If I partition my drive and have one dedicated for the OS and then another just for the programs and files, would I see any performance gain, problems, etc? Would you recomend or go against?
I'd say that you'd notice almost no difference, the main advantage is in the advent of some form of disc error - if the error occurs in a single partiton the others can be spared, but a large crash can take out the entire disc.
I personally think it's tidier to keep all applications along with the rest of the root filesystem in the same place, possibly putting the users home directories on a seperate partition.
As long as you are still on the same buss (and you are with partitions) then you will not see any performance gain, and just wind up inconveniencing yourself.
first, if you partition, i would strongly suggest NOT splitting up your applications from your boot directory. several 3rd party vendors thought they could get away with that, a la OS 9, and mac os x got very confused as to where to place pref files, how to manage permissions between user accounts, etc.
also, there is usually not much performance gained, but it can help with digital audio and video to have a very big, empty partition to place files and scratch disks and such, rather than having to do a tap-dance around other files. the best solution is to have a separate disk, on a separate bus, but if you can't do that, partitioning isn't a bad idea.
finally, the best reason to have partitions... personal file storage. people will say that the mac os never fails. those people would be wrong, and also apparently forget the itunes updater that erased people's home directories. your boot drive is not invulnerable. but if your mission-critical files, are on a separate partition, you can either retrieve them with a disk utility, or boot your disk in target disk mode connected to another mac to rescue the files.
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I personally think it's tidier to keep all applications along with the rest of the root filesystem in the same place, possibly putting the users home directories on a seperate partition.
also, there is usually not much performance gained, but it can help with digital audio and video to have a very big, empty partition to place files and scratch disks and such, rather than having to do a tap-dance around other files. the best solution is to have a separate disk, on a separate bus, but if you can't do that, partitioning isn't a bad idea.
finally, the best reason to have partitions... personal file storage. people will say that the mac os never fails. those people would be wrong, and also apparently forget the itunes updater that erased people's home directories. your boot drive is not invulnerable. but if your mission-critical files, are on a separate partition, you can either retrieve them with a disk utility, or boot your disk in target disk mode connected to another mac to rescue the files.