HOT: change partition sizes without erasing disc

Zammy-Sam

Zammy-Sam

Desertchild
VolumeWorks 1.0 has been released and it's supposed to do what PartitionMagic did in the pc-world. For those ppl who are not familiar with the functionality of PartitionMagic:
You can add, delete partitions without deleting any Data from your disc or formating the disc. You can even increase or decrease the size of certain partitions.
SubRosaSoft developed a similar tool.
Check out here

This is fantastic. Someone gotta try this. I have too many important data to risc checking this tool.. Anyone else? :)
 
If they had a Demo, which they don't, I'd try it on one of my drives.

Send me $49.95 and I'll let you know how it works. :)
 
I wonder if it makes sense to get a demo for this.
Everyone will partition the system the one and only time and skip to buy it.. :)
 
They could have a Demo that will only partition once so you can see how well it works. I wouldn't use it on my main drive unless I knew for sure it worked ok.
 
Most of the macs are not paritioned but preinstalled by default. Supposed one doesn't want to reinstall, it would be great to add another partition just like that. Having at least 2 partitions is very important, if you ask me. But true, I see no point in paying $50 for something I will actually do just once if at all.
However, I remember a lot of ppl previously asking for such a tool. Now, here it is :)
 
Not having an actual income limits my purchasing power, but if I did have $50 I'd pick this up (assuming it works). I'm a Linux dabbler, but most of the time I stick with good ole OS X. However, it'd be great to create and blow away partitions on a whim. As it stands now I need to back up everything, reformat, and then reinstall everything if I get the Linux using bug. I'll probably buy this when I can afford it.
 
I always wonder, what's the point of partitions? A folder does the same thing and you don't have to reformat the computer to make it...
 
The point of partitions is very big. If you want two versions of OS X on the same box, you want them on different partitions. If you use your drive as a file server on your local network, you want the directories that are shared to be on a seperate partition so that a user can't fill up the entire disk with the OS image on it, which can cause issues with the OS running. You may want to keep your /Users folder on a seperate partition, so that when you upgrade the OS, or reinstall the OS, you don't have to worry about bad things happening to your data on it. I can go on and on on reasons why you might want more then one partition.

Brian
 
And all of those reasons are things the majority of Macs users aren't going to do/need.
That said, I hope this software does as it advertises, so PC people can have one more reason to feel better about using Macs.
 
Yes, all things that 'most' people don't need :).
But I was under the impression that just because you had a drive partitioned didn't mean that changes on one partition kept the other partitions safe...
 
I was under the impression that just because you had a drive partitioned didn't mean that changes on one partition kept the other partitions safe...
Click to expand...
Not from a hard drive issue.
 
In the 'old' days of Mac OS 9, I was a fan of partitions, because OS 9 didn't care much where you had your apps, documents etc. Mac OS X, however, is different in many aspects. One of those is that if the system's partition is getting low on disk space, the whole machine turns very, very slow. So you'll want as much free space on that partition as possible. Now, what would you use a second partition for? Just a copy of your OS X installation? That'd mean cutting your drive in half. Just to try out beta builds? I recommend an external harddrive for that. An old one will do. Users' folders? You wouldn't want to run out of disk space there, either...

I found that partitions _always_ seemed to have just too little spare space, too. Ever since, I'm a one-partition man. ;-) ...

Yet: This tool would at least enable me to decide forth and back. Tiger betas? Okay, maybe I _do_ want a second partition for those, so I can also use them on the road without having the FW harddrive with me... And when it's stable enough, I have no more use for the second partition... Then I could remove it and reclaim the space for the main partition... Then again: I'd reformat the harddrive for a clean installation by then, anyway.
 
the demo of partition magic lets u tell it what you want to do to your disks..but then when u say GO, it says..opps, you can't actually do anything in the demo.
 
Partitioning doesn't save you if there's a physical hard drive crash. What it does is keep data that could grow to unpredictable sizes from eating up all your hard drive space, and interfering with the working of the OS or the ability of users to make use of the computer.

So, some typical uses of partitioning from the Linux side of things:

- memory swap space goes in a separate partition (you could even use multiple partitions, I think). So, you can save all the files you want and you won't eat up the swap space your computer will need. In OS X, swap files live on the regular file system, in /var/vm, so to isolate them you'd need to mount a separate partition at /var/vm.

- /var goes on a partition - /var holds all the stuff that could grow unpredictably; mail queues, log files, and such. This prevents an attacker from completely filling of the hard drive by, for example, sending hundreds of mail messages with huge attachments, to unreachable addresses, so the computer can't get rid of them.

- /home goes on a partition - this is the equivalent of /Users in OS X. This way, a user could download umpty gigs of mp3s, and not cause the OS itself to stop working properly. Other users couldn't save files, but at least the OS would be functional enough that the culprit could log in and delete some mp3s.

- sometimes /tmp goes on a partition - /tmp is writable by everyone, so it makes sense to isolate it.
 
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