Partitioning,Ram,Permissions

[Espnetboy3]

ok i have three questions , wat is partitioning and wat is beneficial about it(how do it)i think disk utitily.
second is my ram lately i have a QSg4 733mhz with 640mb ram. Im using menu meters i believe and as soon as i boot up lately it seems that my ram just gets eaten up alot easier than used to. I boot up and it says like 150 used watever free. if im just using ichat and safari it slowly eats more up i donno wat can be causing it.
third is that ive done this before but dont remember how to do it again. when you put the mac osx disc 1 in i believe and restart , there is something u do or hold to run a stronger disk permissions or something that is like a defragment and cleans out the hard drive . how often to run this or just to run regular permissions in D.U.
any help is apreciated

 

[mklos]

Partitioning is splitting up your hard drive. You can have basically as many partitions on one drive as you want, although its pretty ridiculous to have a ton of partitions on one drive. So for example, if you want Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X on different volumes, you create a partition. You do this in Disk Utility. You CANNOT do this when you've booted from the hard drive because partitioning a hard drive will erase EVERYTHING on it. So make sure you back up EVERYTHING you need before doing so. In Disk Utility just select the hard drive on the left column and then click on the partition tab. There you can select how many partitions you want, which file system you want(HFS+, or HFS+ Journaled), and even name them. Then click partition and it will erase the drive, partition it and format each partition in a matter of seconds. MUCH faster than on the Windows side. Then you can install Mac OS 9 on one partition and Mac OS X on the other. Some people like to have a separate partition for Updates, or use as backup, or scratch disks for Photoshop, etc... There are many different uses for a partitioned disk.

As far as your RAM goes...well Safari is a memory (RAM) hog. If you have lots of tabs open then its going to use more RAM. Make sure you're using the latest version of Mac OS X (Mac OS 10.3.5) which will keep Safari up to date as well and might fix your issue.

Repairing Permissions....this looks and fixes any permissions that are not correct. Its a good idea to run this at least once a month minimum. Bad permissions can cause kernel panics. So if you're having kernel panics constantly I'd repair your permissions. You can do this from the Disk Utility as well. You DO NOT need to boot from your OS X CD in order to do this. It will repair on the fly as the OS is running.

Another thing to keep your Mac running well is use the cron updates. The easiest way to do that is to go to http://www.versiontracker.com and search for a program called MacJanitor (exactly as spelled). Its a small program that will run these updates. It will clean out your log files, among other things.

 

[Espnetboy3]

wow thanks a ton for the in depth help , i really apreciate it , that why this site is so amazing. As for partitions tho i still dont see why its so good like when i can have photoshop in a sepersate folder as illustrator or like u can have os9 and x in seperate folders in startup disk , if u can use different folders why would u split ur hd and can u undo a partition?

 

[Mechcozmo]

You can undo a partition by wiping the hard drive....

And didn't you ever learn anything about spelling or grammar?

 

[Espnetboy3]

mechcozmo no i didnt where could i go too tak clases fore speling N gramere.

 

[yellow]

dontcha no dat de internet b uh teachin' instatushun?

purdy soon all da peeps dat speek n rite like dis will b normal , not retarded . horrifyin' huh?

I would advise repairing permissions after installing anything that requires an admin password. Otherwise, it's just a red herring. Impress your friends and run it from the command line!

sudo diskutil repairpermissions /

dat is like da bomb!!11! LOL!!1! WFT?!1

You can easily run your Mac without partitioning. If you do thinK of partitioning, for jebus' sake, don't back up to another partition on the logical drive. That's just bad form.

 

[rainman::|:|]

In this day and age, partitioning is such a niche tool that most people won't benefit. Or, more simply put, if you have to ask, you don't need it. Just keep using folders like you have been, that's what's intended.

repair permissions if anything goes wrong... that's a first step that usually comes in handy. I doubt that most users will see any benefit from repairing permissions after every install... it's just too confusing and tedious when most installations are problem free...

As for your other questions... OS X automatically defrags most files, and it takes care of RAM consumption on it's own. Your memory is sufficient for iChat and Safari, and then some. If you get to a point where more memory is needed, the system will automatically move low-priority tasks to virtual memory. All you need to do is make sure you have enough RAM (you do, tho another 256 never hurt anybody) and let it take care of the rest.

paul

 

[Espnetboy3]

yes I have another 512 chip coming in the mail from crucial. Although my friend said unlike windows panther will automatically reload ram after a program has been quited. Windows is said to just eat the ram until restart , for instance if you have opened a bunch of stuff even though you shut the programs down the ram that was used for them wont come back until the computer has been shutdown or restarted. Last night i had 324mb ram used, I had put my computer to sleep and when i woke her up this morning from her good night sleep (i let her sleep a litle late today she had a long day yesterday) it still said that 324 ram was used. Before she went to bed I had closed out all the programs hoping the mac would restore memory.?

 

[yellow]

Last night i had 324mb ram used, I had put my computer to sleep and when i woke her up this morning from her good night sleep (i let her sleep a litle late today she had a long day yesterday) it still said that 324 ram was used. Before she went to bed I had closed out all the programs hoping the mac would restore memory.?

Couple of questions.

What app are you using to give you this data?
Closed or Quit? There's a difference, especially if you came from the Windows world.

The Mac cannot do anything while asleep. When it's asleep, nothing is running, so no memory management would be running.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

I've got a question.

Tomorrow, my 250GB LaCie FireWire drive will be arriving to compliment the 80GB internal drive in my PowerBook. The external drive will be used for storing DV video mostly but I was thinking about creating an 80GB partition on it to clone my internal drive as a back-up.

Is the partition worth doing? I won't be using it on Windows so I'll reformat the Fat 32 default file system to HFS+. I have no experience of formatting drives before and I've never ever had an external hard drive (or even more than one drive on a machine).

If I create the partition (so that I have 2 volumes - an 80GB "backup" and the remaining 170GB odd) will they appear as two separate drives on my desktop? And will I have to eject both of them each time I want to unplug?? Is this more hassle than it's worth??

Also, I was thinking, for a laugh, to install Jaguar again on the other part of the drive so that if I felt nostalgic I could boot off the drive into Jaguar whenever I wanted. Would this work or would it mess things up? I mustn't use mail in Jaguar AND Panther, right? And has the FireWire drive booting problem (causing data loss) been solved now?

 

[yellow]

TIf I create the partition (so that I have 2 volumes - an 80GB "backup" and the remaining 170GB odd) will they appear as two separate drives on my desktop? And will I have to eject both of them each time I want to unplug?? Is this more hassle than it's worth??

Yes, yes, and no. Honestly, it'll take you like 3 extra seconds to eject both at the same time. If you have no back up solution currently, it's worth it to partition, IMO. That way, when you want to wipe the backup partition, you won't have to worry about wiping the DV storage part too.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

Yes, yes, and no. Honestly, it'll take you like 3 extra seconds to eject both at the same time. If you have no back up solution currently, it's worth it to partition, IMO. That way, when you want to wipe the backup partition, you won't have to worry about wiping the DV storage part too.

Ok thanks. I know I don't currently have a backup system! But I back up the important things like my photo library periodically to CD or DVD archive. My backup solution starts tomorrow!

 

[cluthz]

And has the FireWire drive booting problem (causing data loss) been solved now?

They fw trouble was with use of certain oxford chips and fw800, if i recall it right.
The fix was to update firmware.