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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: Chas on May 29, '05 11:01:44AM

There is absolutely no reason to partition a single hard drive so it has a separate swap partition. A separate swap partition is thought to increase performance, but that only works when the swap is on a separate drive. There really isn't any reason to have separate System and user partitions.
MacOS X is designed to work on huge disk volumes, the volume structure is self-optimizing, and is designed for good performance even when fragmented.

Multiple partitions on a drive is an anachronism from the days of MacOS 9. Get over it. Your partition scheme wastes more disk space than this tip reclaims.



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what about minimum block size?
Authored by: schaps on May 29, '05 11:18:42AM

My reasons for partitioning before was the minimum block size-- partitioning created smaller blocks. I would think with all the thousands of itsy bitsy files that *nix based OSes have, this would still be a reason to partition. You seem rather worked up about this, so please note I am not challenging you, I am attempting to improve my knowledge. Please let me know what you think.



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what about minimum block size?
Authored by: derrickbass on May 29, '05 10:28:28PM

The minimum block size is 4K on HFS+ disks (well, it can be chosen differently when you format the disk, but I've never seen that happen). In the days of HFS, you could only have a maximum of 65536 blocks on a disk, so the bigger the disk, the bigger the block size. But no such limitation is present on HFS+ disks.



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what about minimum block size?
Authored by: schaps on May 30, '05 12:05:17AM

thanks-- did not know that!



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what about minimum block size?
Authored by: axello on May 30, '05 03:08:23AM

Actually, there is a limit to the number of files on an HFS+ disk. It is 2^32, so around 4.29 billion.
The biggest volume you can access with 4 KB blocks is thus 16 TB. We should approach that in a couple of years.



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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: david-bo on May 29, '05 11:48:30AM

A separate swap-partition reduces the fragmentation in the system and user parts of the disk. Yes, I know that Mac OS X automatically defragments some files nowadays.

Furthermore, with a separate swap-partition you never risk that a process that has gone crazy fills up the disk so no more swap can be used; it will fill the disk but only the system and/or user-part(ition), at least if you are so disciplined that you never store any documents, applications etc on the swap.

Finally, you can fit a swap-partition to just accomodate the swap files, i.e. if you never user more than, e.g., 4 swap files (64, 64, 128 and 256 MB), you can make the swap 513 MB and you optimize the space usage in the disk. If you just leave the swap on the boot partition, you always have to make sure that the free space is in the order 2^n bytes, if you have 2^1-1 the last swap file can't be created.

Anyway, this hint was not about the existence swap-partitions or not, but rather a hint on how you could save some space on a crowded disk.

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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: chucky23 on May 29, '05 11:52:44AM
"There really isn't any reason to have separate System and user partitions."

That's a pretty ignorant thing to say.

You may choose to go with a single partition, but if you had any clue about using OS X, you would know that there are many good reasons for having multiple partitions. And separating the system from user partitions is one of those good reasons.

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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: deleted_user18 on May 30, '05 02:47:56AM

So then you should mention the good reasons. Why should I seperate user data from "the rest"? This is already done. It is called home directory...

And by forcing the swap file to use a specific area of your hard drive you lose the ability of OS X to move often accessed files to the hot area (fastest tracks on your hard drive) automatically.

It the same waste of time as defrag.exe is on Windows XP.



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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: chucky23 on May 30, '05 10:17:57AM
"So then you should mention the good reasons. Why should I seperate user data from "the rest"? This is already done. It is called home directory..."

There are multiple reasons.

- Avoiding the swap generated disk full errors that frequently destroy user prefs and data.

- Much easier re-installations.

- Data protection in event of serious disk structure problems.

And those are three of only the most obvious reasons. More valid reasons do exist. I always have a minimum of two partitions, even if I'm not doing anything fancy.

"And by forcing the swap file to use a specific area of your hard drive you lose the ability of OS X to move often accessed files to the hot area (fastest tracks on your hard drive) automatically."

Only semi-true. If your swap file partition is over 10GB, you get the exact same hot-file capability. And given the naturally defragmented nature of swap disks, it's not much of a problem to begin with.

But I personally don't give swap its own partition. From my point of view, it's too little or no gain for much too much work, and should only be done for educational purposes.

But separating /System from /Users seems like an absolute no-brainer to me.

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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: greed on May 30, '05 11:25:49AM

Aside from all the other reasons people have put forth for and against partitions, how about this:

If you want to use multiple partitions, do it. It works well under Mac OS X. And if you have multiple drives that you haven't RAIDed together, you've got multiple partitions anyway--even if you don't have multiples on each drive.

If you don't want to use multiple partitions, don't do it. It works well under Mac OS X; user data is under /User, system under /System, /usr, /var, and so on; and global non-user stuff is under everything else.

But why try to convice others your way is best? Your way is good for you, my way is good for me, his way is good for him, and her way is good for her. A little discussion is great, but blanket statements like "Don't partition you don't need to" don't really help. I don't need to do lots of things; if we got right down to it, I wouldn't have a Mac if I went on "need". I'd have an ANSI TTY and a 9600 BPS modem to a dusty UNIX machine somewhere.



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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: JohnnyMnemonic on May 29, '05 05:07:10PM

Multiple partitions on a drive is an anachronism from the days of MacOS 9.

It is not totally without reason. I have several partitions on my drive; one for beta or in testing OSes; one for Linux; one master "working" OS and data; and one with an image for CCC to copy to client machines. I could put them all but the master on a FW hard drive(s), but I prefer to have them all with me wherever I have my powerbook for use as the mood or need strikes me.

However, I do have a question: I have heard that Apple's hot-file-adaptive technology and prebinding stuff only works on a drive with one (user-created) partition. Has this changed in 10.3 or .4, or is there an actual penalty for using more than one partition?



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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: chucky23 on May 29, '05 07:12:54PM
"I have heard that Apple's hot-file-adaptive technology and prebinding stuff only works on a drive with one (user-created) partition."

Untrue.

The hot-file-adaptive technology kicks in on any partition larger than 10GB. So if you partition your drive with partitions smaller than that, you'll lose hot-files. Otherwise, not.

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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: rhowell on May 29, '05 06:17:13PM

In addition to the posts above, here's another reason. Placing your iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Address Book, Bookmarks, etc, etc, whatever you want, on a separate partition that has ownerships turned off has many benefits. This is the easiest way to share these libraries among multiple users (like an entire trusting family) on your computer. And no, "sharing" them via their respective Preferences does not accomplish the same thing. Everyone should be able to change the libraries.

Great for sharing documents, too.



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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: Anonymous on Jun 02, '05 03:20:05PM

The only reason I split up my main disk into two partitions last clean reinstall was that booting to OS 9 was killing my system, forcing me to fsck constantly. No matter what I did, the simple act of booting to OS 9 would often hose my main disk, causing the dreaded "?" on boot.

I put OS 9 on a separate 10Mb partition and now if it goes pear-shaped I can just blow it away and reinstall -- without afffecting OS X at all.

Regardless of _why_ this was happening, having the two systems on different logical disks means I can count on my important system (OS X) booting. I just don't care if OS 9 blows up. I do care if it takes my only boot disk with it.



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Don't partition MacOX drives. No need to.
Authored by: jesboat on Jun 20, '05 04:00:00PM
I have three seperate partitions on my system— one for the system, one for my data (symlinked to /Users), and one for my media (symlinked to ~/Movies, ~/Music, etc.)— because:
  • It allows me to fiddle with different settings for different partitions (e.g. make some case-sensitive, which I do need sometimes)
  • It allows me to wipe certain partitions and not others during re-install. When Apple releases a new major version of OS X, I can just wipe my system partition, getting rid of all the crap I've built up, and re-install the new version over it.
  • Backups are much easier. I don't have to worry about backing up my System partition, though I like to so it's easy to restore the OS should things die. I need to back up my User partition frequently, but, since it's small (1 GB), I can fit backups on my server and USB flash drive. Media needs to be backed up very infrequently, and can safely use incremental backups. (Safely, as in without me being paranoid the incremental backups will mess something important up.)
Jesboat

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