To Partition or Not to Partition?- 19 July 2000
Charles W.
Moore
To Partition Or Not To Partition; That Is The Question.When you partition a hard drive, each partition functions as a
separate volume and appears on your desktop with its own icon and
name. I'm a fan of hard drive partitioning and have had four
partitions on the 500 MB hard drive in my PowerBook
5300 and on the 2 GB unit in my PowerBook
WallStreet G3. What are the advantages associated with partitioning a hard drive?
Well, prior to the introduction of Mac OS 8.1, the most compelling
reason to partition was that it could gain you a substantial amount
of hard drive space, especially on larger drives. The old Macintosh hierarchical file system (HFS) divided each
volume into approximately 65,000 blocks, which represented the
highest number of data units that could theoretically be stored on
the drive -- no matter how large it was. This was not much of a
problem back in the days when an 80 MB drive was considered large.
However, as hard drive capacities expanded to 500 MB and beyond, the
minimum file size, even for documents with just a couple of lines of
text in them, became unreasonably large. The solution, before Apple introduced its extended file system
(HFS+) with Mac OS 8.1 in January 1998, was to partition the hard
drive into several smaller volumes, each with a smaller block sizes
than the original single volume. For example, when I partitioned my
PowerBook 5300's 500 MB hard drive into four partitions, I instantly
gained more than 30 MB of usable storage space. Other potential advantages provided by hard drive partitioning are
slightly faster drive access, because the drive heads don't have to
traverse as far to find a file within a smaller volume, and enhanced
organization, for people who like to keep one kind of file -- say
documents -- in one drive partition and applications in another. Also, should one partition become corrupted, the possibility
exists that the other partition or partitions may not be damaged, and
data on them will be recoverable. Speaking of troubleshooting and hard drive corruption problems,
having a backup operating system installed on a partition separate
from the one where your normal working system resides can be very
convenient when you suspect system problems. Just boot from your
alternate system and if the troubles disappear you can be pretty sure
of your diagnosis and take remedial action. Another advantage of
having operating systems on several partitions is that you can keep
different versions of the Mac OS handy. For example, I normally run
Mac OS 9 on my WallStreet, but I also keep a copy of Mac OS 8.1 on
another partition, which is very useful when I occasionally have to
use older software that is not supported by Mac OS 9. A potential security advantage of partitioning is that on a
computer that is used by several people or installed in an insecure
location, you can assign separate passwords to each partition,
denying access to one more partitions when the computer is being used
unsupervised. A potential downside to partitioning is that if you have a
relatively small drive and frequently work with a large files, you
may find it a drawback. Some people also find the concept of
partitions confusing. If you think of the partitions as separate hard
drives, this should not be a problem. Incidentally, in his "Mac OS 9: The Complete Reference," Gene
Steinberg suggests that having operating systems installed on more
than one hard drive partition, and using the Start Up Disk control
panel to select which one to boot from, is a bad idea that can cause
problems. I usually agree with Gene, and I defer to his much greater
variation regarding Mac operating systems then I possess, but I am
obliged to part company with him on this one. I have personally used
multiple operating systems on partitioned hard drives on a variety of
Macs ranging from my old Mac Plus (yes, I even partitioned the 20 MB
hard drive on the Plus in order to have both System 6 and System 7
available), through a PowerBook 5300, the WallStreet, my son's
PowerBook 520, another WallStreet, and
Lombard 'Books, and my latest
addition, a Umax SuperMac S900.
I have never once experienced any problems that I would attribute to
having the multiple systems installed on any of these machines -- and
the redundancy his bailed me out of several scrapes and been a great
convenience many other times. Oddly enough, Apple's own hard drive formatting software bundled
with the Mac OS did not include partitioning capability until they
replaced HD SC Setup with Drive Setup not long before a HFS+ was
introduced. However, several third party formatting programs such as
FWD's Hard Disk Toolkit or LaCie's Silverlining could do the job for
you. Apple's current Drive Setup formatter supports partitioning
nicely -- at least for Apple-branded drives. For third party drives,
you may or may not still need third party formatting software. In order to partition your hard drive, it must be erased and
reformatted. Consequently, you will need to back up all of
your files to other media before partitioning. Obviously, the ideal
time to partition a hard drive is when you first get your
computer. If you are partitioning a drive that has been in use for some
time, it's probably also a good idea to do a clean system install
while you're at it. Make sure to save any third-party extensions and
other non-Apple system folder stuff before erasing your old system,
although you will probably have to reinstall some of your
software. Once these preparations are complete, boot your Mac from a CD, a
Disk Tools floppy, or an external drive. You can find Drive Setup in
the Utilities folder of your system CD. Launch Drive Setup, and
choose Customize Volumes or Custom Setup from the Functions menu. You must also select a file format method from the format popup
menu. Choose HFS+ unless you want to be able to access the partition
over a network or using PowerBook SCSI Disk Mode from an older
computer running an operating system prior to MacOS 8.1 that does not
support the Macintosh extended file format. You now have two options for determining the size of your
partitions. One way is to use the pop-up menu to indicate how many
partitions you would like to have. With this method, all the
partitions will be automatically sized in equal proportions. However
you can also drag the rectangle borders in the set up window to
change the relative size of your partitions to a variety of
capacities. On my WallStreet I have three 320 MB partitions and a
fourth of a little more than a megabyte. Once you have mapped your partitions size to your satisfaction,
click the Initialize button and Drive Setup will create your
partitions. When that process is completed, you can reinstall a
system or systems, and your applications and other files on the newly
partitioned drive. Partitioning is not for everyone, but is one of the options that
can help you customize in optimize your Mac to suit your particular
needs and preferences. 
- <this article available in a printer-friendly
version>
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Biography- Charles Moore has
been a freelance journalist since 1987 -- and writing for Mac web
sites since May 1998. His The
Road Warrior column is a regular feature on MacOS
Daily, and he is a news editor and columnist at Applelinks.com.
Charles lives and works in Port Hilford, Nova Scotia, on the shore
of Indian Harbour Lake and in sight of the Atlantic Ocean. His
newspaper columns are syndicated across Canada, and he writes
regularly for several magazines, as well as doing Mac website
journalism. Charles has also contributed to MacToday magazine.
His current stable of Macs includes a Mac
Plus, an LC 520, a Power
Mac 9500, a PowerBook 5300,
and a PowerBook G3 Series
II/233.
Miscellaneous
Ramblings ©1999-2000 by Charles
Moore.
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