[P1] To Partition or...! Virtual Memory

[david]

On Sunday, June 1, 2003, at 08:03  AM, Jack Rodgers wrote:

> I would imagine, but don't know for sure, that if you create 
> partitions that are quickly filled up, you will run into virtual 
> memory problems which may cause slower performance or other problems. 
> There are also scratch files that may run into disk space problems. 
> Video and graphic programs need lots of scratch space or they run 
> slowly, maybe crash. I have yet to  read anyone discuss this 
> possibility.

No question about it -> when the drive fills up there is a noticeable 
increase in drive activity and resultant slowdown. It isn't a question 
of the partition causing the problem but rather simply a full drive. 
You'd see the same thing whether you had a full 20 gig drive or a 160 
gig drive with a full 20 gig partition.
>
> Another problem is stability of the disk. I have had partitioned 
> drives fail but not after I erased the drive and set it to only one 
> partition. I don't know whether that experience is common or an 
> anomaly.

Over the years I've had a few drives go south bad enough that I had to 
reformat them back to square one. I never noticed that partitioned 
drives were more prone to this than unpartitioned and I can only think 
of one instance where a partitioned drive failed so badly that I lost 
all the partitions. However, I will add that my experience in the PC 
world has totally put me off soft partition schemes. (For the 
uninitiated, a 'hard' partition cannot be changed without erasing the 
drive and starting over. A 'soft' partition can be resized without 
reformatting or losing data. For this reason it seems like a good idea. 
Seems...I've seen lots of 'soft' partition failures.)
>
> I don't have 9 installed and run only OS X. So, I avoid the issue of 
> separate partitions for the two OSs. The only reason I would consider 
> partitioning is to download video but now that Apple has sorted out 
> the firewire problems to some degree, I can download to an external 
> drive.

I agree here. The only reason I'd consider partitioning a drive for OS 
X would be a) the drive is too big to be fully addressed because I had 
an old style drive controller, or b) I did massive download/deletes. 
Even then, I'd probably just use a disk image in most cases.
>
> I backup my internal to an external LaCie Pocket drive. If I need to, 
> I can boot from that and then backup to the internal.
>
Ditto. At home and at work I have a disk image ready to restore my 
iBook and a data CD that is never more than a week old. At lunchtime my 
iBook automatically syncs my document folder to the network. When I go 
on the road I copy the disk image and data folder to my iPod. That 
still leaves me about 3 gig for music.

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David