Partition - Swap - Spit Shine

[blackpeter]

So I'm going to try a new partitioning scheme. 5 partitions:

1. (650MB) Swap

2. (2GB) OS 9

3. (2GB) OS X

4. (10GB) Apps

5. (25GB) Data

...so I'm just looking for feedback. Is this a good allocation of HD space for these purposes?

[Beej]

IMHO, you don't need that many! I just have one for X, and one for Classic.

Also, unless you have a slow machine, I wouldn't bother with the swap partition. I used to use one, but after 10.1 came out I couldn't tell the difference (even with a stopwatch). I was using a G4 400.

If you do decide to use a swap partition, you don't need one that big. Mine only ever used less than 70 MB, so I'd suggest by using 650 MB, you'd be wasting half a gig.

[britboy]

i just go for a 3 partition scheme

2 GB for OS 9
2.7 GB for OS X
the rest (15 GB) for files

Keeps things running reasonably well, although i could really do with upgrading this hard drive a little!

[Beej]

One thing you need to remember is that if you get your partition sizes wrong, you have to wipe the whole drive and start again. Not fun. Unless you're very strange. And I mean really, really strange. :D

[menoinjun]

If you are going to use a swap file, make it at least as big in MB as the amount of ram you have. I have plenty of HD, so I over sized it by a lot.

My setup

OS X 30 gig
OS 9 8 gig
Backup 5 gig
Swap 1.5 gig
Scratch (photoshop, fcp, illustrator, etc...) 2 gig
mp3 10 gig

-Pete

[macstudent]

IS there a performance difference using a different HD for swap files opposed to using a seperate partition?

[eyelikeart]

Originally posted by Beej
One thing you need to remember is that if you get your partition sizes wrong, you have to wipe the whole drive and start again. Not fun. Unless you're very strange. And I mean really, really strange. :D

just how strange are u talking? ;)

anyway....my partition scheme goes like this:

a 30 gig IBM Travelstart in my TiBook...
1) OS 10.1 on 9.76 gig
2) OS 9.2 on 18.17 gig

I know I should have probably switched that around...but I was planning on doing more with OS 9.2 than with X...even though I generally run X....I still boot into 9.2 to do work since I have everything I need to be able to use there...

[Mr. Anderson]

No partitions here. Now I'm thinking I should, but could someone tell me why I'd want to do that? I haven't run into any problems with the setup, so I also thinking I shouldn't fix what's not broke.:)

[AlphaTech]

Here's mine...

60GB IBM Travelstar in my TiBook 500MHz (rev. a)...

OS X (10.1.3) 60GB

That's it. With the 1GB of RAM, it SCREAMS!!! I also don't have to worry about filling up one partition and needing to do it all over again (major pain in the a$$). The only version of OS X that needed more then one partition was the public beta. As soon as the full release came out, you didn't need to do that at all. It makes things a hell of a lot easier to have just the one partition. If you are a glutton for punishment/abuse, then go ahead and do up multiple partitions. If you want less pain, and more up time, go with one. Oh yeah, and have a bootable cd for your utilities. Which you should run periodically, depending on how heavy your usage is.

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by dukestreet
No partitions here. Now I'm thinking I should, but could someone tell me why I'd want to do that? I haven't run into any problems with the setup, so I also thinking I shouldn't fix what's not broke.:)

Amen to that... If it works, don't d*ck around with it, and cause yourself grief.

[Backtothemac]

I have a 40 Gig HD and I use two partitions. I have 500 Megs for OS 9 and the rest for X. It is perfect for my needs. Oh, and I agree with everyone who commented before about the swap file partition. If you have any kind of machine and X.1 you will not notice a difference.

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by macstudent
IS there a performance difference using a different HD for swap files opposed to using a seperate partition?

Absolutely...by using partitions on the same HD, you don't really accomplish much except prevent defragmentation of your swapfile.

If your swapfile is on the same HD as your OS, Apps and Files, the drive head still has to travel all over your drive to access information, resulting in slower access time and a LOT of grinding (that's a technical term BTW).

A dedicated swap drive is much better because you don't commingle all your HD accesses for the OS, Apps, etc.

So then the next best solution is to get a separate HD for files and swap, partition it with the 600 MB to 1 GB for swap and the rest for data...

Or just get a boatload of RAM and forget pageouts ever existed! :D

[blackpeter]

Hmm... and I thought it was better for my drive to partition it for swap.

So you're telling me not to bother unless I'm swapping to another drive altogether?

[Rower_CPU]

Yep, don't bother unless you have a second drive to put it on. You might get a little bit better performance, but the hassle is not worth it.

[Beej]

Back in the days of OS X 10.0, I did some testing with swap partitions on my G4 400 w/ 2HDs.

I tired two different set ups:
1. Swap partition on smae drive (7200rpm)
2. Swap partition on seperate drive (5400rpm)

I found even though the second drive was slower, setup 2 was faster than setup 1 by about 10% or so.

But, like I said above, since 10.1 came out, I can't tell the difference, even with a stopwatch. I don't have a swap partition on my new computer.

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
Absolutely...by using partitions on the same HD, you don't really accomplish much except prevent defragmentation of your swapfile.
And all along I thought it was fragmentation we were trying to prevent, not defragmentation. :)

Does OS X support swap *partitions*? That is, unformatted partitions used as swap space? Swap partitions can be faster than swap files, and with them one has the added benefit of being able to put a swap partition on the high cylinders of the drive, along the outer surface of the platters, where transfer rates are higher.

I agree that having many partitions on the same drive can be cumbersome, but it is a useful scheme to reduce damage in the event of a filesystem being corrupted (which is all too likely in both 9 and X). If I have one big 100GB partition and it goes, then EVERYTHING goes, whereas if I have four 25GB partitions, each containing different types of files, then if one of them goes I still have the others. This is less of an issue with regular backups, but I don't know of anyone who backs up 100GB of data every week or more.

Alex

[AlphaTech]

Unless your drive reaches critical mass, or dies completely, you can recover the file system without too much effort. I have done it on a several occasions where the drive wouldn't even show up when I booted off of a cd. I was able to get it back with the trio of utilities that I have (DiskWarrior 2, TechTool Pro 3 and Norton Utilities). Between the threem I have been able to recover the drives, and lose 0 data. Even if the system files go bad on the Mac, you can just install a fresh OS on top of the old one and be back up and running in anywhere from 10-30 minutes (depending on your system). If you are really concerned about system corruption, get an external hard drive, or backup system and do periodic backups. If you have a Superdrive equiped Mac, then just burn a dvd (you can probably get both OS 9 and X onto the same one. I would suggest doing that AFTER running utilities. That way, you know that the system is in good shape. Since OS X is the more complicated, and larger, OS of the two, I would do that one first.

Oh, and if your drive goes, it doesn't matter how many partitions you have, they are toasted. I had an iMac's drive blow it's contoller board (on the hard drive) where everything was lost. That is the ONLY time I have not been able to recover the files. Like I said, if the drive reaches critical mass, you are screwed no matter how you divide the drive.

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by alex_ant

And all along I thought it was fragmentation we were trying to prevent, not defragmentation. :)

Doh...good reason to proof-read your posts...:rolleyes:

[mac15]

ME
5gig OS 9
4gig mp3s
1gig shared
it much better with partions

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by mac15
ME
5gig OS 9
4gig mp3s
1gig shared
it much better with partions
Whoa, FIVE LINES!! I've never seen more than three from you. Congrats, dude. :)

[mac15]

why do I need to write so much there wasn't that much to write about so don't go flapping your gums about something that nobody cares about

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by AlphaTech
Unless your drive reaches critical mass, or dies completely, you can recover the file system without too much effort. I have done it on a several occasions where the drive wouldn't even show up when I booted off of a cd. I was able to get it back with the trio of utilities that I have (DiskWarrior 2, TechTool Pro 3 and Norton Utilities). Between the threem I have been able to recover the drives, and lose 0 data.

Alpha, I'm curious - how much did you pay for those three disk utilities combined? No offense, but it just seems kind of absurd. I know in another thread that you said that one gets what one pays for, but I find that it's a comparison of apples (so to speak) and oranges since 1) no other filesystems except FAT, VFAT, and FAT32 require expensive third-party utilities for maintenance, and 2) no other filesystems except for those I just mentioned suck as much as HFS+ does. If I even had enough money to pay for all that software, which I don't, I would much rather spend it feeding starving African children or supporting e.g. the EFF than spending it on software that there shouldn't be any need for in the first place.

DiskWarrior 2, TechTool Pro 3, and Norton Utilities: A couple hundred $$?

A decent filesystem and a free fsck: Priceless

Alex

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by mac15
why do I need to write so much there wasn't that much to write about so don't go flapping your gums about something that nobody cares about
Sorry mate, it's just that insulting you is so much fun because I know that no matter what your response will be, it will have to fit within three lines or less. ;)

Alex

[Beej]

Originally posted by alex_ant

Sorry mate, it's just that insulting you is so much fun because I know that no matter what your response will be, it will have to fit within three lines or less. ;)LOL :D But I'm going to have to defend mac15 here, being a fellow Aussie, and say that at least he deosn't dribble crap like some people do on these boards...

Short and sweet.

[eyelikeart]

have u ever made use of one of those companies that resurrects data from crashed hd's??

also...when it comes time for me to reconfigure my system....knowing I find it necessary to have 2 systems independent from each other....what suggestions would u give me? if any??? ;)

[AlphaTech]

alex_ant, if you can only afford one utility, get Norton System Works 2 (contains Norton Utilities, NAV and a few other packages). IF you have purchased any of the Symantec utilities in the past few years, you can get it a the upgrade price. That is the only one I currently own, the other two are owned by the company I work for.

I have never seen, or had, a problem with HFS+/extended. With the smaller block size, it gives you more room on your hard drive (4k blocks no matter what the drive size, or partition size).

FAT file systems are for win98 and it's decendants. Anything built on NT tech. uses NTFS (hellofalot better then fat ever was or could be). Oh, and their utilities are not free, when you consider the cost of windblows and then the Mac OS. Get the Mac OS and you have at least $100 left over to use for other things (like Norton).

Oh yeah, and OS X DOESN'T REQUIRE any utilities, but it still a good idea to have something. There are utilities for windblows too, since the ones that come packaged with it BLOW! Not even close to a good blow at that.

I will be picking up Drive 10 shortly (about $60-$70 I believe) since that is the next generation of TechTool Pro for OS X.

Also, EVERYONE should have some kind of antivirus software on their computer. You never know when someone will send you an infected file, which you could turn around and send out as well. Even if it doesn't do any harm to your computer, you will be getting tons of email telling you that you have one.

[evildead]

Disk 0:

60GB OSX and OS 9

Disk 1:

2GB swap
1.5GB emergincy OS X
53GB Data

Works fine for me. In a few months I can get rid of OS 9 compleetly. Unfortunatly I have some apps that have OS 9 installers with OS X updaters (like Aduobe Acorbat and Roxio Toast) So I still need 9 arround for installs.

[mmmdreg]

Umm..I'm a bit lost but how do you copy all your appz onto a partition and remove the original folder from the OSX install?

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by mmmdreg
Umm..I'm a bit lost but how do you copy all your appz onto a partition and remove the original folder from the OSX install?

It's tricky...first off you have to make sure that you're actually getting all of the folder contents when you copy it...then you have to get around the file permissions to trash the old one (Terminal or OS 9)...

Then you have to fix all the aliases in your Dock to point to the right place...


I did this last week and Mail.app stopped working...luckily I grabbed one from another machine and it worked fine...BE CAREFUL!

[mmmdreg]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU


It's tricky...first off you have to make sure that you're actually getting all of the folder contents when you copy it...then you have to get around the file permissions to trash the old one (Terminal or OS 9)...

Then you have to fix all the aliases in your Dock to point to the right place...


I did this last week and Mail.app stopped working...luckily I grabbed one from another machine and it worked fine...BE CAREFUL!

OK, I'll leave that alone...so what if I want to copy the Users folder onto a partition? is that dangerous too? mymemory on the first page of this post seems to have a "storage" partition which has all the stuff in your ~/ which basically means its a users partition right?

[mmmdreg]

Oops...the thread mymemory posted in wasn't this one but the one entitled partition hd or something.

-Dreg-

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by mmmdreg


OK, I'll leave that alone...so what if I want to copy the Users folder onto a partition? is that dangerous too? mymemory on the first page of this post seems to have a "storage" partition which has all the stuff in your ~/ which basically means its a users partition right?

It would be a similar situation...the Unix file structure tends be a little rigid as far as where things can be put...
All of your preferences, mail, settings get stored in your User folder, so moving it would probably confuse some of your apps.

Someone here might know how to reroute everything in the command line, but I sure don't. :)

[AlphaTech]

I would suggest leaving well enough alone. If it ain't busted, don't fix it (and ***** it up royally). Personally, I am an advocate of single partitioning drives. I have had excellent results with this method, in both performance and stability. As well as being easier to find items, and not having to worry about linking to other partitions, or needing to redo them later when one runs out of room faster then you expected.

[jelloshotsrule]

but what exactly are "swap" files/drives...?

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule
but what exactly are "swap" files/drives...?

There are no dumb questions...only dumb people. :D

Unix uses a virtual memory system that allocates a swap file to the harddrive. By placing this file on another drive/partition you can keep the drive from thrashing so much...and (hopefully) performing better.

[mmmdreg]

Does anyone know how to add directories to their path? Fink created a /sw directory which was in my path and after I backed it up, I partitioned my HD and replaced the directory. It seems I forgot to backup a file about my path so now /sw is not in my path. Can anybody help?

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by mmmdreg
Does anyone know how to add directories to their path? Fink created a /sw directory which was in my path and after I backed it up, I partitioned my HD and replaced the directory. It seems I forgot to backup a file about my path so now /sw is not in my path. Can anybody help?

I'm not sure I follow you...
Do you mean add a folder to your User directory?

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU


There are no dumb questions...only dumb people. :D

Unix uses a virtual memory system that allocates a swap file to the harddrive. By placing this file on another drive/partition you can keep the drive from thrashing so much...and (hopefully) performing better.

I like the South Park take on that.. 'there are no stupid questions, only stupid people'

South Park rules football.... OUCH!!!!

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by AlphaTech


I like the South Park take on that.. 'there are no stupid questions, only stupid people'

South Park rules football.... OUCH!!!!

Damn! My sources are too obvious!
I gotta go watch some new stuff...:D

[mmmdreg]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU


I'm not sure I follow you...
Do you mean add a folder to your User directory?

No...you know in a terminal, to use some applications (like BitchX), you type "BitchX" and it will run if the executable is in your path. It's like where your computer looks for it....

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by mmmdreg


No...you know in a terminal, to use some applications (like BitchX), you type "BitchX" and it will run if the executable is in your path. It's like where your computer looks for it....

OK..got it...sorry, I'm still a Terminal newbie...but not a teminal newbie I hope! :p

[mmmdreg]

I found the answer to all my problems at kung-foo.tv/xtips.php (http://) ...Check the partitions as well...He's got good reasoning for all of it. In case you can't see it:Appz 2GB;users 10GB; GNU(ie.fink-related) 1.5GB;XSpace(ie. osx) 3.5GB;STM(swap-file) 400mb;classic 400mb...
...he went on further to show how you put the applications and users directories in their new homes and make them mount at / instead of /volumes/volumename...

-Dreg-

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by mmmdreg
I found the answer to all my problems at kung-foo.tv/xtips.php (http://) ...Check the partitions as well...He's got good reasoning for all of it. In case you can't see it:Appz 2GB;users 10GB; GNU(ie.fink-related) 1.5GB;XSpace(ie. osx) 3.5GB;STM(swap-file) 400mb;classic 400mb...
...he went on further to show how you put the applications and users directories in their new homes and make them mount at / instead of /volumes/volumename...

-Dreg-

Sounds like a royal pain in the a$$ to me. Then again, I also never went for the dual booting peecee's. One drive, one OS, more OS's then get a mobile rack. Oh, and 400mb... damn that's small, 400 megabits sheesh. With the single partition, I never have to worry about placing something into the wrong one, or filling one up and needing to do the entire thing over again. That will happen, unless you are not going to install much. I have three or four applications that will deplete that 2GB partition on the easy install alone. Never mind the rest of my software.

[jelloshotsrule]

since there are no dumb queries but only dumb people. i'll be the dumb one to ask this:

is a drive partitioned into two pieces able to function as 2 separate drives?

ie. if i put os x on one partition and os 9 on the other, am i able to use utilities on the one to check/repair the other?

if so, that would be great. as of now i have 2 separate hard drives both running os x AND 9. a stripped down version of x and 9 on the second drive of course... i'm not that dumb... that allows me to boot up and fix things as i mentioned. but partitioning seems to allow me to do this from just the one drive?

i'm in no hurry to partition as i am now (and always) in the process of organizing files (old video projects and all that) but if it would allow for repair and such then i could just use the entire second drive for goodies... now that would be nice.

for you other no partitioners out there... you just boot up from the utilities cds when you do anything on the drive?

thanks all

[Rower_CPU]

Good job, dummy! ;)

A partitioned drive acts like separate drives...I'm not sure what the absolute limit is, but you can partition a drive several times over. 3, 4, 5...go nuts!

[jelloshotsrule]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
Good job, dummy! ;)

A partitioned drive acts like separate drives...I'm not sure what the absolute limit is, but you can partition a drive several times over. 3, 4, 5...go nuts!

that's kinda what i thought after reading everyone else's posts.

i am hesitant to make more than 1 for each os though, especially given the whole users, apps, etc folders thing in x... but to free up that other drive completely of os'es would be nice

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule


that's kinda what i thought after reading everyone else's posts.

i am hesitant to make more than 1 for each os though, especially given the whole users, apps, etc folders thing in x... but to free up that other drive completely of os'es would be nice

You feel that you need to do this because??????

[jelloshotsrule]

Originally posted by AlphaTech


You feel that you need to do this because??????

don't feel the need at all..

especially after a few other people (i think you were included) said they have just 1 partition and things work fine...

however rower had said something about making "3, 4, 5... go nuts!" so that was just kinda my reason for not wanting to go too nuts.

i want to get x and 9 separate just so i can load up in one to fix the other (for some reason my drive has occasional problems) so knowing that loading in one partition would allow me to totally repair the other partition even though it's the same physical hard drive is what i was curious about.

other than that though, i'm more than happy with the one partition. unfortunately i still feel the need to use classic occasionally... there are just the random things that x can't do including some web stuff or just miscellaneous apps that haven't been ported yet etc. so while i pare down my 9 apps, i'd like to have a decent working 9 partition.

as i said though, i'm in no hurry to erase my drive. had enough problems last time i had to do that.