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Do I need to partition my nMacPro's SSD to also use it as a scratch disk?
- Thread starter hassiman
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VirtualRain
macrumors 603
Yeah. No need to partition it. Best to use an SSD as a large single volume so it's built in garbage collection and wear levelling can work optimally. And don't worry about wearing it out. It will last for years.
Partitioning would make no difference. It is still the same physical drive with the same maximum read and write speeds, and fragmentation wouldn't be an issue with SSDs. Just use as is.
If you don't partition it for OS+Apps and Scratch space and you want to use Time Machine to backup your internal SSD then be sure to exclude the folder used for scratch in the Time Machine's Exclusion list.
A benefit for partitioning is to allow efficient cloning of the OS+Apps using SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.
VirtualRain
macrumors 603
Good advice about Time Machine.
However, I'm not sure what you're getting at with respect to cloning, but unless the app you're using is doing a poor job managing it's temporary files there's no down side to cloning a drive used for scratch. Photoshop (for example) doesn't leave scratch files lying around even if it crashes.