Optimising a dual boot G4's fragmented hard disk

[sunlikeblood]

I am wondering if anyone knows how I can easily defrag a dual boot G4 running OS 9.2 and 10.2.8? I've tried starting up from a Diskwarrior CD and it doesn't work. I can boot from a system disk but I don't have an external drive to run Diskwarrior so of course it won't let me optimise the hard disk because Diskwarrior resides on the disk. Any ideas? Is Diskwarrior even capable of optimising a dual boot machine? If not what should I use? Fragmentation is up to 24% and my 40gb disk has 12gb free so I am starting to notice performance loss. I'm on a G4 Dual 533 with 896mb RAM.

 

[kiwi_the_iwik]

I can do it easily on my dual-boot Cube.

I'd initially partitioned my 120Gb HD 3 ways - 40Gb for OSX, 3Gb for OS9 and 70Gb for a Video Scratch Disk.

Because I had OS's on TWO of the partitions, I installed the two different OS versions of DiskWarrior 3 onto them (the OS9 version on the "9" drive, and the OSX version on the "X" drive.). From there, I could boot up off the required partition, and fix the OTHER partition (which meant being able to defragment too).

Simple!

 

[sunlikeblood]

If you partition your hard disk using disk utility do you have to erase it first?

 

[crazzyeddie]

yes

 

[kiwi_the_iwik]

Of course - ANOTHER option is to open your tower, and insert an additional drive into one of the spare bays - you can buy a relatively small "el-cheapo" drive from CompUSA (or similar shop), and then install OS9 OR OSX on THAT drive.

In that way, you can boot from either drive (by holding down "option" at startup), and use your second drive solely for emergencies when required...

 

[sunlikeblood]

I think I like this idea better. Another drive is always handy too.