Separate partition for OS X on a MBP?

[marianillo]

Hello everyone!

I am upgrading to a 15" Macbook pro (with a 500 GBm, 7200 rpm) from a 13" white macbook running with Tiger. I will probably receive the new computer in a couple of days, and I have been thinking about how to configure it for best performance.

I have sometimes heard that partitioning the hard drive and using the first partition solely for the OS and programs, and using the second partition (within the same hard drive) for data storage helps keeping a high performance.

Is it true? Is the trouble of creating partitions, etc. worth in terms of performance? or I can just let the hard-drive be as it comes?

I use the computer mainly with Photoshop, although I might begin working with video editing in the near future.

Thanks for your advice

 

[MacDawg]

Any gains would be negligible
I would recommend keeping the drive as normal

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[neilhart]

Performance ?

I have noticed that the first bootable partition on a large drive does bench mark as faster then like partitions that follow (where each partition is a bootable copy of the first partition). The bench mark is run after rebooting to the test partition.

The question is does it make any difference in real life in real world use? I think not much.

If you have time and the interest, when you get your new 500GB drive, partition it into three equal parts, bump a bootable copy of you OS onto first and last partitions, then bench mark using X Bench or what ever and see for yourself.

Neil

 

[-aggie-]

I've made multiple partitions on my PC running XP, but that was mainly to keep the part with all the system files separate from data, backups and programs seperate, so that if something happened to the system, I could just reinstall Windows in the system partition, saving time and still having my data, etc. Supposedly it means less travel of the heads, but I don't know if it makes a difference in speed and if it does, it's probably not noticeable.