Reformat, Partition, Reinstall?

unlearnthetruth

unlearnthetruth

Recycle Me!
Hey everyone, Ok so as can be seen in my signature I have a 120 gig HD and a 60 gig hd. The 60 is partitioned into two, and the 120 isn't partitioned at all, because when I had that huge crisis a while ago, the repair guys didn't partition it and I was too lazy to do it then. Anyway, the question is two part. Firstly, I want to partition the 120 gig into probably 2 or 3 partitions. To do this I was going to back up what I needed onto the other drive, reformat and what not, then replace files. Unfortunately I know OSX isn't as flexible as classic, and I'm somewhat concerned as to how to do this without having to start from scratch as far as users and preferences. Any ideas?

Also, this would be a bigger pain in the rear, but I was considering migrating my system stuff to the 60 gig and my files to the 120 gig. (the 120 used to be a 10 gig which supported my system while the 60 did the files and programs, but the 10 was replaced due to failure) The question here is can a slave drive be a boot drive, and if not, any idea where I can find jumper patterns online? THANKS!
 
The Mac usually does not care about Slave or Master, either can boot your system. take the plunge with that big HD. Copy your user Folder and any non-Jaguar apps to 60HD. Also copy over your OS 9 stuff. Assuming you keep everything as osX installs it, Then all you really need are perhaps some files from the root Library folder, that maybe from some apps, or settings files for some iApps.. Almost everything else would get recreated after a new install of Jaguar, So once copied over. Boot to OS9, then you can refomat the 120HD, re-partition, whatever. You're still in )S 9, copy everything! to a partiton on 120HD. Why? so you can do a clean partition of that drive too! If you dont need or want to do that, then just copy Data and Apps that were on 60HD, Then reinstall 0SX without formatting. Go through user setup with same user name as existing user names. Isn't that simple? Well, I didn't say it would work perfectly.....
 
I once spoke to a IBM engineer at the plant when I visited the place (when my cousin was working in there). And his advise was not to partition the HDD because it will tax the moving arms too much and wear down the HDD. And I have not partitioned any HDD since. Thought I share this with you.
 
Originally posted by plastic
I once spoke to a IBM engineer at the plant when I visited the place (when my cousin was working in there). And his advise was not to partition the HDD because it will tax the moving arms too much and wear down the HDD. And I have not partitioned any HDD since. Thought I share this with you.
Click to expand...

I have been in the computer industry for over 30 years and have seen the transition of hard drives from wash machine size to something you can hold in one hand with X100 storage capacity. Believe me that these wonderous devices are designed to work 24x7. You can't wear down the linear motor thru useage. Also the recording heads are designed to float on the recording surface of the platters. What eventually kills the drive (typically 5 years) is normal wear in the bearings of the spinning shaft that will cause excessive WOW and a head crash. Also there is a normal aging process in the coatings used to record the data. Oxides and other coatings will deterorate with age changing the flying characteristics of the heads leading to an eventual head crash.
I must add that residue heat will accelerate both the above so keep it as cool as possible.
 
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