Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

bozz2006

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 24, 2007
2,530
0
Minnesota
Hey all. I have my mac pro set up so that I have a boot drive with pretty much all my apps and stuff. And then, on a separate drive, I have my home folder. Basically, it's set up as detailed in this article. My boot drive is on a 500GB hard drive, and currently takes up only ~30GB. Since it is a 500GB drive, I don't use much of that space at all. Is there a way to partition the drive, without having to delete/reinstall anything, so that all of that data is stored on the outer areas of the HDD, so they're accessible more quickly?
 

littleb2005

macrumors member
May 27, 2007
90
0
disk utility should do this just make sure u watch what ur doing and have a backup i be able to create new partitons and resize them with out having to reinstall leopard
 

bozz2006

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 24, 2007
2,530
0
Minnesota
I'm hoping someone has done this and provide me with the steps to do it ensuring that I won't explode the system.
 

giffut

macrumors 6502
Apr 28, 2003
467
156
Germany
You ...

... start up "Disk Utility" and choose the harddisc you want to partition; do then select the according panel in "Disk utility "(located in the right upper area).

Choose your first partition according to your system needs; as you mentionned 30GB usage at the moment, I would recommend nothing huge, around 120 to 250GB. If you have a spare drive of this size lying around, use it as external backup for a cloned copy of your system drive. If you haven´t considered this yet, now is the time to get an external drive for backup.

Now, don´t use the second partition for anything which needs harddrive access while you are working with your machine - it will slow down your system drive severely, when the read/write head jumps around those partitions. Do only put stuff on it like video files your apple tv might want to look at, document/file drawer, software installations, asf.

My setup, e.g.: a 500GB drive partitionned into 200GB (system) and 300GB (all my software and system installation packages). My system drive is time machined on another one, but also replicated (with "Carbon Copy Cloner") to an external 200GB harddisc; and on a third hd there is a DMG image of it. I keep all of my data sets (mostly dv video and aiff recordings) on other drives. Keeping heavily used data files of the system drive will speed up your workflow quite significantly. Same applies to cache files, like Final Cut Pro or Photoshop are using.
 

bozz2006

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 24, 2007
2,530
0
Minnesota
Thanks so much. I'll give it a shot this afternoon. I do have backups, both time machine and a superduper clone.

Can I do this partition without messing up what's already on the disk?

And in disk utility, when i make the partition (you know, the little slider deal that lets you select the size of the partition) I want the data on the outer ares of the disk. Is this the "top" partition, or the "bottom"?
 

giffut

macrumors 6502
Apr 28, 2003
467
156
Germany
My ...

.... understanding is, that you need to choose the first partition, as Disk utility - or any other formatting application - starts from the inner circles of the disc - and those are the fastest ones.

Regarding so called "live resizing" of partitions: Don´t do it, if you can avoid it. With Disk Utility you can do it with some terminal vodoo, NOT with the application itself, though. Another software called "VolumeWorks" is capable to do it, too. Here are other tools´n´tricks on how to do it: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080216071647156. You would need a backup, anyway, as this process may develop serious issues with drive/boot partition maps. If you do have the backup in place - or can apply one - then do reformat your disc and repartition.

I especially would recommend "Zero out data" (under "Erase" and there "Security option"), which means that you will get a low level format. In that case each and every bit of the disc is read to AND written from and therefore checked on its status: If it is defect, it will be marked as such in the harddrives firmware and won´t be used anymore for data storage. This is important, because a harddisc will only let you know, when you try to read a defect bit (well, and it will give you just an error and much of your data may be lost), but it will let you write on one without any hazzles (so you won´t ever notive it is already broken beforehand). So only when you access data you will learn, that it is unrecoverable. Each and every drive may have defect bits right from the beginning - and they can develope with aging of the HD. This is natural to the physical layout and imprint of the media itself.
 

bozz2006

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 24, 2007
2,530
0
Minnesota
I thought the outer area was faster, as about twice as much area passes over the laser in a given amount of time... maybe that's wrong.
 

giffut

macrumors 6502
Apr 28, 2003
467
156
Germany
No, ...

... I was wrong; I got it mixed up: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/short-stroking-hdd,2157.html

It´s the outer area - and the first partition starts there: Just think my argument backwards ;-)

But again: If you use the second partition (or any other one) while the system or applications are performing tasks, all the benefits will be gone. So put all caching, data sets on different drives. And do NOT allow Spotlight to index the second partition.
 

bozz2006

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 24, 2007
2,530
0
Minnesota
OK, thanks. so, the top partition in the disk utility window is actually the outer area of the disk?

And, how do I disable spotlight from indexing on that inner partition?

Thanks again!
 

Hoodman

macrumors newbie
Feb 20, 2009
21
0
Mexico
Live partitions can be done in disk utility

Hi.

Live partitions can be done in disk utility, even if you want to resize the boot one.

The volume must be in HFS+ (Mac OS Plus) for this to work
Here is the step by step guide:

1.- Open Disk Utility and Select the media (drive) that you want to partition, not the volume inside it.
2.- On the main window, there should be a tab that says partitions or something like that, click there
3.- ther should be a window with a graph of what you have occupied and what is free, on the bottom there are 2 buttons, puls and minus, if you select the plus you can add another patition to the existing drive, name it, put the size you want.
4.- click apply

hope that helps!
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.