Should I partition my rMBP 256GB?

[Mac Write]

Since I've had dual hard drives OS X onward (Beige G3 required partitioning the HD). I've always had a OS/Apps drive as well as a separate Data Drive.

With the Retinal MBP being my first ever portable, I partitioned it 70/180. I am now wondering if I should just stick with a single drive and use FileVault2 for security.

The reason I love having seperatge OS/Apps and Data partitions/drives is so that I don't have to care about my boot drive. With every OS upgrade, I always clean install. and sometimes throughout the year clean install.

I've been using Time Machine via my Drobo FS on my Mac Pro (4 drives) for 2 years). But doing a restore at install time…I don't know why but I don't trust it.

So what are your thoughts? I average around 2-4 clean installs a year to clean out the build up of junk on the boot drive.

 

[Ccrew]

Personal opinion? I also scrub/reinstall on every OS change, but at the premium cost of SSD space I really don't like the idea of slack space across partitions. So as a result I tend to use the opportunity of the clean install to also pare all the applications i had the best intentions of using but seldom did. Single partitions seem to work well in that respect.

Pretty much the same reason I don't Bootcamp, and since I don't try to convince myself that a Mac is a gaming platform just run Windows in a VM.

 

[Mac Write]

I do the clean install to clean the junk I've gotten. But I do tend to install very few apps and only the apps I really need. I think I will move to a single partition. but of course if the OS gets hosed, by by all my data (even though I run allot of stuff off my Mac Pro since it's a Lion Server).

 

[Edie Brickell]

I think it’s a good practice to have your OS and data part separated. If you have ever been to transfer your data or choose anything from your data partition you can easily identify it without any hassel. However now a days there are so many tool which can cleanup your drive even free. But reinstalling your Mac every time seems to be difficult for a new Mac user or the guy who has a lot data saved on hard drive.