Partition sizes for rMBP

[Megaman]

Hey everyone,

I've been partitioning every Mac that I've owned since about the mid 90's (7200 I think?). This will be the first SSD I will own on a Mac. I'm wondering if SSD's need partitioning?

I work as a graphic designer. I use a lot of "heavy" PS (for work and personal), Illustrator, InDesign. I also use a lot of FCPX (personal) with my Canon XA10 footage.

I'm expecting my "maxed" rMBP to arrive this week.

Normally I partiton into 3, System (OS & Apps), Working and a Scratch.

If partitioning is recommended, what would be recommended that I divide the 768gb drive partitions into "size wise"?

Thank very much!

 

[maflynn]

There is no real advantage to splitting up the SSD into multiple partitions. You're not going to see any performance gains and it adds a level of complexity to the installation that is not needed.

 

[Dark Void]

I suppose if you do that for organization then do a 3-way even split but why not just have everything on one partition?

 

[Megaman]

Thank you both for the replies!

So the way that SSDs work, I don't have to worry about performance loss or system getting corrupt the same way I would with a normal HD?

 

[maflynn]

So the way that SSDs work, I don't have to worry about performance loss or system getting corrupt the same way I would with a normal HD?

Actually, the SSD works exactly like a single hard drive would. That is, the single hard drive is not going to give you any faster speeds by partitioning it. If you had a second hard drive (or SSD) hooked up to the optical drive sata controller, then you'd see faster speeds because both physical drives would be able to read/write at the same time.

Given that you have a retina MBP, there is no option for a second drive, since there's no bay.

I've not heard of any corruption problems with using a single partition, and I've been using a Mac for many many years

 

[Megaman]

Thanks Maflynn,

In that case, I'll leave it as is.

I appreciate your help

 

[nontroppo]

Just to say that for a scratch drive (i.e. video and photography work), a 64GB SSD connected via thunderbolt is the bee's knees! Thunderbolt is really flexible and native PCI speed means an effective 2nd bay ;-) We use Seagate goflex adapters which will fit any SATA disk with ease...