[X Newbies] Partitioning Map for two Drives

[Alex]

On Thursday, Apr 22, 2004, at 13:38 Canada/Eastern, Al Poulin wrote:

> [...] I have recently seen on another e-list that having applications 
> and data on
> separate volumes of the same drive causes needless disk-thrashing (head
> movement).[...]

I don't see why it should be so.

On partition, keep in mind that Mac OS X is not Mac OS 9 or earlier 
(not even a descendant thereof), but nor is it straight "Unix". The 
"traditional" arrangement on Unixboxes is to keep system, apps, and 
user space separate, each on its own partition. For various reasons, by 
default Mac OS X expects to find them all on the same partition. You 
can change that, but you must understand very well what you're doing 
and why, because you can run into all sorts of unexpected problems. For 
instance, prebindings may not be updated for apps not on the boot 
volume. Or MS Office can't import graphic files if the Users directory 
is not on the boot partition. So, until you reach black belt, just go 
with the defaults.

> [...] I have two internal 40GB hard drives with 9 volumes.[...]

IMHO, that's needlessly complicated, especially for drives which appear 
to me on the small side. I can't say I read your post in detail, but I 
don't see any reason for it. You could just as well get along without 
partitioning the drives: OS X + Classic on one, OS X (emergency) + Mac 
OS 9 + Mac OS 9 apps on the other -- and that may very well be best at 
this stage. At most, I'd create a single volume on the first drive (OS 
X + Classic), and three on the second. First, a pared-down version of 
OS X (no extra languages, printer drivers, etc.) for emergencies (to 
start up the machine if the first drive fails or to run Disk Utility), 
second, a Mac OS 9 boot volume (including all "classic" apps), and, 
third, a scratch volume.

f