (sorry, I don't remember the English term for this). Since the last 6 years (when I began partitioning), I never had a single lost because of my partition strategy.
I have read many books which suggest partitions and I know by experience it's a good strategy when you only have one HD.
If you don't want any partitions, just don't make any. Apple doesn't suggest partitions because they want people to use their Applications and files folders. I'm using the Apps folder only for Apple's apps, but I prefer to put all my serious stuff elswhere. Is this about the Macintosh way or not ? Apple's politics aren't sacro-saint, dammit. I wont argue more on this.
Okay, I understand all of your point except this one:
Partitioning accelerate disk access
I'd *really* like to know why you say that. It's the same drive, only data is stored in a different location. If the drive is optimized and not fragmented much (I very rarely encounter fragmentation in OSX), why would disk access on a partitioned drive be faster?
Because there is less head movements ! Just because of that !
When the computer access several files ON THE SAME PARTITION, the little arm inside the HD do not have to move far away. Files on the same partition are physicaly closer. Of course, for a single file, you wont notice any differences. But if you do lots of stuff and many disk access, the difference CAN be pretty noticeable. I personally experienced this on a slow drive and it was obvious (well, okay, almost).
This is related to fragmentation in some way. If you scatter a big file over a very big HD with a single partition, the arm must do many movements (back and forth) to read the file. This is a slow process. People tend to forget the importance of disk access on their computer on overall system performances. If you put your documents on a separate partition, you reduce this oscillation movement and you also reduce the risk of fragmentation.
There was an interesting file on this, made by APS, and another one from LaCie, some years ago. I don't know if I can find them. They are justifying the partition strategy (whatever what Apple enginneers are saying).
[ 08-30-2002: Message edited by: Kali ]</p>
<strong>>why would disk access on a partitioned drive be faster? Because there is less head movements ! Just because of that !</strong><hr></blockquote>
Kali,
I'm sorry but I gotta disagree. This might have been true at one time but with todays drives it isn't... also when it comes to RAID systems (I have 1.4+TB rack system on a dual fibre channel) the LESS you partition the BETTER.
Worst part about that much storage is tape back-up.
Dave
[ 08-30-2002: Message edited by: DaveGee ]</p>
External Firewire HD Name: 60 Gig External
Heh. I think not.
If you are using a file, it's not like the hard drive only uses that file. It will also be swapping things around, grabbing various sytem files, etc. On a new drive, the partitions could actually be slightly (but probably not noticeably) slower because to move the head from the file you're using to the swap means it has to move all the way to a different partition which is further away than the swap file would have been if the drive was not partitioned.
If you're really serious about this, you should get 2 or more hard drives even if they're smaller. At least that way you will see a performance increase. Partitioning is just pretending.