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partitioning TiBook soon, need some advice...

cb911

cb911

macrumors 601
Original poster
Mar 12, 2002
4,134
4
BrisVegas, Australia
i'm going to partition my HD as soon as i get 10.2. i'm going to make seperate partitions for applications, startup disk, documents and an OS 9 startup disk. oh, and i'll also make a temporary/downlads partiton for stuff i get from the net, etc.

i was just wondering what size should i make the OS X startup disk? would 500 or 600MB be enough? and i'm guessing that the OS 9 partition would only need to be about 2GB (i still use a couple of OS 9 apps).

i just checked my applications folder the other day and the total was about 7GB. but a heap of that is freeware/shareware stuff that i don't really need. so i'm thinking about making the applications partition about 5GB. is this big enough? i'll have Macromedia Studio, Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, InDesign, Final Cut Pro, After Effects and a couple of other apps.

and i also want to make a partition just for a scratch disk for Photoshop. if i make a 2GB temporary/downlads partition, would this be suitable for use as a scratch disk as well?

so far this is what i'm planning for the partitions (BTW i've got a 30GB HD):

startup disk (OS X): 600MB (only for system stuff, not for saving documents etc)

startup disk (OS 9): 2GB (i still need Quark and some other apps)

applications: 6GB (just for all of my apps)

temp/downloads: 2GB (just for temp & downlods, also for a Photoshop scratch disk)

Documents: 19.4GB (for all my mp3s, and work, etc.)

i guess that the actual formatted size will be less than 30GB, so the documents partition will be a bit less.

so does this sound like a good idea for partitions? are there any other partitions that it would be good to have? if anyone has any comments or suggestions, don't be shy. i need as much help with this as possible.
:D
 
I once partitioned my old iMac drive (6 Gig) into 3 partitions and I regretted it. I might understand 2 partitions. 1 for the system, 1 for everything else, but 5? I think that is a bit much. It will be really annoying when you fill up your applications partition and you have to put an application elsewhere. I would suggest not partitioning your HD, or maybe just doing 2 partitions, and using good old folders. :D

I didnt like partitions but you might. If you do partition your HD good luck :D.
 
That size OS X partition will probably run out of space very quickly.

15-18 Data
2 OS 9
10-13 OS X and Applications

Applications are easy to reload, a emergency boot drive is a very good thing and you should get data on its own.
 
Re: partitioning TiBook soon, need some advice...

Originally posted by cb911
i'm going to partition my HD as soon as i get 10.2. i'm going to make seperate partitions for applications, startup disk, documents and an OS 9 startup disk. oh, and i'll also make a temporary/downlads partiton for stuff i get from the net, etc.

i was just wondering what size should i make the OS X startup disk? would 500 or 600MB be enough? and i'm guessing that the OS 9 partition would only need to be about 2GB (i still use a couple of OS 9 apps).

i just checked my applications folder the other day and the total was about 7GB. but a heap of that is freeware/shareware stuff that i don't really need. so i'm thinking about making the applications partition about 5GB. is this big enough? i'll have Macromedia Studio, Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, InDesign, Final Cut Pro, After Effects and a couple of other apps.

and i also want to make a partition just for a scratch disk for Photoshop. if i make a 2GB temporary/downlads partition, would this be suitable for use as a scratch disk as well?

so far this is what i'm planning for the partitions (BTW i've got a 30GB HD):

startup disk (OS X): 600MB (only for system stuff, not for saving documents etc)

startup disk (OS 9): 2GB (i still need Quark and some other apps)

applications: 6GB (just for all of my apps)

temp/downloads: 2GB (just for temp & downlods, also for a Photoshop scratch disk)

Documents: 19.4GB (for all my mp3s, and work, etc.)

i guess that the actual formatted size will be less than 30GB, so the documents partition will be a bit less.

so does this sound like a good idea for partitions? are there any other partitions that it would be good to have? if anyone has any comments or suggestions, don't be shy. i need as much help with this as possible.
:D
Click to expand...

yeah.. this could definately work..

if i were you, though, id designate maybe 2.5 gb to os x, jaguar requires about 1.8 gb these days.. and a lot of programs will save temporary files and prefs, etc. on your main os x startup disk, against your will, eventually taking up space. it is just a good rule of thumb to have room to breathe for the os...

mac os x will undoubedly run slower if you have barely any space left on the whole partition because of swap disk space -- you can set up an extra parition for a swap disk..

however, overall i think its a good idea..

there are advatages, such as if os x gets trashed for whatever reason, you could reintsall and have your apps and documents all safe.. but it will vbe a real pain to have to routinely back everything up.. and it may be a little anooyting having different partitions for everything.. but if you like it, go for it.. i dont see any major reasons to hold back..

good luck!

-f
 
Lot's or freeware so you'd better keep the Apps separate and still have enough room somewhere else to drag and drop your user folder.

But I also haven't ever had to reformat the hard drive to fix OS X either.
 
Originally posted by Sun Baked
Lot's or freeware so you'd better keep the Apps separate and still have enough room somewhere else to drag and drop your user folder.

But I also haven't ever had to reformat the hard drive to fix OS X either.
Click to expand...

yeah.. usually not a real concern, but it is a common practice for me and many others to fresh install when a major release for an apple os comes out ...

i will be re-formatting for jaguar on my primary machine and will be doing a clean install on my dads cube...

when having os x on its own partition, it is simple to "start over" completely fresh...

-f
 
Still have the original installion I did for OS X sitting on dark drive on the bottom of my tower.

When I transferred to a new machine I carried the drive with me and used it to clone my old OS X set-up.

I did learn in transferring that OS X installation to the new drive -- that's to be a little more dilligent in keeping stuff in the proper places, after finding that you can recover quite quickly if you keep good backup of the user account.

Of course I still have my Classic OS installation that's been dragged around since the B&W G3 came out, would have been older but the drive was stolen out of the Performa 6400 - so I was stuck with the newer B&W install.

So I'm probably not a typical OS 9 or X install, and a bad example to follow. :)
 
ok, so i'll make the OS X startup partition about 3GB? sounds like a good idea.

and i shouldn't get too annoyed with all the partitions, i'm used to it from my PC days.

and does 6GB sound enough for the app partition? how big is everyone else's applications folder?

and will 2GB be enough for the OS 9 partition? i still need to use Quark and a couple of other apps.

and thanks to all for your help so far.:D
 
I believe that 3 partitions is the way to go...on my 40GB iMac harddrive that is :
24.01 OSX
5GB "Other" (currently OS9...crap that will go away one day or another)
9.13GB Users (All the 8 users, mp3z etc...moviez..whatever)..
 
well im not sure i can tell you what you should do but i can tell you what i do.

Joe - 4GB: OS + apps (i would like to have apps separate but since so many apps must be on the same partition as the os i decided i would rather have them all together)

Luggage - 4GB: beta partition - for beta testing. an os all by itself for testing whaever comes my way.

Waponi Woo - 48GB: this is where all my documents (movies, mps3s, word documents, pdfs, etc) go in addition to where my users folder is. So my desktop folder is on this partition and all user related things. Since i generally download to the desktop its nice to have the desktop separate from the OS. Use this as my scratch disk for photshop as well.

TweedleDee - 10GB ipod: mp3s, secondary scratch disk for photoshop, disk utilities and osx for running utilities.

to answer your questins my apps folder is 1.25GB for 60 apps.

OSX needs at the very least 4GB. Remember this is the os many app and system files/prefs and virtual memory. also if you plan on defraging (if a decent osx defragger is ever released) its nice to have some extra space just to speed up that process. an extra 1-2 GB is nice so you always have enough VM and also have space to move things around during defrag.

I do not have os9 on any of my computers anymore, but since you need it now i would suggest putting it on a partition that could be converted to something else. hopefully in a years time you wont need os9 anymore and if that partition is useful for something other than os9 it wont bother you to have it around. perhaps combine os9 with one of your other sections.
 
so most apps have to be on the OS X partition? is this the case with Photoshop and the like? i'd really like to have a seperate apps partition, so i can recover easily if the OS X system partition stuffs up.

and OS X needs at least 4GB? well then i guess that i'll make the OS X partition about 6GB.

and AmbitiousLemon, your apps folder is only 1.25GB? i just did get info on my apps folder and it has 39 apps & 52 folders. yesterday when i checked it was something like 7GB, now it is 8.74GB. and all i did was install a couple of theme programs?!
hold on, i know what it is. i've got KDX in the apps folder, as well as all KDX downloads, that's what it is.;) :D

but if i fix that up, should 6GB be enough for all my apps? AmbitiousLemon, what apps do you have?
 
'stuffed up' :) australian slang... so funny.

ok ok, on to your questions.

osx itself needs 1.8GB to install (less if you get rid of some of the extras like print drivers, etc). However it needs more room than that because some apps store things on that partition (but thats not going to take much room). It also needs more room for virtual memory (VM), when you use up your RAM osx uses hard disk space in the place of ram (called virtual memory, referred to as pageouts by unix). these are stored in 80MB chunks of data on your hard disk. If you do not have enough space for this you will have memory errors. Also you want 'breathing room' sounds stupid and untechnical i know, but basically it comes down to file fragmentation. With the OS writing and read from the hard disk fle can become fragmented (some peopel move their virtaul memory swap to its own dedicated drive or partition, but unless you have an actual spare drive for this it give no speed improvement). so you want to make sure 1) there is enogh room for virtual memory to write to the disk and 2) you want ample room so that virtual memory does not crowd the system making defraging difficult(long) and further fragmenting your system files. another thing to note is that i have found 4-6GB best for the os but this is a size that includes the ~2GB of applications i have on the same partition. i suppose if you try to keep apps separate you could get away with 2GB - 4GB.

if you have file sharing apps like kdx, xnap, limewire, edonkey, etc you might want them to have their own partition to download to (if you download lots of data, which it sounds like you do).

i shouldnt say 'most apps' need to be in the applications folder. its just some. most (all?) of the preinstalled apple apps need to stay in the applications folder. some need to be their because the os needs them there and others need to stay there because if you move them the system will not update them when you do software update. most third party apps you can install and run from anywhere (i run new apps from their disk image until i decide they are worth going on my drive or not). so photshop you can install anywhere. however the are a few third party apps that need to be in the applications folder to function properly (this is largely poor programming, by newbie developers). these apps typically do not even tell you that they need to be in the applications folder. i have sort of said to hell with it ill just put everything in there (i tried moving thema round for awhile and had too many weird problems). but if you are diligent you could try sorting out which apps need to be there and which you an move.
 
Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
Waponi Woo - 48GB: this is where all my documents (movies, mps3s, word documents, pdfs, etc) go in addition to where my users folder is. So my desktop folder is on this partition and all user related things. Since i generally download to the desktop its nice to have the desktop separate from the OS. Use this as my scratch disk for photshop as well.
Click to expand...

how do you set up your users folder off the os x drive?
 
:) well you told me to ignore this on the other thread but i can just tell you the details of what i did.

it started when i wanted the desktop folder on the other drive. i tried moving it but i didnt have permission. so i logged out and logged in as root (im sure you could do thhis in the terminal, but im a pixel pushing not a CL guy). since each user has its own desktop (even the root) it was simple to trash the desktop folder. create a new folder in the partition named desktop and then mak an alias to it and put that in my user folder. after that went so well i did the same with music, movies, documents. if i were to do it again i would just move the whole users folder, but since but iw as being cautious originally since i wasnt sure if the os would freak out (read kernal panic). all of this was done in 10.1.5. but i know fo at least two people who have done it safely in 10.2 (6c115 and 6c115(a)).
 
thanks AmbitiousLemon. i want to have the system (OS X) partition as small as it can be, so it will be faster to defrag and reformat (in case of stuffs up:) ) is it easy to change the VM to use a different parition? i could use the Photohsop scratch disk partition for the VM as well couldn't i?

so here's my updated plan for the partitions:

startup disk (OS X): 4GB (only for system stuff & not for virtual memory, not for saving documents etc)

startup disk (OS 9): 2GB (i still need Quark and some other apps)

applications: 5GB (just for all of my apps)

temp/downloads: 5GB (KDX, also for a Photoshop scratch disk and Virtual Memory)

Documents: 18GB (for all my mp3s, and work, etc.)

i guess i should leave about 4GB for OS X. i'm guessing that theme (and other modification stuff) will have to be on that partition?

so if i have 5GB for a Photoshop scratch disk (and for any other program that needs it) as well as for virtual memory, will this be enough? i've got 768MB RAM by the way, i don't know if this effects the VM usage much?

and is it easy to change the location that VM uses (in OS 10.2)?
 
4GB for the OS & VM is fine? cool. then i guess that 3GB for the KDX downloads & Photoshop scratch disk will be fine?

hhmmm. i could combine the apps & docs, but is there any chance of some dodgy apps corrupting the documents? 4 partitions would be a bit simpler than 5...

edit> i just got monolingual & swapcop. look interesting...
 
Don't Do it!

Okay, I have a 40 GB HD in my Ti book. I thought that it would be good to make a partition for 9 and a partition for X. I made the 9 partition only 5 GB. Four months later, I had less than 5 GB free on my main partition, and about 3 free on the OS 9. I was getting nervous. I stopped converting my cd collection into mp3s. I slowed down on taking pictures with my 3MP camera.

So when I got the GM of jaguar, I backed up my data and reformatted my HD. I guarentee you that if you partition you HD you will want to get rid of them later. iTunes, iPhoto, they don't particularly like having their large data stores on more than one partition. You are not getting any speed advantage. Why, why do you want to do it?

Once I had three partions to my hard disk, mainly because I could. I thought, like you, that it would be cool to be able to segregate my data. I tell you what, just use the folders in your home directory, that is what they are there for. I am much happier.

Another thing, what do you need classic for? If you really don't need it, don't install it. I have no regrets about not having classic. If you need it, by all means, put it in there, just remember, you need to install os 9 before you install 10.
 
well i want to have a seperate system partition so i can just format & reinstall OS X if anythig stuffs up :)D). and then if anything goes wrong with with the system partition then my documents (work & MP3's, wallpaper collection) won't be affected. and i'm used to partitions from my PC days, so i'm not too worried about it all. and if there are any difficulties i'll just have to hack my way around them.:D

and i don't really need classic, just OS 9. but it's good to have both, saves re-booting in 9 everytime i have to use Quark (which is lots).

so you see i'm not doing it for speed, just for data integrity (documents) and ease of recovery form a crash.

and what's this you say about installing 9 before 10? can't i just install X on the OS X system partition, and then not touch the 9 partition, then do the 9 install on the seperate partition later?
 
Originally posted by cb911
and what's this you say about installing 9 before 10? can't i just install X on the OS X system partition, and then not touch the 9 partition, then do the 9 install on the seperate partition later?
Click to expand...

sounds good to me, but i would leave 15GB for the OSX boot drive and its apps, use the rest of anything that you truly value and when space runs out go out and fetch a firewire drive. The last thing you want is running out of room in your boot drive and having to start putting programs into your personal drive.
 
I had the OS 9 installer choke when I tried to install it post X install. Also, classic will not work, I believe, if you don't do it 0S9 then 10, since the x installer does some funky stuff to make classic work.

I imagine it is possible though to do a 9 install after 10 if you don't want to do classic. It was June when I did this, and I remember how I had to go through three installs to get everything to work (os X, then clean OS9, then X).

I am sorry that you still need 9. As for data integrity, what does a separate partition do for you that just having all of your documents in a separate folder? You could still erase everything except for your special documents folder. I can't see why you couldnt start up with the install disk and then delete all the other folders. Partitions don't protect you from hardware problems, it is still the same hardware.

If you want to do it, go for it.
 
15GB for the OS X boot drive & apps? i'm not going to have any apps on the OS X partition, the reason being that if X crashes or messes something up then i can just format that partition & re-install X. and then i won't have to re-install my apps as well.

and i know that partitions won't protect me from my hardware problems, but i just want to the seperate partitions to protect me from OS X. i know that X is a really good OS, and i haven't had any problems so far, but when you go messing around with things like themes & terminal... i just want to be prepared.;) :D

and AmbitiousLemon, thanks for clearing that up.:D
 
i'm ready to partition now & i'm just wondering if i have to partition, then install 10.2, or if i can put in the 10.2 install CD & partition from that? anyone knows?

also, is there any disk utility i should run to fix bad sectors or anything? or is a complete format going to fix the HD as much as it can be fixed?
 
the 10.2 install cd (and all osx install cds) has the disk utility (for partitioning and other things) on it

when you startup from the cd after it has completed loading go to your menu bar and look for an option for the disk utility. you can partition. and then go back to the installer and install.
 
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