# How many partitions do you have ?



## toast (Nov 12, 2002)

I'm not only being curious. I'm thinking of formatting my HD, and I'd like to know what partition other Mac users have.

What purpose ? What use of your Mac ? As I download a LOT, I was thinking of a 3-partition system:
*Classic
Jaguar
Downloads*

Is it really worth it ? If not, I'll partition the simple common way:
*Classic
Jaguar*

Or maybe some other suggestion ? I have some big applications that don't move from the HD, but I often install little ones to test (utilities, games, browsers...). So ? An "Applications" partition ? What about you ? Waiting for answers, thanx for voting [].


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## kendall (Nov 12, 2002)

You really should have at least one partition for each of the following, OS X, OS 9 and swap.

Having a partition for swap in most instances gives you a slight performance increase.  Also, with swap being written to a seperate partition, your main partition that houses OS X is less likely to get fragmented over time.

Also, its good to have OS X and OS 9 seperate.  It makes crucial mistakes less likely to occur if you still boot into OS 9.  In OS 9 for instance, you can delete any OS X system file.  Keeping them on a seperate partitions helps insure that wont happen.

Look at http://mac.fryke.com for a small tutorial on how to partition your HD for OS X, OS 9 and swap.  I will write something up and have it there by the end of today.


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## kommakazi (Nov 12, 2002)

I have 3 hard drives in my Tower.
1 500MB SCSI drive that is entirely dedicated as my swap partition.
1 6gig IDE HD for the System, Users, and included apps
1 45gig IDE partitioned into 2 blocks. 1 6gig block I use as a scratch disk for apps that need one and for storing backups of important files. The other block contains all applications I installed, documents, whatever, basically all my stuff.

I plan to reformat soon with an even more specific partitioning scheme:
keep the 6gig IDE as my System disk
keep the 500MB SCSI as my swap
then partition my 45giger like this:
1 for all applications, it will be mapped as /Applications to keep all apps on my system together
1 for for the users, will be mapped as /Users and will contain all my documents, movies, etc... taking the biggest chunk of the drive
1 as a scratch (much smaller)
1 as a backup (fairly small)
Obivously I need to figure out more specifically how much space to give to each partition yet...but this I feel would be the optimum partitioning scheme to keep everything clean, organized, and segmented.


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## Nummi_G4 (Nov 12, 2002)

I have 8 partitions.

Big Mac
Jerry's Crap
Scratch Disk
HD 3
Marathon
Durandal
Leela
Tycho


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## Sogni (Nov 12, 2002)

OS & Data on 1 120GB HDD
Backup of Data (User folder) on 2x40GB Drives working as RAID (so it's an 80GB RAID Drive).

I don't use Classic anymore, and have kind of removed it (it's now a .dmg file on the system drive just in case).

I might add an old 10 gig drive for swap...


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## themacko (Nov 12, 2002)

I've got my 40 gig harddrive with OSX and everything else on it, I don't have 9 installed.  Then I have a 20 gig FireWire harddrive but that's only used for backing up my iMovies, photos and MP3s.


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## cabbage (Nov 12, 2002)

Hard Drive 1 - 37.27gb
SCRATCH (2.83gb) - scratch and vm
SYSTEM (24.30gb) - Jaguar and tiny classic
CLASSIC (5.07gb) - full os9 when i need to boot for Quark  crap that won't convert to InDesign
RESCUE (5.07gb)- another jaguar partition with Norton on it

Hard Drive 2 - 37.27gb
WORK - this is where is save all my crap


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## michaelsanford (Nov 12, 2002)

I've only one partition on my TFT (no Classic at all  ).

I've also got a 60GB LaCie FW external for backup, and, of course, I've got my iPod for backing up my essays and projects and code other small junk, since it's a billion times more reliable than my LaCie (the filesystem gets completely corrupted if I look at it the wrong way).


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## Shardie (Nov 13, 2002)

i have 4 partitions on my 48gig

1.Mac OS 9 (5 gigs)
2. Mac OS X (5gigs)
3. Server (websites and work) 3.5gigs
4. Storage (Junk - downloads, movies, music whatever)

swap file for osx is on the Server partition.

??? Dunno if i notice a performance difference with swap file there. But all i know is that OS9 runs like a bomb

i have OS X 1.5 anyway (sux)


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## adambyte (Nov 13, 2002)

> _Originally posted by michaelsanford _
> *I've got my iPod for backing up my essays and projects and code other small junk, since it's a billion times more reliable than my LaCie (the filesystem gets completely corrupted if I look at it the wrong way). *



Good to know I'm not the only one... My 20 gig LaCie pocketdrive died a few deaths, too, then died permanently, and you can't even pay LaCie to repair it. It's a very sucky situation.


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## Jason (Nov 13, 2002)

37.27gb
-Stuff - 9.74gb
-Music - 9.74gb
-Windows Backup Files- 9.74gb
-Scratch2 - 6.03gb
-unformated - 3.09gb (didnt know about this.. hmm)

57.27gb
-Scratch - 5.16gb
-OSX - 11.45gb
-os9 - 11.45gb
-Files - 14.75gb
-Programs - 14.45gb

looks like im going to have to lookinto what that 3.0gb part is that unformated, can i format that partition without wiping the drive?


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## unlearnthetruth (Nov 13, 2002)

2 Drives:

60gig in 2 partitions:
Durandal - Applications and such
Tycho - Games and MP3s

120 gig in 1 partition for OS stuff and smaller apps. I've been meaning to change this into 3 partitions, but I'm too lazy to do the reinstall.


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## adambyte (Nov 14, 2002)

PowerBook with 1 20GB partition.... I know about partitioning, (did it to my Performa 6400 a while ago, when HFS was still in use, and not HFS+), and decided against partitioning my PowerBook. 

Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, Apps, and Documents all in one drive. I suppose this sounds dangerous to all of you who partition, eh? So why have I stuck with 1?

Simplicity. I remember copying files amongst my partitions all the time on my 6400. And because more copying amongst the drives happened, there was probably more wear and tear on it. Also.... I don't consider myself dumb by any means, but my brain is too slow for the "what should go where" game. I drove myself nuts with my own organization. "Crap. Does this go on the System partition, the Applications partition, or the Documents partition? Part of this is a Control Panel, so it has to go in the system, but then what? Do I put the app that uses it in the Applications folder? And I suppose I store the original compressed file in the "documents" partition..."

So, yeah.... drove myself nuts with all that. So now, I backup my important stuff to my iPod, and risk using 1 partition. I'm a simpleton, and the cons of partitions outweigh the benefits of a "scratch disk" or whatever....

to each his/her own.


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## ksv (Nov 14, 2002)

7 here.

Jaguar -8 GB
Server -8 GB
CaptureScratch -8 GB
Darwin -4 GB
LU1 (OS9) -1 GB
swap -512 MB
Mystic (apps, downloads, archives) -64 GB


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## ELSELS (Nov 6, 2011)

Nummi_G4 said:


> I have 8 partitions.
> 
> Big Mac
> Jerry's Crap
> ...



Hello,

I just joined here, found the site through yet another Mac OS-X related quest..::ha::

I wanted to know why I can't make four (4) partitions, on my 160 GB MBP hard drive, so I can run the following:

1.) Mac OS-X Lion

2.) Mac OS-X Snow Leopard (for the Mac programs that won't work without Rosetta).

3.) Windows 7

3.) Windows 8

I have three (3) - but even though I have UNALLOCATED (Un-partitioned) space, it refuses to let me create and use that (fourth) partition...

Sigh - so, how did you create eight (8) partitions! What partitioning software are you using to do so?

Also, are every one of those BOOTABLE?

Thanks!

Have a nice day/evening,

Ed


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## DeltaMac (Nov 6, 2011)

Disk Utility allows creating up to 16 partitions on one hard drive. There might be methods for even more through the diskutil app in the terminal, but then that many partitions gets a little hard to manage, I think. All 16 partitions can be bootable. I have an external with 10 partitions, with separate partitions for 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7 installers, and also partitions for each installed system, so I can boot almost any Mac model from the last 10 or 12 years. So, that's 8 bootable partitions, plus another that has a bootable backup.

Adding more than one Windows system means that you would need other software to help with that setup for Windows bootable partitions. Boot Camp can't setup more than one, but one of the alternate boot managers can get you going - like Grub, or rEFIt.

Search for 'triple boot Mac', which can bring up a number of different methods. Usually the third OS is some form of Linux, but it could just as easily be a different Windows version, I suppose.


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## Giaguara (Nov 7, 2011)

_Currently_ - just one (as in whatever Lion does).
As I don't need Windows for gaming (and if I would, I could always use the PC of my other half), all my random needs of Windows are satisfied with a Fusion VM, which can be stored in the same partition.

Previously it has depended a lot, being 1-4 partitions usually.

On my server it's 2 partitions - one for server data, iTunes and TM, one for server stuff.


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