Can anyone give me a walkthrough on how to partition a hard drive for a mac. I'm planning on putting a new hard drive with 10.1 on an old 233 mhz iMac. I have no idea how to partion the drive, all i know is the first 4 or 8 gigs is suppose to be for the OS.
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Partitioning a HD
- Thread starter JzzTrump22
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You'll want to start up from a CD or external hard drive, you can't be booted from the destination drive. Of course, partitioning will reformat the drive in question. When you're booted from another disk, open Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder), select the drive, and the rest is pretty much self-explanatory.
The point I would make, however, is that partitioning is usually a bad idea, one that's regretted later. It carries almost no benefits. Give yourself 8-10 gigs for the boot volume (making an Applications partition is a very, very bad idea, Software Update will get screwed up, apps won't launch right, and installers will usually put apps on the boot volume... so your boot volume must also be your App volume). So if you make the boot volume to small, you'll be limiting the amount of apps you can have.
Partitions may be helpful when you're working with extremely large files that you don't want fragmented together with your boot files. Or when you need a scratch disk, files that are created/erased very often.
So unless you have a real, specific need for partitioning, avoid future headaches by sticking to a single disk.
paul
The point I would make, however, is that partitioning is usually a bad idea, one that's regretted later. It carries almost no benefits. Give yourself 8-10 gigs for the boot volume (making an Applications partition is a very, very bad idea, Software Update will get screwed up, apps won't launch right, and installers will usually put apps on the boot volume... so your boot volume must also be your App volume). So if you make the boot volume to small, you'll be limiting the amount of apps you can have.
Partitions may be helpful when you're working with extremely large files that you don't want fragmented together with your boot files. Or when you need a scratch disk, files that are created/erased very often.
So unless you have a real, specific need for partitioning, avoid future headaches by sticking to a single disk.
paul
So theres no need to partition? I thought with the older iMacs, with a hard drive larger then 4 gigs a partition is neccessary.
You said you have an imac 233-original bondi blue model
You HAVE to partition this!! It won't work any other way! Also be sure the firmware is up to date BEFORE you install OS X.
Split it into the first 8GB (7.9 to be safe), a couple for OS 9 (Classic) and the rest. If you have no reason for Classic, leave it out completely.
What I did in this situation is to put the Docvuments folder (and other Music, Movie folders if you like) on the extra partition then create a symbolic link of them to the original locations where the OS expects them to be.
You HAVE to partition this!! It won't work any other way! Also be sure the firmware is up to date BEFORE you install OS X.
Split it into the first 8GB (7.9 to be safe), a couple for OS 9 (Classic) and the rest. If you have no reason for Classic, leave it out completely.
What I did in this situation is to put the Docvuments folder (and other Music, Movie folders if you like) on the extra partition then create a symbolic link of them to the original locations where the OS expects them to be.
Actually it's pink, it's my friends, she got it for free and wants me to help her fix it. So the first 8 gigs goes to the OS then the rest is regular disk space for everything else i put on the machine? Am i going to have to put the disk in the machine then turn it on holding down "C"? I don't understand how to go about doing this, I am completely lost.
How to do it:
Yes, you would put in the OS X CD, then bootup holding down the C key. After it boots into that, you can choose options, or I believe go up to the menu bar and down to Disk Utility, and then partition from there. Check out this link to see what it basically looks like:
http://www.lafcpug.org/partitioning_osx.html
Things to consider:
-Definitely update to the latest firmware before doing this.
-Think about putting 10.2 or 10.3 on there instead. Muuuuuch better.
Yes, you would put in the OS X CD, then bootup holding down the C key. After it boots into that, you can choose options, or I believe go up to the menu bar and down to Disk Utility, and then partition from there. Check out this link to see what it basically looks like:
http://www.lafcpug.org/partitioning_osx.html
Things to consider:
-Definitely update to the latest firmware before doing this.
-Think about putting 10.2 or 10.3 on there instead. Muuuuuch better.
This is very important--if you do 8GB, it won't work (has to do with the way "GB" are calculated). I believe a hair over 7.45GB is the largest that'll work (hence the 7.4GB recommendation), but I'd use 7.0 just to be safe--should be plenty of space anyway, particularly if you use the second partition for most of the data.Mechcozmo said:
Also, make sure it's the top partition in the Disk Utility screen; it won't work if it's the bottom (meaning not in the "first" 8GB on the disk).
In truth, though, I'd have to question the wisdom of installing 10.1 on a 233 iMac. Even with 256MB of RAM, 10.3 will barely be useable on that machine, and 10.1 will be painful for all but the most patient people, whereas OS9 will be relatively peppy. The one exception would be for web browsing, since Mozilla 1.2 is the latest that will run on OS9, but I'm not even sure if Firefox or Camino will run on 10.1... don't they require 10.2?