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Sven071

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 4, 2004
26
0
Maryland
I just want to say hi to everyone on the forum. Your advice has been great leading up to getting my pb. The adjustment has been a little weird, but i have had my pb for 3 days, and i can say safely i do know how to navigate through most of the OS. One thing that is pretty impressive about the mac is that you really need no formal training. I had no clue what advanced features MS had until i got my MCSE last year. I can really see now why people switch and really enjoy working and surfing on the Mac. Everything has worked as it should, and no dead pixels. I do have 2 issues that are kind of throwing me for a loop........... Maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

Can anyone point me in the right direction in finding some info on how the mac file system works. I know its something along the lines of mounting and dismounting drives to use them.............

I went ahead and bought the OSX missing manual........ i cant find anything on file structure or file systems.......

any help would be great...............other than that im a happy camper!!!!!!
 

Zaty

macrumors 65816
Mar 14, 2004
1,215
2
Switzerland
Welcome to the World of Macintosh! As for your question, I can't help you as I'm not quite clear what you would like to know.
 

Sven071

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 4, 2004
26
0
Maryland
I mean , how is it organized....... with my windows machine i have 10 logical HD's .......... what i would like to do is see if i can split up HD space into smaller chuncks........ like maybe mounting a folder and lets just say making that folder have 100 megs in it..... then installing a program inside the folder which is only 100 megs or less...... so that i can isolate certain things or files, or programs from the rest of the HD.......... does that make since?.....
 

Zaty

macrumors 65816
Mar 14, 2004
1,215
2
Switzerland
Sven071 said:
I mean , how is it organized....... with my windows machine i have 10 logical HD's .......... what i would like to do is see if i can split up HD space into smaller chuncks........ like maybe mounting a folder and lets just say making that folder have 100 megs in it..... then installing a program inside the folder which is only 100 megs or less...... so that i can isolate certain things or files, or programs from the rest of the HD.......... does that make since?.....

You could use disk images
 

mac_gal

macrumors member
Jun 23, 2004
95
0
I'm not sure I can answer all your questions, but I'll give it a shot ...

I just moved to a Mac as well, and here's what struck me about the file structure. A lot of things are done for you. When you install an application, you're usually just dragging an icon to the folder "Applications." You don't need to plow around and decide where to put the application, as you might do in Windows.

Every user has a "home" folder, with documents / preferences / etc. There is also a general home folder, though I'm not sure about the details of this.
 

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
Sven071 said:
Right on......... where could i find info. on doing that on the Mac..........
Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Using this application you can make disk images (.dmg files). You can either create an image from an existing folder, or you can create a blank image of whatever size you like. You can even encrypt & password the dmg so that it wont mount without the correct password. If you double click a dmg file it will "mount" as if it were another physical/logical drive.
 

oldfart

macrumors member
Jul 30, 2004
30
0
Albuquerque
Sven071 said:
Right on......... where could i find info. on doing that on the Mac..........

In the Finder, click on "Help". You'll see "Mac Help" in the pull-down. Click on it.
In the window that comes up type in "disk image" in the space above the "Ask a Question" text.

You'll figure it out after that :p

I don't think you want to get into "partitioning" on your HD. You may want to consider organizing stuff in "Folders", apps and such and storing things on an external FW/USB drive like photos, movies etc. that eat up HD space instead :) .

Not too clear on what you mean by File Structure, my guess is, like Windoze :eek: HD name/folder name/file, et al. :confused:
 

jrober

macrumors regular
Jan 22, 2003
212
0
Heathfield, UK
New PowerBook owner too

Sven071

Welcome to PowerBook Heaven. I too am a new PB owner but came from an old iMac.

In answer to your question, I understand that this sort of partitioning is not the way to "protect" your system from the program. I was reccomended to creating a new user and to use this to test out new s/w. This new user entirely protects the old user from what you are testing.

Go to System preferences and then Users and add a new one called test, switch using fast user switching bcause its cool and there you go.

Yours

John
 
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