Help with partioning

2A Batterie said:

I apologize if this is a stupid question, but I'm still fairly new to the computer world so bear with me. I'd like to partion my hard drives so I can get better performance with editing audio in ProTools. I was getting ready to partion one of my hard drives this morning and window popped up that said my HD would be erased when I partioned. Do I have to parition on an empty HD or can I partition it when it is already storing data?

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Mac OS X (and Mac OS 9) do not have a non-destructive partitioning method. This means that if you partition, you format also, and lose anything stored on the drive that isn't backed up after partitioning. It's perfectly fine to partition an HD with data on it as long as you have anything you want saved backed up elsewhere. If you partition your boot volume, you'll have to reinstall Mac OS X and reapply all the updates again unless you have a bootable clone of your hard drive - even then, it isn't easy to just clone the HD again because the original might be bigger than the largest partition, preventing a successful clone.