[X Newbies] Using partitions?

[Grégoire Seither]

>
> On Monday, November 25, 2002, at 06:20  AM, Norman Rowe wrote:
>
>> I have a beige beige G3 266/420 with a 100 gig HD. In order to 
>> install OS X I was forced to partition this drive. One partition is 
>> now 7.9 gig with OS X 1.1.5 and the other is 92.1 with OS 9.2.2 on 
>> it. Everything is OK but I seem to be filling up the OS X partition 
>> while the OS 9 partition has plenty of room. How can this be handled?

If you install new Apps – unless you state otherwise during the 
installation process, they'll automatically go into your Applications 
folder which is on your Mac OS X partition. Same goes for Mail and 
other personal documents, by default Mac OS X sends them to the 
Documents folder which also resides on the Mac OS X partition. iTunes 
MP3, Pictures etc... they all end up in your Users folder... again, on 
your Mac OS X partition.

Now that Jaguar is stabilized and that we have a way to do a "clean 
install" (via the Archive and Install function) the "old" 
recommendations about keeping Mac OS X on its own partition don't apply 
anymore. Mac OS X is happy when it has lots of contiguuous disk space 
for cache, temp files etc.

Unless you are a power user that installs software all the time and 
needs to zap his hard drive now and then to start from a clean slate, I 
would recommend you :
- make yourself a bootable Mac OS X CD with some first aid apps (in 
case disaster strikes and you need to be able to boot your Mac)
  - back up all your data
- reformat your drive into one partition.

That way Mac OS will have plenty of legroom and should be a happy 
chappy.

Another solution is to take your documents folder, applications folder, 
music folder etc... copy them to the bigger partition and leave only 
aliases to them on the Mac OS X partition. That way Mac OS X still 
finds the folders but they take up space on the other partition. But 
that will not prevent Mac OS X from slowing done from insufficient disk 
space.

Hope this helps

Gregoire