[X Newbies] OS X Panther Partition Size and Swap Space

[Alex]

On Monday, Apr 19, 2004, at 14:53 Canada/Eastern, Al Poulin wrote:

> Should I set up a partition for Panther swap space?

Meddling with the swap space is, IMHO, not a good idea for newbies. 
(I'm not implying Al is one, merely that this is the focus of the 
list.) If one understands the issues involved, one is, ipso facto, not 
a newbie.

I doubt that a separate swap partition on the same drive as the boot 
partition helps -- the read/write heads may travel just as much, if not 
more. A separate swap partition on a different drive might improve 
performance, although my aggregate impression of various reports on the 
web is that the gain is rather marginal. If you feel comfortable enough 
to go ahead, I suggest checking the X-Unix archives -- there's been a 
useful discussion on swapfiles and dynamic_pager settings a couple of 
weeks ago.

> [...] The apps and data will all be on other volumes, I hope.

In OS X , it's not a good idea to have apps on a separate partition 
from the boot partition.

> [...] Say the OS X volume is 10GB.

IMHO, you should have at least 10GB free on your boot volume for 
Panther -- although probably there are those who get along fine with 
less. Personally, I shouldn't consider anything less than 15GB for a 
boot partition in OS X. If that's a problem, consider replacing one of 
your older drives with -- or adding -- a new drive.

f