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Partition 320GB Firewire HD?

zen.state

zen.state

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Mar 13, 2005
2,181
8
I have just purchased a Western Digital 320GB 8MB HD for the miniStack FW enclosure I have. I was wondering if its better to partition it or just leave it one huge drive? I will be booting from this drive also. It will just have standard mac apps and loads of video.

Any advice is welcome.
 
Partitioning might well be a good idea.

Assuming your mini has a hard drive of 40 - 80 GB (not that it matters but these are the standard shipping sizes I think) you could create a partition the same size as your mini's HD and use it to create a clone and/or boot from it.

Another partition would be good for storing files, media, or whatever you want on hand.

And maybe one more to use as a scratch partition should you be doing any video encoding, DVD ripping or creation etc. This will save you creating and deleting large files on your boot partition, which can lead to your HD getting fragmented.

I've got a 40 GB mini HD and an external 250 GB one. The mini has just one partition and the external has 4. 1 is an exact clone of the internal, 2 and 3 (75GB or so each) are for storing media files, movies and the like, and 4 is scratch.
 
Thanks a bunch deebster. Some very good ideas.

I still have the original 40GB inside. Have not booted from it or had an OS on it in months. Only use it for music storage. I have had the miniStack for a while but only had an 80GB in it till now. The 320 is still not installed and won't be till I decide for sure how to format it right the first time. I have a G4 tower also incase I mess up and need another system. :)

Think I will most likely do what you say with making a boot partition of around 60GB for all the apps and then some. I will leave the rest as a big partition for video.

The main and almost only reason I upgraded to a 320GB is for video storage as I sorta use my mini as a media center and it sucks grabbing disks 20 times a day.
 
adk said:
Sorry to distract from your thread, but have you found that booting off a firewire drive gives you a lot of beachballs?
Click to expand...

Yes actually. I have noticed that at times. Seems to happen most a couple months after a fresh install.
 
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