repartition my disk?

L

llewell

Registered
I have only have one partition on my disk. From the info I've seen, you can't repartition the startup disk. Is this correct or am I missing something here? I'm new to this Mac stuff, having wasted my life on Windows and Linux, so be gentle, please.
Just want to know if I should start reinstalling now, so I don't waste the time it takes for the CD to arrive.

Thanks,
Ted
 
Wow, no one knows the answer to this. I'm really getting into uncharted waters, here, huh? ;-)
Well, even the thought of reinstalling all that stuff is too painful; I'm basically lazy. Think I'll figure out how to add an external drive...
 
Well the truth is you can install X on the same Partition as MacOS 9.0.4. To be exact could you list your Hardware Config to give people an Idea what your dealing with. Good luck.
 
Thanks, Beau, for your response. I'm running a stock G3 All-in-one. 266-MHz, 4G ATA drive, 288Mb RAM, 6Mb video (I know, more than 4 is pretty much a waste).
I thought about installing into the existing partition, but it sounds sort of irreversible unless you know EXACTLY where to put everything by hand if you have to back out.
I also happen to have a 9G SCSI drive going unused in an IBM PC, so with an add-in card (it's a 68-pin drive) and an enclosure, adding a drive is not such a problem. The G3 all-in-one is a marvel of engineering. I'm not sure just where they put the hard disk, and I looked real hard. If it's that thing bolted to the top of the enclosure I hope it lasts for a very long time.
 
Right now you have two choices. You can either install OS X on the same partition as OS 9, or you can back up your data, erase the HD, put it in two partitions, then reinstall OS 9 on one and OS X on the other. It's not that you can't partition your startup disk; you can't partition ANY disk that has data on it without erasing the data.
 
Luna,

Ah, well, you have figured out what I wanted to know even when I was too obtuse to say it. I have repartitioned disks without erasing the data, with a utility the Linux community distributes to work with DOS (read Windows FAT) file systems. I was wondering if Apple had a way to defrag my disk and create a partition in the unused space without destroying the pointers to the existing data. No such luck, I guess.
And yes, I am crazy enough to risk this procedure rather than just reinstall. I've already copied the data off to a CD. I just don't know how long it would take me to figure out how I've got everything set up. It begins to look to me like experienced Mac people put their OS in its own small partition, like smart UNIX people do, for the times when disaster strikes. (And like you can't do with Windows because it's too stupid to find a swap file that's on a different disk.)
Well, I just spent more on a SCSI enclosure than I did on my last two PCs. I'll just put the beta on an external drive. I'll just have to keep lots of copies of my data in case OS9 ever blows up on me and takes it's partition with it.

Ted
 
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