[X Newbies] Partitioning Drive?

[Michael Winter]

On Tuesday, May 20, 2003, at 09:36  AM, Florin Alexander Neumann wrote:

>
> On Monday, May 19, 2003, at 17:15 Canada/Eastern, Michael Winter wrote:
>
>>> Unless you have some specific reason why you need to partition it, 
>>> you should leave it the way Apple sends it to you, ie unpartitioned. 
>>> IMHO.
>>
>> I would concur with Charles. Especially because unless you know why 
>> you're partitioning, you don't know how big to make the partitions.
>
> I disagree.
>
> For general use, I'd recommend partitioning the drive in 3 volumes.
>
> (a) Your work partition. I'd say, about 20GB, but, for X, certainly no 
> less than 15GB.

But for a newbie (this list), which is it and how do you make that 
determination? It depends a lot on how much you use iPhoto, iTunes or 
iMovie. If you're like me, you start out thinking you won't use them 
much, then end up with several GB of photos and several GB of tunes. 
Then you run out of space and what do you do?

> This is where your system, apps, and docs live. This is also the 
> partition you should back up religiously -- a daily incremental backup 
> for your Home folder,

Personally, I only backup my Users directory. The rest takes very 
little time to rebuild from scratch and ensures the cause of the 
problem isn't simply restored back into the system.

> (b) Your emergency partition. I'd say, about 8GB.

Here I just use startup CD's with the utilities. Generally, when I did 
have multiple partitions, I would want to check them all anyway, this 
saves a step.

> This is not the best solution, because in some circumstances the 
> entire drive may become unusable; it's better to have a second drive.

That's where just using a utility CD is simpler. This makes it easier 
for "newbies" since you always follow the same steps. Its not an 
if-then-else solution.

> Why an emergency partition? Well, if your regular startup volume gets 
> munged, you can boot off your system software CD or DVD, but you can 
> only use Disk Utility, which may not be enough. A third-party disk 
> utility usually comes with its own startup CD, but, again you can only 
> use that utility.

Personally, I've never found that to be a problem, especially if you 
want to keep it simple.

>  Moreover, the software on a CD is frozen in time -- you can't add 
> other tools or update it. It's easier to have a separate partition 
> than burning a bootable CD each time you upgrade your disk utility or 
> want to add another tool on it.

I know this is just "personal preference", but I disagree with this. 
The only caveat being it is more difficult to make a custom, up-to-date 
"Emergency" CD that boots OS X than it has been with OS 9.

> (c) Your scratch partition. This is where you set your apps to keep 
> their scratch files, caches, temp files, downloads, etc.

IMO, this just adds a layer of complexity with little or no benefit. 
Does a "newbie" really want to spend the time figuring all this out, 
and will there be a benefit over simply having these things use the 
first partition.

Again, IMO, its simply easier to go with a single partition. Multiple 
partitions really requires planning and is definitely not a 
one-size-fits-all scenario.

Having said all that, there is one case where I would recommend two 
partitions (a main partition and an Emergency Boot partition). That's 
if you don't have ready access to utility CD's. The most common 
scenario for this is portable users who are on the road a lot and don't 
want to carry a bunch of CDs with them.

-Mike