partitioning hard drive

[djcoxon]

I hear a lot of talk in mags about partitioning your hard drive, as it's apparently a good idea when working a lot with image files. But how do you go about it? Is there a walk through somewhere on line? I've been into disk utility, but can't seem to get the partition boxes to highlight - they're all deactivated. And what are the advantages/disadvantages of this? I have a G4 powerbook, with 256mhz and a 30gb hard drive which is getting rather full, and slow.
One other thing - can the mac be defragged? How is this done. Thanks for any help...
DJC

[HexMonkey]

Partitioning splits your hard disk into multiple 'bits', so you essentially have more than one smaller disk instead of one big disk. The main advantages are it lets you use multiple systems (other than OS X/OS 9 which can be done on one partition), and if one partition dies, the others may still be alright (instead of the whole hard disk dieing). Disadvantages include the fact that you have to erase the disk to set them up, so make sure you back everything up first, and that you may run out of space on one partition but have plenty of room on another, and if you want to change the partition sizes, you have to erase the disk. In your case partitions might not be very useful since your hard disk is so full.

To partition a drive, restart from the install disc, and open Disk Utility (from one of the menus I think). Select the hard disk (NOT the indented partition), and click on the Partition tab in the middle (this is Panther version, may vary in others). Set up your partitions here and click partition.

Defragging is mostly done automatically by the system and you shouldn't worry about it. There are a few third party apps that do it, but it's not necessary.

[Sparky's]

Here's a few articles that shed some light:

http://partition.radified.com/partitioning_2.htm

http://www.mcn.org/heidsite/macinfo/hd.html

http://www.knowplace.org/tips.html
This one go to "Partition Scheme Hints"

http://www.lowendmac.com/misc/2k0719.html

I think these will say a lot more and more acurately than I could.