Hard Drive Organisation

Z

Zimbop

Registered
Dual 2G Powermac G5
3.5GB Ram
Mac OSX 10.4.9

I was running out of space on my main HD and kept getting warnings. It was partitioned so i moved the data on the data partition onto an external HDs, deleted the data partition and resized the main system OSX partition to the full size on the drive -- 149GB.

I bought a new WD Caviar SE16 500GB 16MB SATA drive which I presume is better than the Seagate Barracuda 7200 160GB supplied with the Mac a couple of years ago. As I have only a couple of drive bays in the Mac I intended to use this to centralise most of my data from various external HDs and use those for backups only.

Then I thought, "Shouldn't I be using the best one as the primary drive?".

I really have no idea if it's worth it, but I was half thinking of partitioning the new 500GB drive into system and Data so that at least the drive with OSX on it is benefitting from the 8MB more HD cache that the new drive has.

I know this isn't critical stuff, but I'd be interested to hear some opinions from anyone with more knowledge of HDs than myself.

Thanks for reading this far! I know it's not the most exciting post on here :)
 
Zimbop said:
Dual 2G Powermac G5
3.5GB Ram
Mac OSX 10.4.9

I was running out of space on my main HD and kept getting warnings. It was partitioned so i moved the data on the data partition onto an external HDs, deleted the data partition and resized the main system OSX partition to the full size on the drive -- 149GB.

I bought a new WD Caviar SE16 500GB 16MB SATA drive which I presume is better than the Seagate Barracuda 7200 160GB supplied with the Mac a couple of years ago. As I have only a couple of drive bays in the Mac I intended to use this to centralise most of my data from various external HDs and use those for backups only.

Then I thought, "Shouldn't I be using the best one as the primary drive?".

I really have no idea if it's worth it, but I was half thinking of partitioning the new 500GB drive into system and Data so that at least the drive with OSX on it is benefitting from the 8MB more HD cache that the new drive has.

I know this isn't critical stuff, but I'd be interested to hear some opinions from anyone with more knowledge of HDs than myself.

Thanks for reading this far! I know it's not the most exciting post on here :)
Click to expand...

If taking the startup of os x in account (which you do only once a day or less), the speed for the drive is not important. It may also be used for other purposes (like swapping) were additional speed is an advantage. So for booting only, use take the slower drive.

If you know other activities will be performed with the volume, which cause intensive drive activity, than use the fastest drive.

It is best not to have to much other things as the OS on the boot drive as an OS re-installation might be a lot easier when the drive can be formatted.

So maybe the best is - OS X on 160gb and 500gb for DATA.


Good luck, Kees
 
I'd disagree here. Take the 500 GB drive as the main drive. Do *not* partition it. You want both the system and your data to be able to grow freely, else you're soon in the situation where the system would want to allow for more virtual memory (and can't, because the system volume is full) but still have space left on the data partition. Or vice versa. But there's no real reason for partitioning. Use the 160 GB drive as an additional place for storage, archiving etc. Or you could install a spare OS X on there, so if something goes wrong, you could still boot from that one to take a closer look at the hosed system.
 
The only reason you wouldn't want to use the 500 GB drive as the main drive would be if you needed a scratch disk - for video imports or similar. Scratch disks tend to break sooner, due to the large amount of work they do, they need to be fast, and there should be a large amount of space on them.

You will get better system performance on the 500 GB drive, and you don't need to worry about moving things like you would with the 160 GB one.
 
Thanks for the answers, what would be the easiest way to clone the original HD to the 500GB? I have a few things like carbon copy cloner, disk utility, super duper, just wodnering what you guys would opt for.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top