Need advise setting up partition

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versible

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Need some advise setting up partition (s)

I have just purchased a 160GB (well its supposed to be 160, it only shows up as 152.61, why is that? seems that quite a bit is missing?) and I was hoping someone could advise me on how to set up partitions

I use OS 10.2.8 for most things (iTunes, iPhoto, email, safari, etc) and occasionally use OS 9 for my older photoshop and quark programs. I have a 13GB (12.67) internal drive on a G3 400mzh iMac. I'm pretty sure that my new external firewire LaCie drive is faster.

How many partitions shold I set up? How large should I make them? what should I use each for? What permission settings should be used for the external HD and the partitions?

also I don't know if it matters, but there are two users with separate accounts on this machine. I have set up my system according to this thread (http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28201) so that we can easily share and manage content like iTunes music and iPhoto images.

Thanks in advance for your kind attention. I love my Mac and great forums like this make me love it even more.
 
My advice: Don't partition. It sounds needless for what you mentioned what you do. If you want some security, you can create an encrypted disk using Disk Utility and you can store stuff in there that only you can get to.
As far as the missing 8 GB or so, that's normal.
 
I'll second that...forget about the partitions and just use it as one big drive.

When they say a drive has a compacity of XXX, that's unformatted. When you format, partition, etc. there's less space available. Yours lost 8gb of 160gb. My 40gb is actually 37.25gb. Just depends on the size and some other factors.
 
I think it also depends on if they are counting the megabytes at 1000 bytes or 1024 bytes.
 
Hard drives always advertise in 1000k = 1MB, so, like mdnky said, a hard drive advertised as 40GB actually formats out to around 37GB (give or take) because the system uses 1024k = 1 MB. The larger the hard drive, the more "lost space" you'll have.

In addition to the "lost space" due to the 1000k/1024k conversion, the Apple format also uses a few megabytes for partition/formatting information, so a freshly formatted drive will "lose space" because of the conversion, and will also lose a little more becaues of the partition/formatting information that has to be stored on the drive.

Perfectly normal.
 
to those who suggested I don't partition: thanks for responding. I must admit however, that I'm surprised by your answers; after all the threads I read on partitions, it seemed like a good idea. for example: I thought could I improve the speed of OS X if I put it on the faster drive in a 7-9 GB partition?
 
You can improve the performance of Panther by putting it on a physically faster hard drive (ie, going from a 5400RPM hard drive to a 7200RPM hard drive): yes. The partition size won't make a difference, though. Unless you've got a very small amount of RAM (64MB - 128MB) then partitioning doesn't make a difference in speed. Even then, spending $50 on more memory is more worthwhile than trying to repartition the hard drive to squeeze a miniscule 1% to 2% more performance out of it.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
You can improve the performance of Panther by putting it on a physically faster hard drive (ie, going from a 5400RPM hard drive to a 7200RPM hard drive): yes. The partition size won't make a difference, though. Unless you've got a very small amount of RAM (64MB - 128MB) then partitioning doesn't make a difference in speed. Even then, spending $50 on more memory is more worthwhile than trying to repartition the hard drive to squeeze a miniscule 1% to 2% more performance out of it.
Click to expand...

I am going to add 512 for a grand total of 860MB. Does this go for Jaguar too? (OS X 10.2.8)
 
860MB should do just fine. Typically, each release of OS X (10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3) benefits from more RAM -- I would say that 256MB would be the absolute minimum on which to run Jaguar or Panther, and 512MB would be a decent amount of RAM for day-to-day activities (web, email, etc.) and would suffice for medium work as well (PhotoShop). 860MB should do you just fine for the next couple years. I've maxed out my machine at 1GB, and when the system requirements for OS X go beyond that, well, it'll just be time for a new machine.

I think with 860MB and OS X on one big partition, and your backup solution (you DO have a backup solution, no? ;)) you should be set just fine.

Also, I don't know if you've said so in this thread or not, but what kind of machine are you using?
 
errr. I mean to say I will be adding 512MB for a total of 680MB. sorry

otherwise my machine is as follows
1999 iMac G3 DV/SE Graphite 400mhz,
internal 13GB HD
just added LaCie firewire 160GB HD.

I don't know anything about backing up, either. For the past 9 months, I've been operating on less than a GB of HD space, so it was never really an option. when backing up, is the data compressed and by how much?
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
I think with 860MB and OS X on one big partition, and your backup solution (you DO have a backup solution, no? ;)) you should be set just fine.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info.

I noticed that I am able to create one partition. Is this the same as no partition?

I moved everything over to the FW drive using CCC and booted up successfully from that drive. The system does seem to move faster. (I can't wait for my RAM to get here)

I have been looking into back-up software. It seems that most backup software is actually just a synchronizer on a schedule. Does it also compress the data? or do I need to use StuffIt for that?

Would it do any good to backup to the same drive?

If not, then I must figure out how to backup the 156 GB to the 12 GB drive (is archiving/compression that efficient?). or else I must partition the big drive; use one side for everyday use and the other for backup.

here's a thread for my proposed backup solution: http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=43632

Let me know what you think. And thanks for all the advice people!! :D I love getting the most out of my machine.
 
Technically you always have at least one partition on a drive.

You don't want to use the same drive for backup. That kinda throws the whole backup idea out the window. You have a backup in case your drive experiences a faliure, but if your backup is on the same drive (the failed one) then you're screwed.
 
I too have a 160GB drive, which I'll be adding to my (new, freshly installed) PowerMac. In the PC world, it's often wisely recommended to partition in order to separate the OS from the data files (and sometimes even to separate the OS from the programs). Is this a good rule of thumb with OSX? Or is it safe(r) to keep the OS + programs + data in one partition. With all of the talk I've seen and heard about having to "repair permissions" after an OSX upgrade, it _seems_ to me that separating the OS from other files is wise, but I'd like to hear from people who've actually been there and done that. Thanks!
 
Freiheit,
Since MacOS X Mounts all non-boot Volumes in the /Volume Folder of the filesystem it makes more sense to keep everything on the same Partition.
MacOS X uses a very specific Filesystem structure, and doesn't easily permit you to mount Volumes in those specific Folders.
Traditional Unix Systems would provide the ability to Mount Volumes wherever you liked in the filesystem; /boot could be a tiny partition at the start of the Physical Drive (so the OS would boot quicker), followed by the SWAP Partition (MacOS X uses a Swap File, and doesn't need a separate Partition) and then the /, /usr and /home Partitions.
If User Directories were stored on a separate Machine, the whole /home partition could be mounted over the network. If a Particular User wanted to use an Account on their Personal Workstation, the SysOp could mount their remote Volume locally in the /home Partition.
You could end up with;
/ (local)
/boot (local machine specific)
/usr (local or over the network, not machine specific, could be shared by all machines)
/home (local, off a local RAID array or over the network, not machine specific)
/home/dan (local, over the network from a different computer or off a portable Storage Device)
The location and access controls of Mounts was controlled by the SysOp through the /etc/fstab configuration file. Desktop Linux users still have to edit this file by hand.

MacOS X users can still edit the fstab file by hand, but MacOS X usually automatically mounts all non-boot volumes in the /Volumes folder.

Also, since MacOS X uses Filesystem Resources to Index (for Finder Searches), store Aliases and locate File Handlers, it's probably better to keep everything in the same Partition.

As you also might know, from your Windows Experiences, some Programs don't run properly when installed on a Partition other than the boot Partition, or on a different Partition to the OS.
 
Freiheit said:
In the PC world, it's often wisely recommended to partition in order to separate the OS from the data files (and sometimes even to separate the OS from the programs). Is this a good rule of thumb with OSX? Or is it safe(r) to keep the OS + programs + data in one partition.
Click to expand...

You must mean the Linux/Unix part of the PC World...never seen it done very often anywhere else.

The Macs from the factory are 1 partition, everything on it. I prefer keeping everything on one, which allows the home folder to work correctly. It's more of a matter of personal preference than anything.
 
I think it's more a matter of conditioning. Many people who come from a PC-background think partitioning is good. And many older Mac users remember the advantages of partitioning from the OS9 (and earlier) days.
And I think many people think that partitioning will prevent a catastrophic event from taking place.
That said, Apple should make more of a concerted effort on educating people on how to maintain their investment and keep it in good running condition, as opposed to troubleshooting. If anything, it would be good pr.
 
versible said:
Need some advise setting up partition (s)

I have just purchased a 160GB (well its supposed to be 160, it only shows up as 152.61, why is that? seems that quite a bit is missing?) and I was hoping someone could advise me on how to set up partitions
Click to expand...

Just another point here: This 160 (advertised) GB hard drive 'loses' 11 GB due to conversion between decimal (advertised) and binary (actual computer use). There is no actual 'loss of data' only a math conversion. There is a small amount lost through formatting (maybe around 10 MB, or 0.01 GB!) but that's it. The figure of 152.61 GB converts to about 163.86 GB (decimal), so this particular hard drive has more space than advertised!
 
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