Should I Partition My HDD?

I have a MBP C2D with 160GB HDD currently formatted into 2 partitions (OS approx 60GB & Data approx 100GB).
I am currently tidying up my data and may get rid of the 2 partition setup as it can be a pain when moving files around.
Is there any advantage in maintaining 2 partitions (speed? data security?) or is a single one better on this size of drive?
Thanks, John

Hi John Henley;
It has been my experience that if a drive is partitioned and all of the partition are used productively, as in the case of OS in one partition and data in another, that leads to reduced performance of the system.
In the testing I have done it appears that when you partition a drive you are forcing data to go to certain positions on the disk. In order to get to this data, the heads on the disk are forced to move back and forth to the position of the data. On the other hand, if the OS and data are interspersed in a single partition, the head movement is reduced. Since head movement is one of the slowest things a disk can do any increase in head movement will only reduce performance.
Allan

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I already partitioned my hdd via Bootcamp, supports downloaded, and windows is on an external USB. How can I start installing Windows now? at startup it doesnt show up as bootable device...

hi,
I am having a problem installing windows via bootcamp.
I already partitioned my hdd via Bootcamp, downloaded and copied all the supports for windows, and windows is on an external USB as well. I had to stop the process the other day, so i shut down the computer. Now I am trying to boot from the USB, but I cant get to that point where the computer should restart and windows would start installing.
. After restarting, holding command, it doesnt show up as bootable device.
How shall I move forward? My disk is already partitioned, and if i start the whole process from the beginning, it wants me to partition again - although I already made a 100GB partition for windows.
Please help me out.
best,
Zoltan

So, here is what happened when I tried to make it.(sorry for quality, i had to take them by phone)
At first when I opened it I saw that I could simply resolve it just by stretching the arrow at the bottom, giving the 100 GB back which I partitioned before via Bootcamp. At this point options was not available.
I didnt do it because you mentioned earlier that it might be not designed to install windows.
The second thing I tried I choose 1 Partition from Partition Layout. This time Options were available but I didnt see anything like GPT, the onces that are optionable are on the screenshot.
What do you think how shall I move on? I was thinking to give it a shot with option 1, just stretch it back and try everything from scratch.

Satellite A200-10X: How to partitioning the HDD

Hi there guys!
I have a pro with my satellite A200-10X, it has only one HDD volume, and i want to make them two... and everytime i use the product recovery CD, it formats the HDD... but i do not know how to partition the HDD two get two volume spaces...
and whats worse is that when i keep on doing that over and over it eats the HDD free space... so how can i partition the HDD and recover the 200GB space the computer originally have?
i appreciate your help ..
thanx

Hello Sherif
If you use delivered recovery media you have follow options:
1. the whole HDD capacity can be used for partition C
2. the HDD capacity can be split and you can create two partitions
When you use both options Vista will create 1,4 GB partition but this partition will not be visible when you use OS.
If you want to have two partitions (C and D) start recovery procedure and after choosing the language use SETUP button on the right side. In the middle of the screen occurs small window and there you can set how much capacity should be reserved for partition C. when the recovery procedure is finished and Vista starts open Computer Management.
On the left side choose Disk Management. After doing this on the left side you will see partition marked as black. This is second partition but still not visible. Click there with right mouse button and choose option to create logical drive. Follow the setup procedure.
After few steps this partition will be set as logical drive and after formatting it will be visible in Vista Explorer.
If you have more questions please post again.
Bye

Should I partition a table or not???

I have a table with well over 8 million records and growing around 15,000 records daily. It is queried through a form (forms6i), no updates are done on the form just "select". The indexes are set up for the 2 types of querries mostly performed- by a date criteria and an id criteria. Is indexing good enough? I notice that it is getting harder to get results from date specific querries. What is the best approaches to ensure the table is optimized for querries? I am not used to working with such a large table size. Does partitioning help indexes work more efficient? Should I run statistics on the whole table?? I am not comfortable running statistics on the table when I am not around to monitor the performance on the server. The database runs 24 hours, 7 days a week- there is no real "downtime" to run stats.
Please advise, I would like to find a best practice approach.

Re: Should I partition a table or not???
Posted: Jun 19, 2007 11:59 AM in response to: user542952 Reply
(small correction in my earlier posting)
mostly performed- by a date criteria and an id criteriaPartitioning NOT always imporves performance. It can degrade performance if you had NOT partitoned based on queries those hit.
Beaware of local indexes. You might degrade performance because you may need to proble mulitple index partitions.
Do you query date and Ids by range search or exact search ?.
How much data (roughly 10% ,20% , 1% etc..) you fetch through the query

Bootcamp won't partition my HDD what do I do?

I was testing around with Bootcamp for the first time. I partitioned the HDD accidently and then removed the partition in Disk Utility. I went to make sure everything was ok and i partitioned again. It says "The Disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved" then it says "Back up the disk and use disk utility to format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Restore your information to the disk and try using Bootcamp Assistant again.
PLEASE HELP
sadly i need to use Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro
ONE PROBLEM
I don't have an external hard drive to back my MBP up to!!!!

The error message you've received means that the computer is unable to free up the necessary block of hard drive space. Even though the drive is large enough to be partitioned to the size you've requested, there is at least one large file that cannot be moved out of the contiguous block you want to partition. The simplest way to fix this problem is to do as BootCamp recommends: backup the drive and then erase it and restore from the backup. When it is restored, the files will all be placed in a single group so that you'll be able to partition the drive.
Your best bet is to acquire an external drive and then keep using it for backing up with TimeMachine after you've gotten BootCamp running. The only other possibility is to buy a 3rd party defragmentention program. The problem is, (a) there's no guarantee it will work any better than Disk Utilities' defrag program and (b) any defragging program you buy will cost nearly as much (or even more) than a USB external drive, and (c) defragging a drive that isn't backed up is pretty foolhardy.

How should I format my HDD

Hello,
My computer's startup disc is full, so I need to clean house. [And I just generally need to save files]. I have a Mac OS X 10.7.5 and I also runs Parallels for my windows needs (basically Microsoft Office Suite). Also, my work computer is a pc, so I don't want any files I tranfer to my home computer corrupted.
The question is: I have a 1 TB WD My passport, that is mainly going to be used for storage, [saving all of my files and cleaning my home computer for more space], how should I format this to run on both Mac and PC.
Should I partition the drive? What is the most reliable for long term use: reformat this drive to exFAT or just keep it as NTFS and install a programs such as Tuxera or Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X? I've read that fat32 is more recognized but has its own probelms. Please help.

Currently, I am only going to connect the drive to my mac. And then dump everything from my computer onto the drive.
I'm not that computer literate. [I'm just girl whose read tons of forums and am still lost] Is there anything I need to do that is special for this mapping. Or can I just format the drive for HFS/mac os journaled on my mac and be set? Once I have it formated for the mac, if I get a pc I can just buy something for that platform to read it later down the road.
I also just didn't know if anyone had experience running parrallels/mac/pc and using exfat formated externals. I've read how great exfat is but that it is not journaled and is not recognized by everything.

Creating 2 partitions on HDD for M30-852

Does anybody knows how to partition the HDD?
The recovery disk is not offering any option for creating 2 partitions.
I understood that the BIOS is located on HDD so you have to be very carefull about this, eg not using any other WIN XP CD-ROM?
Is this true?

Thanks a lot. Hope it works.
What about BIOS located on HDD and not on the motherboard chipset?
Is this true?
This means you can not install/HDD format WINXP from a standard disk because of potential BIOS eraseure!
Regards

Partition my HDD from 2 to 1.

If I partition my HDD from 2 back to 1 HDD will I lose my files in the my 2nd HDD?
I am out of room on my start up disk and have to set my partition back. I was trying to give my first HDD more GB but it won't allow me to...
I would rather just add more GB to my Startup Disk/ 1st Partition but at this point I'll do whatever I need to do .
Thanks!

Yes, if you repartition to a single partition everything in the second partition will be lost.
You will need to first create two partition on and external disk drive to hold all of the data from each of the partitions.
Then you are going to have copy all of the data off of the drive. In order to be sure you get everything you will need to use cloning software, such as SuperDuper or CCC.
Once you do that you can boot from the clone of your system partition.
Then you reformat the internal drive to single partition and clone the partition of the system drive back to the internal drive.
Boot from the internal drive
Then copy data from second partition to internal drive.

How much should I partition for Time Machine/Backup?

Hi all,
I upgraded my PB G4 HD to a 160GB recently and have just purchased a 1TB External HD. How much should I partition in the external to be used for Time Machine backup purposes of my internal HD? Will the same size suffice, or should I allocate more?
Also, I was thinking of formatting the drive so that it's both Windows and OS X friendly, but that means formatting it to MS-DOS something (I was just reading about it in another thread), will that cause any issues for the partition for Time Machine that I created? Thanks.

Also, I was thinking of formatting the drive so that it's both Windows and OS X friendly, but that means formatting it to MS-DOS something (I was just reading about it in another thread), will that cause any issues for the partition for Time Machine that I created? Thanks.
That's not practical. If you want to use the hard drive on a Windows machin while still being useful for Time Machine you should use MacDrive.
I upgraded my PB G4 HD to a 160GB recently and have just purchased a 1TB External HD. How much should I partition in the external to be used for Time Machine backup purposes of my internal HD? Will the same size suffice, or should I allocate more?
I would make the partition at least twice the size of the internal drive. Preferably, you would want 50 GB for a Leopard install that includes just the base operating system so you can boot off the 50 GB to recover your Time Machine data if your Leopard installer disc ever becomes unusable.
Also since you have a Powerbook, your 1 TB hard drive should be Firewire. USB will not boot Powerbooks. If it is USB only, you can remove the external hard drive case and replace it with one compatible with the drive inside that case from http://www.macsales.com/ that has Firewire.

Should I partition my drive? (Is this common practice?)

Hello,
I recently purchased an iMac and I'm really liking it so far. I got used to it pretty quickly and can now do everything I could do before on my PC (which is now for sale).
I'm wondering if most Mac users partition their drives - one partition holds the operating system and applications, the other holds music, photos, videos, documents etc.
I used to do this on my PC to make sure the media files and documents don't get erased when I reinstall Windows. I asked this question on a Turkish Mac forum and the response was that most Mac users don't feel the need to partition their drives since the OS rarely needs reinstalling and in case it does, the partition doesn't have to be formatted anyway.
I would appreciate your replies on whether I should consider partitioning my drive to separate system and media files. I have never reinstalled MacOS and I'm not sure if I will need to format the drive and install afterwards if I need to reinstall one day. Also, AFAIK I won't be able to use Boot Camp if I partition the drive.
Thanks in advance!

Hello,
Thank you for the replies!
den.thed, thanks for the welcome. I see that as long as there is space in the partition there is no tangible benefit to partition the drive.
My real worry was what would happen if I needed to reinstall MacOS or format the drive, as my photos etc. would be gone too, but I think this is what Time Machine is for (it's on and all my files are backed up.). And I don't think I need to "format" the drive for reinstalling MacOS, am I correct? Or is it "recommended but not necessary" to format/erase the partition before installing MacOS?
Also, thanks for the information about the "boot camp section" of the forums, if I come across any problems I will certainly visit there.
Glorfindeal: Thank you for the information. I have not decided for certain about installing Boot Camp - I have a licenced copy of Windows 7 which is currently running on VirtualBox inside MacOS - but I wanted to know my options clearly.
So, I think it's not common for Mac users to partition their internal drives. I think I will not bother with partitioning either. I hope I will get some more replies to be certain in my impression...

Should I partition my internal HD 500G for MacBook Pro ??

Should I partitioning my internal HD 500G ?

In that case really what you want is an external HD for a Time Machine Back-up or a Bootable clone backup.
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_make_bootable_clone_your_mac
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
If the internal HD fails all partitions fail along with it.
Command R for Recovery is worth reading up on as well. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

Should I partition my 500 GB FWHD

I have a Seagate 500 gb external fwhd that I am using as my primary drive. I'm not sure what I need to do to maxamize performance. Should I partition it? If so, how many partitions? If I partition it can I raid it? Any suggestions?

Nothing wrong with a single partition, especially if you want to use "boot camp" to install windows in the future
Boot Camp, more to the point, Windows booting does not work with external FireWire drives so this is rather a moot point given we're talking about an external drive.
HOWEVER, I never use less than two partitions for the simple fact that if you need to reinstall your operating system for any reason, you can format the primary partition without losing your personal data.
I used to partition as well but since Mac OS X I've just found it to be a pain in the ringer. Especially given the largest internal drive you can get in a laptop or Mac mini is 120GB and with today's huge applications and data, it's just too easy to get caught with space in the wrong place. Given many of the Apple application require data in particular places I find it simpler just to clone and then restore data from the clone.

Should I Partition My Hardrive?

I just purchased a 160gb Western Digital hardrive. Before I install it on my macbook I wanted to know should I partition the hardrive? What are the benifits of doing that? I do have alot of music and will continue to add music. Please help!

"...What are the benifits of doing that?..."
You might get some small improvement in disc access times when reading from a smaller partition rather than the whole large disc. For example, you might boot a little bit faster from a small 10GB partition containing just OS system files than from the whole 160GB drive. (Not that I would recommend that size for the boot partition, you can get /tmp files that might require more space if you are encoding a large DVD project...) With current fast drives, I'm not sure if that's really even noticeable or not. Depends on the usage, I guess. But potentially you could put the OS system files on one partition and personal /User files on the other partition. There are several options to split up things depending on your needs.
If you need to boot multiple operating systems or versions, it may be helpful/useful to have them on different partitions. (i.e. one for MacOS, one for BootCamp/Windows). Although this might not be required, if one OS gets corrupted, you can still boot from the other one.
Regardless of your partitioning scheme for the internal drive, I tend to agree that it's best to have an external bootable drive that you clone the entire internal disc to on a regular basis as a backup. Drives are cheap compared to recovery expenses when a hard drive fails, which could destroy data on all partitions.
Message was edited by: Glen Doggett

Installing Win7 from unallocated partitions in HDD

I've have had my GS560 laptop for about 10 days and have been trying to 'personalise' it - mainly to have 'My documents'
(or its Win7 equivalent) to operate from the 'D'drive. Foolishly I did not make a recovery disk at this stage. The result now is that the 'Desktop' is also located on the 'D' drive and that's not what I want.
Since I did not get a copy of Win7 OS on discs, then I am led to believe that the Win7 is on two unallocated partitions on HDD.
Is this so ? and if so, can a 'luddite' like me reinstall Win7 and start all over again?
There is no data on the laptop yet.
Can anybody help?

Yes, I think so.
Any way to re-trace your steps, and put it back
on C? May make things worse!
Win 7 does not have the same file layout
as XP for instance. Documents folder is just a "link" to
the real one, which is at C:\Users\Username\Documents.
Not sure how to help fix it from here, as I can't imagine what
you did.

Using bootable USB flash drive to partition internal HDD

I just got my B5400 with Windows 8 x64 and UEFI. I found out that you can't lower the size of the hard drive by a lot. I want to split my HDD into 250GB and 666GB, one for the OS and one for data obviously. Therefore I tried the tool windows offered me but it said that I couldn't make a smaller drive because system relevant data are working at the moment.
So after searching the web I found out, that I have to use a bootable USB flash drive with something like Gparted running, to partition the HDD without any errors. I formatted my USB drive to FAT32 and made it a bootable stick with a program offered on the official website of gparted. I eagerly wanted to use it and plugged it in. Still booting into Windows. So I went into UEFI and checked the settings. I disabled secure boot mode and made it that legacy comes first. Then I chose 'USB HDD flash drive' in the boot manager and exited saving changes. I started my laptop and hit enter to et to the boot manager, made sure to select my USB drive and then confirmed it. It booted into Windows. I don't even understand why it is that way. It is like everything is set up correctly, but still it's trolling me.
I would appreciate any help greatly. And to make clear, I don't want to burn a CD or DVD, I want it to be working with a USB drive.

Hello,
search the web for "yummi bootmanager", it's free and easy to use.
If you got OKR (OneKeyRecovery) on your device, it will not longer work with resized parititions.
Have a nice day
LENOVO IDEAPAD Z710 59403383,i7-4700MQ,8 GB DDR3-RAM,1.920 x 1.080 Pixel,NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 740M,Hybrid (1 TB S-ATA + 8GB SSD)

Should I Partition My HDD?

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