Partitions and mac

[joshysquashy]

I will be a switcher in about 7 days!

On a PC, its a good idea to have 2 seperate partitions - one for the os, one for your files. This way, it the os craps out, you can reinstall it, delelte the partition etc and your files are fine.

my question is:

• is it possible to create partitions on a mac
• what software is recommended
• is there any need for a seperate partitions for documents compared to mac os x?

hope that made sense

 

[grapes911]

This isn't a bad idea. About a year ago, I had a two partitions. One for my OS and one for my files, home directory, and many of my apps.

Disk Utility (in the utilities folder) can do this. Being that you are going to partition your system drive, you'll have to use the Disk Utility on the Restore/Install Disk.

I personally don't use partitions anymore because OS X rarely "craps out". I'm more concerned that the hard drive may die before the OS, so I back up my entire hard drive on and external one.

 

[CanadaRAM]

a) yes
b) Disk Utility that comes with the machine
c) No need. You can do it as part of a data organization strategy, (remembering that partitioning will wipe out all of the data and sofware on the hard disk) however most of the Apple programs will install their data files in your User folder on the boot partition by default. While you can reset that, there isn't much reason to. If you had a second physical hard drive, putting project data files on the 2nd drive is a good idea for speed improvement, however there is little to no speed benefit between 2 partitions on the same drive.

Unless you are building up a drive from scratch, or have a specific requirement, leave it as loaded from Apple.

 

[witness]

On Windows I have multiple partitions, on Mac I don't.

Windows needs to be reinstalled far more frequently than OS X so 2 partitions make sense, but it can be more convenient to have a single partition, you never have the problem of outgrowing one of them when you have plenty of space on another.

 

[joshysquashy]

Thanks for the replies. I won't create two partitions, as I feel Mac OS X will probably never need to be reinstalled (I loose track of the times I have reinstalled XP!)

I will make a backup however. I will probably use ipodbackup as I like the idea of music and files syncing automaticaly when I plug it in.

 

[grapes911]

I will make a backup however. I will probably use ipodbackup as I like the idea of music and files syncing automaticaly when I plug it in.

Remember, iPodBackup only backs up your home directory. Anything you put elsewhere, including apps can be lost.

 

[joshysquashy]

Remember, iPodBackup only backs up your home directory. Anything you put elsewhere, including apps can be lost.

Yes, but apps can be easily installed, and settings can be easily re-entered. the main thing i don't want to loose is my files, those would be irreplacable.

All programs (downloaded or bought) are on cd's so it wouldn't take a second to copy them across.

 

[Switzermac]

macs are 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times more leliable than pc's so no partition needed

 

[Macmaniac]

macs are 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times more leliable than pc's so no partition needed

Partially true, but you should be prepared for emergencies anyway. HDs can die be it a PC or a Mac. Running maintenance programs on OS X is a good idea to keep problems from creeping up, and backing up regularly is always a good idea. Just because an OS is stable does not mean that bad things won't happen. Working in a computer store I have seen far too many people come in with broken HDs and then tell us they never back up.

Back up, its the smart thing to do©