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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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