Reinstall & Partition?

[macwow55]

Hi,

I just got my macbook pro 15inch i7 about 4 weeks ago. I really like it but am having some glitches with a few apps i need to use for work. I was thinking of doing a fresh installation of snow leopard & possibly partitioning the hard drive.

questions:

Any advantages to partitioning a harddrive?

If so, how do u recommend to partition it & set it up?

I use programs like Photo Shop & Photo Mechanic.

I have 500GB 7200rpm drive

Your thoughts and comments are appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[Hellhammer]

What apps are you using? It might not be the OS X that is causing the crashes, maybe the app itself is buggy, try reinstalling it first.

IMO partitioning is useless unless you are intended to install secondary OS

 

[mmulin]

Hi,

I just got my macbook pro 15inch i7 about 4 weeks ago. I really like it but am having some glitches with a few apps i need to use for work. I was thinking of doing a fresh installation of snow leopard & possibly partitioning the hard drive.

questions:

Any advantages to partitioning a harddrive?

If so, how do u recommend to partition it & set it up?

I use programs like Photo Shop & Photo Mechanic.

I have 500GB 7200rpm drive

Your thoughts and comments are appreciated.

Thanks,

Adhering to the endless performance discussions on hard drives, it might be useful to have the OS, Libraries, and Applications on the faster part of the hard disk aka the first partition. The data you can move to the second partition.

Personally, I just keep everything in one partition and reinstall everything from time machine once my laptop gets too slow due to growing degradation. Then again, I never been at such a case yet.

 

[Hellhammer]

Adhering to the endless performance discussions on hard drives, it might be useful to have the OS, Libraries, and Applications on the faster part of the hard disk aka the first partition. The data you can move to the second partition.

Personally, I just keep everything in one partition and reinstall everything from time machine once my laptop gets too slow due to growing degradation. Then again, I never been at such a case yet.

Any proof that first partition is faster than second I've never heard partitioning actually affects the speed, it'd be different if OP had 7200rpm and 5400rpm drive

 

[Dozerrox]

Any proof that first partition is faster than second I've never heard partitioning actually affects the speed, it'd be different if OP had 7200rpm and 5400rpm drive

Depends where it is on the platter. As the platter spins faster on the outside than the inside, the outside will read faster than in the inner circle partition.

I'm not sure where the first and second partitions would be on the drive however, from that post it looks like the first partition is on the outside.

I say don't bother though. On Windows I do it because you can reinstall the OS and leave all my data on the second partition.

 

[Hellhammer]

Depends where it is on the platter. As the platter spins faster on the outside than the inside, the outside will read faster than in the inner circle partition.

I'm not sure where the first and second partitions would be on the drive however, from that post it looks like the first partition is on the outside.

I say don't bother though. On Windows I do it because you can reinstall the OS and leave all my data on the second partition.

How can the outside spin faster One round is one round, in inside and outside. Sure there is more data stored in outside but due density, I'm pretty sure the speed is equal.

I don't know how partitioning is done exactly and where partitions are but I doubt it actually speeds up anything by much, so not worth hassling

 

[Dozerrox]

How can the outside spin faster One round is one round, in inside and outside. Sure there is more data stored in outside but due density, I'm pretty sure the speed is equal.

I don't know how partitioning is done exactly and where partitions are but I doubt it actually speeds up anything by much, so not worth hassling

If you think about it as one rotation. The outer ring of the disk has much more distance to cover. It holds much more data in a single rotation than on the inner ring, which would also be covered in a single rotation.

If I'm not explaining well then sorry, hopefully someone else can explain better .

 

[Hellhammer]

If you think about it as one rotation. The outer ring of the disk has much more distance to cover. It holds much more data in a single rotation than on the inner ring, which would also be covered in a single rotation.

If I'm not explaining well then sorry, hopefully someone else can explain better .

Yeah I got your point but the fact that we don't know where the partition would be located is causing issues If you think it as a pie (it might partition it like this too) and you partition it to e.g. 1/4 and 3/4, your theory isn't helping. Anyway, the boost it might give is minimal i.e. not worth it

 

[Dozerrox]

Yeah I got your point but the fact that we don't know where the partition would be located is causing issues If you think it as a pie (it might partition it like this too) and you partition it to e.g. 1/4 and 3/4, your theory isn't helping. Anyway, the boost it might give is minimal i.e. not worth it

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure partitions aren't stored as slices.

Anyway, agreed. Too much effort to be worth while.

 

[mmulin]

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure partitions aren't stored as slices.

Anyway, agreed. Too much effort to be worth while.

Exactly my point of the original post. Please take it with the sarcasm implied.

Theoratically, the first partition will be located in the faster part of the HDD. However on a single disk system this is marginally pointless. On Windows it would make some sense to keep data and application seperated due the install way of things. In OSX this is bit the case unless you care about fragmentation which again the OSX takes care of pretty well.

 

[justn]

I have a system partition and a data partition on my MacBook Pro with a 640GB drive. I gave my system (boot) partition 35GB. It has been plenty so far. I have Photoshop and Premier CS5 installed, along with a couple of large games and have 7.5GB free. I leave the rest of my drive for data and map my home folder to it.

When this comes in handy is when I need to re-install the OS. I don't have to sit around for an hour or two for all of my data to copy back. I just have to copy back applications, and I'm up and running again fairly quickly.

 

[g-boac]

partition split

Question - if I use disk utility to add a partition to my hard drive, does it destroy ALL data on the current single hard drive partition? Or is it non-destructive, the way creating a Boot Camp partition is?

thanks,
Mark

 

[justn]

Question - if I use disk utility to add a partition to my hard drive, does it destroy ALL data on the current single hard drive partition? Or is it non-destructive, the way creating a Boot Camp partition is?

thanks,
Mark

It is non-destructive. I believe it has been that way since Leopard.