I'm one of those who cannot log into "Apple support communities" so here I am. 
I have a MBP alu (late 2008) with OS X 10.6.8 and 3+ year of honored service and now I think it's time to give it a little boost by cleaning and optimizing it.
The main problem is the partition of the HDD (320 GB):
I was thinking about making a partition for the OS (without the /Users, /DeveloperTools and /Application folders) in order to reduce fragmentation, but I'm in trouble with the temporary files (such as cache and logs) and the sleepimage file (4+ GB without editing the hibernatemode in the pmset bash command) which I want to place on another partition.
I suppose I can substitute those folder (the ones for temporary files) with their counterparts on a second partition by using syslinks (as I'm gonna do with the previous mentioned folders) but I'm not sure at all.
The sleepimage file, according to the man page of pmset, should be only on the boot volume but I do not understand if I can put that file on another partition (not the boot one) on the "boot" hard disk.
And what to say about the Trash folder and the Spotlight's index file (actually 2+ GB) ? Can I move them in another partition ? If yes, how ?
In the same partition of the OS I think I should keep some free space for the auto-defragmentation and for anything that I've not think about (I use MacPort which is placed in the /opt folder, but I think I can change it; same argumentation for MySQL, etc).
Some of you maybe know where the virtual memory is placed onto the HDD ? (If I have understood how it works) I should consider it before making a partition too small (maybe I can purchase more RAM, but I've already 4 GB who I rarely fill; and I'm afraid about the battery usage).
In general, I want at least 3 partition: [OS], [User data and Applications] and [Temporary files].
What do you think ?
I may came back later with other details or questions
P.S.: I want to apologize for the not very good English; I'm italian
O.T.: Do you know where the battery alert percentual values are placed ? I think they could be in a .plist file and I wish to tweak them
I have a MBP alu (late 2008) with OS X 10.6.8 and 3+ year of honored service and now I think it's time to give it a little boost by cleaning and optimizing it.
The main problem is the partition of the HDD (320 GB):
I was thinking about making a partition for the OS (without the /Users, /DeveloperTools and /Application folders) in order to reduce fragmentation, but I'm in trouble with the temporary files (such as cache and logs) and the sleepimage file (4+ GB without editing the hibernatemode in the pmset bash command) which I want to place on another partition.
I suppose I can substitute those folder (the ones for temporary files) with their counterparts on a second partition by using syslinks (as I'm gonna do with the previous mentioned folders) but I'm not sure at all.
The sleepimage file, according to the man page of pmset, should be only on the boot volume but I do not understand if I can put that file on another partition (not the boot one) on the "boot" hard disk.
And what to say about the Trash folder and the Spotlight's index file (actually 2+ GB) ? Can I move them in another partition ? If yes, how ?
In the same partition of the OS I think I should keep some free space for the auto-defragmentation and for anything that I've not think about (I use MacPort which is placed in the /opt folder, but I think I can change it; same argumentation for MySQL, etc).
Some of you maybe know where the virtual memory is placed onto the HDD ? (If I have understood how it works) I should consider it before making a partition too small (maybe I can purchase more RAM, but I've already 4 GB who I rarely fill; and I'm afraid about the battery usage).
In general, I want at least 3 partition: [OS], [User data and Applications] and [Temporary files].
What do you think ?
I may came back later with other details or questions
P.S.: I want to apologize for the not very good English; I'm italian
O.T.: Do you know where the battery alert percentual values are placed ? I think they could be in a .plist file and I wish to tweak them
