should a large 120GB drive be partitioned?

[blue&whiteman]

would a 120GB boot drive with 10.3.1 installed be safe enough from data loss being that its formatted with journaled hfs +?. I would prefer not to partition it and since journaled hfs+ is more stable data storage I would think it should be safe..

I have heard that large drives are more prone to data loss and should be partitioned but as I said I would prefer not to since it is a more secure file format now.

any thoughts on what would be good here?

 

[blue&whiteman]

I have also been told that a partitioned drive loses some speed.

 

[idkew]

every apple boot drive has several partitions. you one see one of them.

i have never seen a need for partitioning. it just creates clutter for me. In fact, if I had several identical HDs on my machine, I would srtipe RAID them so I only have to deal with one "partition".

logic does say that a large drive is more succeptible to data loss- since there are more places for data loss to happen. i have never heard that a partition would stop a drive problem from talking an entire drive with it.

 

[arn]

partitioning used to be a bigger issue due to minimum file-size issues... but should no longer be a problem with HFS Extended.

I would just keep one partition.

arn

 

[~Shard~]

For what it's worth, I'm getting a brand new 17" iMac next week, BTO with a 160 GB - I plan on keeping it as one nice, big HD and no partitions whatsoever.

 

[MacBandit]

I run my 160GB drive with two partitions. I do this so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my system to the other partition as a backup in case an update or something screws up my primary system.

 

[~Shard~]

Originally posted by MacBandit
I run my 160GB drive with two partitions. I do this so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my system to the other partition as a backup in case an update or something screws up my primary system.

Fair enough, but technically, if you're HD crashes, both partitions will be gone, will they not? Don't mind me, just being difficult....

 

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by ~Shard~
Fair enough, but technically, if you're HD crashes, both partitions will be gone, will they not? Don't mind me, just being difficult....

Yes that's why I have a second hard drive. I have the second partition in case the system crashes not the hard drive. In the case where my system crashes I have another system on the second hard drive that is an exact duplicate of the one that crashed at most a few days old.

 

[manitoubalck]

As you all know I have an AMD machine, but what I haven't told you is that it has a 30GB HDD with two partitions. Why it does I don't know, just when I first booted up the machine and installed win 98 back in early 2001 it had 2 partitions. 1 10GB and 1 20GB.
This is fantastic since I reinstal my operating system once every 6 months or so, just to keep things running smooth. I can completly deleate the C: Drive and leave all my music, Div-X files, word doco's, packed programs, saved game files, etc on the other partition.

It is just convineant to have these two partitions on the same drive. About Data loss, speed, etc... I've never had any poblems with anything you've mentioned. Partitioning is the poor man's second HDD.

 

[FuzzyBallz]

If you want 2 drive letters, buy 2 HDs. I hate partitioning. But then again, I do a lot of video editing stuff so I have a 160GB as C:, plus 2 separate 240GB (2x120) RAID 0s on the promise TX4000 controller as D: and E:. In addition, I have a pair of 40GB HDs I use for ghost clone of the primary HD. Note: When doing ghost, it only clones what's on the HD, not the entire HD. PC system btw. 40GB + 120GB on the dual G4.

Used to run dual boot WinME and Win2K on a separate system, but instead of doing the aweful partitioning thing, I installed the OSs on different HDs and put them in mobile track trays. If I want it a particular OS, I'll just the HD in. Much much better than screwing your system up w/ partitions. Unfortunately, retail systems all come w/ partitioned HDs.

 

[4409723]

Originally posted by idkew
i have never heard that a partition would stop a drive problem from talking an entire drive with it.

Sure, I've had some severely effected partitions in which the other partitions were fine.

 

[amnesiac1984]

Originally posted by Wes
Sure, I've had some severely effected partitions in which the other partitions were fine.

Yes but if those problems were actually physical HD problems then the whole disk would go down. Problems with bad formatting and abd blocks etc are not physical problems on the drive so they won't affect the other partitions.

 

[4409723]

Originally posted by amnesiac1984
Yes but if those problems were actually physical HD problems then the whole disk would go down. Problems with bad formatting and abd blocks etc are not physical problems on the drive so they won't affect the other partitions.

I took drive problem to mean a problem with the blocks or bad formatting, not the physical side.

 

[Makosuke]

Personally, I tend to avoid partitions on secondary drives, but I do keep one for my OS installation. For example, right now I have a 160GB boot drive that has two partitions; a 30GB one for OSX, and the rest for data. My data drives are all single partition.

My reasons for doing this are:

1) I like having my OS on its own partition, so if I need to I can wipe and reinstall or reinstall from a backup without affecting the rest of my data. Very convienent in case of emergency. Although I haven't recently seen any OS problems that can wipe an entire partition, this also protects the rest of the data if that happened for some reason.

2) Backups are easier; since the OS partition only has OSX and my "most important" data on it (in the various users' folders), I can keep a like-sized partition on an external backup drive and use CCC to clone the whole thing to that. This saves me having to selectively not back up non-vital data that is on the same physical drive, but not the same partition (most of the data partition is video scratch stuff or junk), and it gives me an easy-to-boot-from backup.

3) Permissions. If I've got 20 folders of data that I want to share between users, and only the one partition, I have to put that data at the root level of the drive, probably in a subfolder, and set the permissions on that folder accordingly. By having it on a seperate partition, it's easily accessable to other users without permissions fiddling, and I keep the root level of the OS partition clean.

4) If I've got a program that's dumping vast amounts of video to the drive, I don't have to worry about eating up my entire scratch space, since I'm saving to a seperate volume; the OS keeps enough space for page files even if my data drive accidentally fills up completely (which has happened several times). This is slightly less of a problem under Panther, but it also just encourages me to keep some free space on my OS partition since I'm not tempted to chew up every last bit of space on that partition, which is a good thing.

All in all, I just find it convienent to keep an OS partition, but I wouldn't do it to any other drives unless, like MacBandit said, they're a backup of your boot partition.

 

[~Shard~]

Originally posted by MacBandit
Yes that's why I have a second hard drive. I have the second partition in case the system crashes not the hard drive. In the case where my system crashes I have another system on the second hard drive that is an exact duplicate of the one that crashed at most a few days old.

Ah, I understand now - fair enough!

 

[Dreadnought]

Originally posted by FuzzyBallz
If you want 2 drive letters, buy 2 HDs. I hate partitioning. But then again, I do a lot of video editing stuff so I have a 160GB as C:, plus 2 separate 240GB (2x120) RAID 0s on the promise TX4000 controller as D: and E:. In addition, I have a pair of 40GB HDs I use for ghost clone of the primary HD. Note: When doing ghost, it only clones what's on the HD, not the entire HD. PC system btw. 40GB + 120GB on the dual G4.

What's up with al those letters? Are saying the Alphabet? Thank God that I own a Mac!

 

[~Shard~]

Originally posted by FuzzyBallz
If you want 2 drive letters, buy 2 HDs. I hate partitioning. But then again, I do a lot of video editing stuff so I have a 160GB as C:, plus 2 separate 240GB (2x120) RAID 0s on the promise TX4000 controller as D: and E:. In addition, I have a pair of 40GB HDs I use for ghost clone of the primary HD. Note: When doing ghost, it only clones what's on the HD, not the entire HD. PC system btw. 40GB + 120GB on the dual G4.

The scary thing is, I actually completely understand everything you're talking about...