How do you partition and setup your folder-system?

[TimBrandt]

I just got my first Mac. Love it. I've been using PC since forever, and I'm used to splitting my harddrive in 2 partitions, a C and a D drive. C for programs, and D for all my personal stuff (pictures, documents, music, video, etc.). This way it's easy to just back up the D-drive, if I wanna do that, or if I wanna install a new Windows or whatever.

How do you guys prefer to do it on your Mac? One big partition with some specific backup-procedure, or several partitions etc?

 

[Carrot007]

Yeah one partition is fine.

Mac's don't need re-installs like windows box's do! And even then you can do an archive and install with no problem, unlike windows where you have to really format the partition to start clean.

As for backup I tend to make a big tbz2 of my home folder now and then and copy it to my file server.

Everything really depends on things like. Is this gonna be your only machine. and what will you put on it.

 

[i.shaun]

I just keep backups on a External HDD, which is like another partition (literally another drive, though)


To make my backups easier, I make a folder in my "Home" directory called "Files".

Inside there, I make another named "Photos", "Documents", "Messenger Logs", "Misc", "Torrents" etc..


I keep all my photos inside the photo folder, I don't use iPhoto (I never liked it). I put all my documents in the documents folder, and make aliases to my messenger log files (MSN, Yahoo, etc..). I don't really back those up, I just like having easy access to them if the need arises. Inside my "Misc" folder is random files I have, and also a folder called "_Backups"


I put an underscore so that the folder rises to the top when sorted by name. Inside my backups folder is where I keep RSS Feed backups, iCal backups, Macro backups, Safari Bookmarks, etc...


When The time comes to back it all up, I click my "Files" folder, and drag it all away. It will save my photos, documents, files, and everything. This makes it so much easier for me. Another up-side is that "Microsoft user data" and other pointless things in the default 'Documents' folder do not get saved, as I don't have a need to back them up.


I remove my default "photos" "documents" and other folders from the finder sidebar, and drag the new ones over. I then change the icons to custom ones that I have found so that it doesn't look so dumb with generic folder icons all over the side.

 

[Nugget]

One big partition and I let Time Machine (to a USB drive) worry about making sure everything gets backed up properly.

 

[TimBrandt]

I just keep backups on a External HDD, which is like another partition (literally another drive, though)


To make my backups easier, I make a folder in my "Home" directory called "Files".

Inside there, I make another named "Photos", "Documents", "Messenger Logs", "Misc", "Torrents" etc..


I keep all my photos inside the photo folder, I don't use iPhoto (I never liked it). I put all my documents in the documents folder, and make aliases to my messenger log files (MSN, Yahoo, etc..). I don't really back those up, I just like having easy access to them if the need arises. Inside my "Misc" folder is random files I have, and also a folder called "_Backups"


I put an underscore so that the folder rises to the top when sorted by name. Inside my backups folder is where I keep RSS Feed backups, iCal backups, Macro backups, Safari Bookmarks, etc...


When The time comes to back it all up, I click my "Files" folder, and drag it all away. It will save my photos, documents, files, and everything. This makes it so much easier for me. Another up-side is that "Microsoft user data" and other pointless things in the default 'Documents' folder do not get saved, as I don't have a need to back them up.


I remove my default "photos" "documents" and other folders from the finder sidebar, and drag the new ones over. I then change the icons to custom ones that I have found so that it doesn't look so dumb with generic folder icons all over the side.

Sounds pretty much excatly how I'm used to do it in Windows, just on another drive instead of a separat folder. It's nice to be able to just drag one folder to your backup destination and then all is good

 

[TimBrandt]

Another question... iTunes... on Windows it keeps my files excatly like they were, when I imported them into iTunes on my new Mac, it started changing the files and putting them into folders. Is there any way to avoid that, and just keep the structure that I have and prefer?

EDIT: Nevermind... figured it out

 

[brapmac740]

Use an External (500gig or 1TB) formatted as a FAT32 and let Time machine do all your work!

 

[bc008]

my files are thrown all over the place in no particular order.. let time machine do the rest.