Own partition for osx - difference in performance?

hi folks.
just finished to import my files from a powermac G5 (10.5.11) to my new macbookpro i5 2,3 GHz 4 MB RAM via migration assistant. on my G5 i had only one main partition where i had my osx, my pictures, mp3 and so on. total amount about 230 GB. everything looks pretty fine on my mbp.
now. i have one big 230 GB partiton on my mbp.
will it make any difference performance wise if giving my osx (and the main used programms?!?!!) 10.6.7 on my mbp i5 it´s own partition and create a second partition for pictures, music files and so on...?
a bit off topic, but
is it actually a good choice to import from a G5 10.5.11 ppc system to a mbp i5 10.6.7 intel system via migration assistant or would it preferable to do everything handish and start from the scratch??
thanks for your help in advance...

Hi again:
after that migration assistant procedure the account/user name of my old powermac G5 appears in my new mbp. so my new mbp is now called powermac G5. am i able to change this? the only way i see to do, is to create a new account and delete the "powermac G5" account...
This is the way to change the "short name" :
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8756.html
I cannot remember if I have done it, but I believe you can change the "long name" by going to system preferences>accounts and typing the new long name in the box.
Barry
Message was edited by: Barry Hemphill (to add the link)

Similar Messages

Partitions for OSX and Win-XP, Photo Library and Scratchdisk

Hello everybody,
I have just received my 160GB hard disk for my MacBook, before installing it I have a question:
I want to run OSX, and windows XPPro
Within OSX I will be using Aperture
Within the XPPro environment I will be using CS2
Question 1.
for the CS2 envrinment I want to partition a schratchdisk of appr. 20GB. Will I be able to use this schratchdisk from both OSX and XP depending on when I use them (I am also able to run CS2 from OSX)
Question 2.
I want to access a single photo library from both OSX and XPPro, do I make an extra partition for this as well ?
I would be most pleased for any comments or alternative setups on partitioning.
I will be using Bootcamp.
Thanks in advance

I would only partition for scratch disk and running XP. For iPhoto it is best if the pictures are on the same partition as the operating system as it makes it easier to backup your data as my FAQ explains
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
Before partitioning, be sure to backup your data at least twice, as partitioning may cause the drive to fail if there is anything wrong with it at the low level. Apple´s Boot Camp utility theoretically can partition without wiping the drive, and other methods of running XP on your MacBook may make their own virtual partition to run XP on which you can copy over to a formatted partition with the installer´s Disk Utility if you so desire, or you can keep on your main partition. This FAQ of mine explains what those methods of running XP on Intel Macs are
http://www.macmaps.com/macosxnative.html#INTEL
You may find though you don´t have to run XP at all. There are many more compatible Mac compatible titles than you might think which you can find in the above FAQ.

Another hard drive swap question - re: 8GB partition for OSX in iMac 266

I have a Tangerine iMac 266 that I am setting up for a neighbor's son. The original 6GB hard drive was toast, so I swapped in an old 10GB drive that had previously been removed from an iMacDV 400. The 10GB "new" drive had OSX 10.3.1 and OS 9.1 on a single partition. I am aware that these early iMacs need OSX in a first partition of less than 8GB, so I expected that I would need to partition the "new" drive. However, while I was loading an install CD after powering up, the iMac booted fine into OSX, despite it NOT being located in a first partition of less than 8GB (and has continued operating well - booting multiple times in OS X and 9, surfing the net, etc...the only weirdness is a refusal of Word X to run).
I thought this was impossible, and in researching this I found that the Apple support site says that, for this computer, "Mac OS X must be installed on a volume that is contained entirely within the first 8 GB of its ATA hard disk." see http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106235
My Questions:
Is the 8GB limit only related to iINSTALLING OSX on these machines (and not RUNNING OSX)?
Will the machine run into problems later if a portion of the OS (i.e., during an update) gets installed outside of the first 8GB of the disk?
One of the log files says that the driver is out of date for the RageproC, and Classic applications that require more than 4MB of VRAM say that I don't have enough VRAM to run, yet the iMac has 6MB of VRAM (2 on MB and 4 in slot as listing by the system profiler) - do I need to (or should I) reinstall the system software (I already tried loading the latest ATI drivers, but it did't help)?
P.S. - to add more data points on the subject of RAM upgrades in these iMacs, my iMac 266 would not accept a 256MB PC-100 SO-DIMM that worked fine in an iBook and in the upper slot of a Rev. A iMac 233. Well, it accepted it, but only recognized the first 128MB.

I believe Duane is correct. Even with Mac OS 9, you can run fine as long as all OS components used during startup are within the first 8GB of space. However, (even with Mac OS 9) as soon as something used during startup ends up beyond that limit, you will get open firmware or a gray screen at startup. The Mac OS X does not allow the installation target to exceed the limit as a preventative measure, not because it won't work at all.
The best "non-technical" explanation I have heard as to why, is this... The IDE hardware (and its driver) can only "see" the first 8GB of space during the initial start up process before the OS is loaded. Once start up completes, control is handed to the OS, which can see the entire drive. Therefore, apps have no problem running from beyond the limit. Only components needed before the hand-off is constrained to the 8GB limit.
FYI - On my iMac and 120GB drive, 7.78 GB (as shown in a Finder window) is the precise point where the Mac OS X Installer allows the volume to be the install target. "Precise" to with a few hundred MB's.

How can I make triple partition for OSX, Windows 8, and for saving Data

I read many articles on googles yet I still can't figure out how to.
The point that I get is when you're installing Windows using bootcamp, before it actually try to install windows, i have to go back to OSX, choose disk utility and create the 3rd partition.
But after I continue the installation, the windows boot camp partition can't be formatted and worse I can't use the drive to install windows 8.
Other I read about deleting the recovery partition in order to make it works?
I don't know .... I tried and I failed many times *sigh*

1. Boot Camp doesn't support Windows 8, so wait until Apple releases new Boot Camp drivers.
2. Boot Camp requires only one volume on the hard drive, so you can't create a volume to store data

How to partition 120 GB hard drive MacBook for OSX+Win (BC+Par.)? Fat/NFTS?

After many happy years with my PowerBook G4 12" (I will miss it definitely, as compact and cute as it is ;-() I'll now switch to a new MacBook 2.16 GHz with 2 GB RAM and a 120 GB hard drive.
I will have to use Windows (not yet sure if XP or Vista), as I need special software not available for the Mac, so my choice will be Parallels, so that I can work in Os X and at the same time use those Windows Apps I need.
However, I also want to be able to boot Windows-only with BootCamp, so I already learned I have to install Windows on its own partition.
So my question is:
How shall I partition the hard drive?
* If I have one big partition for OSX + documents and the rest (maybe 30 or 40 GB) for Windows, I won't be able to access my documents from Windows, right?
* So I would have to keep the data I want to access from within Windows on a PC formatted partition (if I don't want to pay for a software like MacDrive)?
Or can Windows running in Parallels read from a HFS partition?
* Does this mean: if I want to access (read and write) my documents in OSX and Windows, I have to keep them on a Fat32 partition?
-> This could be the partition where Windows is installed (but I'm not sure if I feel comfortable with that solution) of I would need a 3rd partition (Fat32) for data which would cause quite a big "segmentation" of the hard drive.
How did you resolve this problem?
Unfortunately, I don't see that I could really "separate" data I only have to access from Windows and those I only want to access in OS X, so in my opinion for me they all have to be in one place.
Looking forward to your comments,
Martin
MacBook 2.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB HD (white) Mac OS X (10.4.9)

You should probably ask all your Boot Camp quesitons in the Boot Camp discussions:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1165
And your Parallels questions in the Parallels forums:
http://forums.parallels.com

Hi, Iost a partition for Windows. This is how it happened:

First, I installed windows 7 using bootcamp. I put in 150Gb for windows and 350 for osx. Everything went fine. A few weeks later, i decided to get windows 8. I got the files into a flash drive using bootcamp and when i had to put it in a partition, i chose the windows 7 partition and formatted it. When i clicked ok, it told me windows cannot be installed in this disk. I went back to osx and decided to delete that partition and put in a new one using bootcamp. When i clicked restore, it said the disk cannot be restored. I researched a little bit and decided to format the partition with disk utility. After i did that, the partition for osx was still at 350gb and the win7 partition was gone. I booted to my win8 installation flash drive and at the point where i had to chose a partition, the win7 partition read 'unallocated'. I hope u guys can help me with this. Thanks

Hi all,
First, sorry to interfer, but I have a similar problem.
@Christopher Murphy:
I saw your answer on this thread (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4144252) and was trying to find a way to contact you, because I have a similar problem.
I used Paragon Camptune X to expand my bootcamp partition. But now it is not bootable anymore...
I am on a Macbook Pro 13 mid 2012 with Mavericks, I installed gdisk and ran those commands :
sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0 :
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=750156374016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1465149168
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1465149167
       start        size index contents
           0           1         MBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640 1269905920      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1270315560      263640
1270579200   194568192      3 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
1465147392        1743
1465149135          32         Sec GPT table
1465149167           1         Sec GPT header
sudo fdisk /dev/disk0 :
Disk: /dev/disk0          geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE    0   0   2 -   25   6 46 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
2: AF   25   6 47 - 1023 61 37 [    409640 - 1269905920] HFS+
3: 07 1023   7   8 - 1023 12 12 [1270579200 - 194568192] HPFS/QNX/AUX
4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
diskutil list :
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            650.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                99.6 GB    disk0s3
I hope I don't ask too much, but if you would help me it will be very useful.
Thanks in advance,
CH

Can i set up my drive as encrypted with different partitions for different versions of osx?

i have some questions about setting up an encrypted drive with different versions of osx installed on separate partitions, and how this choice effects time-machine and the emergency recovery disk.
I have a new/refurbished macbook pro with a SSD. it already has mavericks installed. i want to fully wipe the drive and reinstall everything my self because I'm odd like that.
first wiping the current drive
Does the recovery partition get wiped if i use disk-utility to reformat the drive. Even thought the recovery partition does not show up as a partition, when i look at it with disk-utility? i would like to know I've wiped all partitions so that no little bugger gets left with out me knowing. Disk-utility does not show the recovery partition and this makes me concerned it might not wipe it.
Does mavericks automatically make a recovery partition during the installation process? Or do i need to make a new 1gb partition for the recovery disk?
Can i have two different partitions on my drive with separate installations of OSX on it? (one for work that i don't update the system os till my current project is done, and the other for experimenting with new software.)
will time machine back up both of the partitions or just one?
can i accomplish all this from a bootable usb drive or do i need to do this in target disk mode?
do i need to use a more capable utility than the stock apple "disk-utility"?
when reformatting the drive should i format it as encrypted or let file vault do this after i install mavericks?
how much does encryption slow down performance for things like photo/video/music production?

Do a backup before you do anything.
Does the recovery partition get wiped if i use disk-utility to reformat the drive
It shouldn't
Does mavericks automatically make a recovery partition during the installation process?
Yes.
Can i have two different partitions on my drive with separate installations of OSX on it?
Yes.
will time machine back up both of the partitions or just one?
It will as long as one partition is not excluded in the Time Machine/Options.
do i need to use a more capable utility than the stock apple "disk-utility"?
No, just boot into the Recovery Volume (command - R on a restart).
file vault do this after i install mavericks?
I would let File Vault do that.

I want to partition an external device for OSX and Windows. Opened Disk utility but Partition is not an option

I want to partition an external drive for OSX and PC. Went to Disk Utility but Partition is not an available option.

Why not? does the partition tab not exist?

I am trying to purchase Creative Suite CS6 Design Standard. I own a Max OSX. I live in Germany. When I try to order for Germany, it gives me only an option for Windows, not Mac. How can I order?

I am trying to purchase Creative Suite CS6 Design Standard. I own a Max OSX. I live in Germany. When I try to order for Germany, it gives me only an option for Windows, not Mac. How can I order?

In Germany no telephone number nor web chat is available. Searching on the Adobe site tells me that this forum is the only avialable means to ask consumer questions. I am giving up and ordering from elsewhere.

Questions re: Partitioning HD for OSX & OS9x

I have a Beige G3, MT, 300mhz, rev.1, with an 4GB Ultra SCSI Quantum Viking WSE that is basically a goner now. I bought a Seagate Ultra ATA/100 7200 RPM 160GB hard drive to replace it, and need a little advice about how to partition it. (bought the 160GB before I learned that, as an internal drive, my Beige will only see about 127GB - oh well, live and learn....).
For a while I need to continue to use OS9 for quite a few Apps & external devices. Also, I do a lot of graphic & web work so there's a lot of revising of files going on on my machine.
After browsing through the posts here, I still have some questions:
Q. Since my computer will only be seeing 127GBs out of 160, what happens to the rest of the "unseen" 33GBs? If, for instance, I format this drive today and then get a controller card or move it to a FW case later, what happens with the previously "unseen" GBs? Do they just get added on to the last partition? Will I have to reformat the whole drive again?
Q. Is it a good or bad idea to put the OS9 Classic system folder on a separate partition from OSX? What would be the pros or cons with this? (I plan on mostly using the regular OS9x on a separate partition for a lot of my Apps and such to avoid the conflicts with Classic that I've heard about, and until I get all my software & devices upgraded to OSX).
Q. I read some posts where some people don't think partitioning is a good idea, but since it looks like I'm going to have to do it anyway in order to install Tiger, I figured I would probably go ahead and partition the rest of the drive The list below might look like over-kill, but from what I've read, this type of set-up seems to minimize and confine disk fragmentation & corruption which seems to me to be a plus - any cons to this?
Q. Also, does this order of partitioning seem ok? (I came up with this configuration after reading some info at these sites: http://www.sciencequest.org/support/computers/mac/topics/partitioning.html and http://www.themacintoshguy.com/mactips/archive/tip11.shtml
Partition 1: 7.95GB - OSX (Tiger)
Partition 2: 10GB - Scratch Disk (for Photoshop scratch disk, scanner captures, burning CDs, downloading, browser cache, etc. - in essence, no files reside here).
Partition 3: 5GB - OS9x (original)
Partition 4: 5GB - OS9x Classic
Partition 5: 10GB - Temp/Work area (Unlike the "Scratch" partition, files/projects may reside until completed)
Partition 6: 50GB - Docs & Resource Library
Partition 7: 5GB - Email
Partition 8: 20GB - Apps
Partition 9: 7.95GB - Emergency OSX system, & OSX repair utilities (Disk Warrior, & Drive Genius).
Partition 10: 5GB - Emergency OS9 system, & OS9 repair utilities, (DW & Norton).
All recommendations, opinions and tips are greatly appreciated.
~Kathleen
Beige G3, MT, 300mhz, rev.1, model #M6572LLA,Ultra SCSI Quantum Viking 4.5 WSE Mac OS 9.2.x RAM=640MB, Apple53C875 SCSI Card, USB card, FW card, ATI mach64_3DU Display card

Kathleen:
The tech forum in the ExPostFacto site (http://forum.macsales.com/) has a number of extensive discussions about partitioning and recommendations. I suggest you look there for additional discussion by people with far more expertise than me.
I do remember a couple of points from my reading in that forum.
1) If things go awry in an attempted EPF installation, under certain conditions it can alter or cause problems in the System 9 being used at the time. Having a separate partition for a duolicate System 9 for EPF to use would protect your regular working system in the event of such a mishap.
I believe one recommendation indicated you could just drag and drop your existing System 9 from your internal drive onto a new partition, even on an external drive, in order to create such a separate System for EPF use.
2) You may wish to have a separate System 9 partition for use as a helper disk for EPF to use.
3) You may wish to have a separate System 9 partition to use for System X to designate as a classic environment.
4) You may wish other partitions for applications, data/documents, etc.
As I recall, most of the detailed recommendations (I believe I saw at least 3 different such messages during my travels at that site) included a first partition of >8GB for System X, two other separate partitions (several GB) for System 9, one for desigantion as classic mode under System X, the other for use by EPF in installing and also (if necessary) as a helper disk.
If I have recapitulated this information incorrectly I trust others will set you straight. In any event, I recommend you take a close look at the EPF tech forums - a search for partitioning should yield rapid results of very helpful information. Hope this helps - Good luck!
G3 Beige mini tower Mac OS 9.1.x Sonnet G4 800MHz upgrade; 640 MB RAM

Partitioning for Performance

Hi All,
Currently we have a STAR Schema with ORDER_FACT and ORDER_HEADER_DIM , ORDER_LINE_DIM, STORE_DIM, TIME_DIM and PRODUCT_DIM.
We are planning to partition ORDER_FACT for performance improvements both reporting and loading. We have around 100 million rows in ORDER_FACT. Daily we inserted around 1 million rows and update around 2 million rows.
We are trying to come up with some good stratgies and we have few questions..
1) Our ORDER_FACT does not have any date columns except INSERT_DATE and LAST_UPDATE_DATE , more of timestamp columns. ORDER_DATE would be the appropriate one but we do not store it in fact. We have ORDER_DATE_KEY which is surrogatekey of TIME_DIM.
Can a range partition (monthly) still be performed ? ( I quess we need a ORDER_DATE column in our fact )
If somebody has handled this situation in some other way , any guidance will be helpful.
2) Question below is assuming - we have a partitioned ORDER_FACT on ORDER_DATE.
Currently we are doing a merge (Update/Insert) on ORDER_FACT. We have a incremental load (only newly inserted or updated rows from source) are processed.
Update/Insert is slow.
Can we use PEL (Partition Enabled loading ) and avoid merge (Update/Insert) ?
PEL is fine for new rows , since it replaces empty partition in target with a loaded partition from source . How to handle updation and insertion of rows in partition which has existing rows?
Any help on these would be helpful.
Thanks,
Samurai.

Speaking from our experience, at some point you need to build your fact rows so you need an insert/update prior to PEL anyway, and you would need your partitions closely matched to your refresh frequency for it really to be effective.
So what we have done is focus on the "E" part of ETL.
Our remote source database is mirrored on our side via Streams. This mirrors into a local copy that we can run various reports/ processes/ queries against without impacting production.
We also perform a custom aply that populates a second local copy of the tables, but these ones are partitioned daily and are used for our ETL. So, at the end of the day we have a partitioned set of data that contains only the current status of rows that have changed over the day. Now, of course, this is problematic for ETL because you need to have all of the associated information with those changes in order to do your ETL.
(simple example, data in a customer's address record changes. Your ETL query undoubtably joins the customer record and the address record to build your customer dimension row. But Streams only propogates the changed address record so you wouldn't have the customer record in that daily partition for your join)
So, we have a process that runs after the Streams aply is finished that walks the dependency tree and populates all dependant data into the current daily partition, so - at the end of our prep process we have a partitioned set of data that holds a complete set of source tables where anything has changed across any dependencies.
This gives us a small, efficient daily data set to run our ETL queries against.
The final piece of the puzzle is that we access this segment via synonyms, and the synonyms are pointed at this day's partition. We have a control structure that manages the list of partitions and repoints the synonyms prior to running the ETL. The partition loading and the ETL synonym pointing are completely decoupled so, for example, if we ever needed to suspend our ETL to get a code fix in place we can let the partition loading move ahead for a day or two and then play catchup loading the partitions in sequence and be confident that we have each end-of-day picture there to use.
By running our ETL against only the changed data, we acheive huge efficiencies in query performance. And by managing the ETL partitions, we don't incur the space costs of a second full copy of the source as we prune out the partitions once we are satisfied with the load at the end of a month (with full backups of course in case there is ever a huge problem to go back and correct).
Now for facts, of course, we expect these to be insert only. Facts shouldn't change. For dimensions we use set based fail over to row based (target only), with a couple specified to be Row Based Target Only as they are simply too large to ever complete in Set Based Mode.
Yes, this is a bit of a convoluted process - exacerbated by our need to have a full local copy for some reporting needs and the partitioned change copy for the datamart ETL, but at the end of the day it all works and works well with properly designed control mechanisms.
Cheers,
Mike

I am setting up a time machine backup to a external Hard drive. I want to backup by Mac book Pro running OSX 10.8.5. I would like to Partition the disk and use one partition for Time machine backups and the other for my Lightroom backups. How to do this?

I want to create a two partition disk. One partition for time machine, the other for Lightroom backup. Currently Time Machine is using the entire drive and it is doing the intial encryption and is about 29% complete after two days. I've decided that I want to turn encryption off and partition the disk. So I do I start over?

With the external drive attached, open Finder>Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility. Select the external drive from the list in the left side panel of the DU window. In the main window panel, click Partition in the buttons top center of that panel.
Select the number of partitions you want and adjust their sizes.
For the first partition, click to highlight the partition, then select the format, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then the partition table as GUID [both of those are the defaults]. Click Apply and it will ask to confirm and erase and format that partion...oh, give the partition a name, like Backup.
Then repeat those steps for the second partition..and remember to name it...something like Lightroom.
Close Disk Utilitty and you are ready to send TM to the one partition, and do your backup of Lightroom to the second partition.

Can't Mount Windows Partition in OSX After Upgrading to 10.5 and BC 2.0

I just installed Leopard today, using the upgrade option (as opposed to a clean install). I was happy to see that I could boot into Windows still, and installed all of the Boot Camp 2.0 drivers while booted into Vista. However, I can no longer mount my Windows partition in OSX. While using Tiger, I did use MacFuse and ntfs-3g to get read-write support, but in Leopard, I can't even read. When I try to mount the Windows volume in Disk Utility, I get an error stating that it cannot be mounted. I also do not have the option to perform "First Aid" or "Repair" on the volume.
I realize that the latest version of ntfs-3g isn't proven to work with Leopard, but I would at least like read access in OSX. Is it possible that some settings were left over from my Tiger configuration that would not allow Leopard to mount the partition? Any ideas?
Thank you.

Ok. I'm in the club with the same problem...
Strange things:
* For the first days after Leopard's install, my BootCamp disk0s3 partition (I'll name it "BillGates") was mounted correctly. Then, after a few days (but BEFORE upgrading to 10.5.1), it disappeared.
* If I launch DiskUtility "BillGates" is shown, but (in the right device navigation bar) it's named "-n BillGates". If I click the Erase menu, it's named "-nBillGates" (without the space between "-n" and "BillGates"). If I launch SystemProfiler it's named "-n BillGates", but the mount point is "/Volumes/billgates". Can't understand where this "-n" thing is coming from!
* If I try to mount "-n BillGates" from DiskUtility it doesn't work and the log says "Mount of -n BillGates failed".
* In the FSTAB there were no instructions: it was empty.
Now, I tried the MacFUSE-solution: no results (meaning BillGates was not mounted on startup).
I tried the modify-the-FSTAB-solution: no results (with "BillGates", "-n BillGates" nor "-nBillGates".
I tried the chkdsk-solution: all tests were ok, but nothing happened.
The only trick that worked was mounting the partition with Terminal's commands (thanks rtracy!!). It made appear "BillGates" on the desktop (without the "-n thing", that is still present in DiskUtility).
Problem is at the first reboot, the Boot Camp partition disappears again. Any ideas for a permanent fix?!
Giangiacomo.
ADDENDUM: I've tried to move a file from desktop to an unlocked folder in BillGates and System did not copy them. "The item could not be moved because "BillGates" cannot be modified" !!!!!!!!
Message was edited by: Giangiacomo Castelfranchi1

Partition Map Schemes: HFS+ and FAT32 partitions with OSX and Windows

OK so I know this question has been practically beaten to death, but I keep finding conflicting information. I am using a 2011 MacBook Pro, on which I will set up Windows through Boot Camp. I recently purchased a 750 GB WD external hard drive to use with time machine for a backup on my Mac. However, I also need to be able to use part of this for Windows files. SO.. I intend to use the HFS+ partition for the the Mac (500GB) and create a FAT 32 partition (250GB) to use for backing up windows files (using it for solely computer modeling and need to be able to transfer/share files with Mac users who use Parallels as well as copying to PC desktops). My question is what to use as the partition map scheme. I have heard that when using these two partition types, a Master Boot Record is needed (so Windows can recognize the FAT32 partition) and also that a GUID partition map is required for use with time machine, meaning windows would no longer be able to read the FAT32 partition. Is there a way to reconcile this? Either using Time Machine with HFS+ partition that is set to MBR or uisng FAT32 on Windows with a GUID partition map? Also if I were to use Parallels (with a GUID setup) instead of Boot Camp, could that be the way to save the windows files to the FAT32 Partition and avoid problems with Time Machine not working with MBR? Thanks for any expertise, as I have heard that both setups that I have mentioned both will work and both will not work. Any experience with a similar situation?

Wow. Thanks for the extremely quick responses. Just for a few points of clarification.. I'm a complete newb at backing up strategies.
Steve, you would recommend to not backup files from my Mac OSX and files from Windows (also on my Mac) on the same drive, correct?
I appreciate the strategy of using it only as a backup, that makes quite a bit of sense. However, if I want to only backup my OSX files, and also store (solely as backup copies) say, a number of computer models (Rhino, Revit, etc.) that were created in Windows programs (not needing to store the entire Windows disk), would it not make sense to store these on the same drive in a different partition, creating the need for two different partition formats? And if I were to do this, maybe I should use NTFS instead of FAT32 (and reformat to GUID since that seems to be a standard for Apple and Windows 7 recognizes it..?) to keep them completely separate since the computer model files cannot be opened unless running the Windows programs.
How do you use your drive with HFS+ and NTFS if not for backups? I will not need to access the HFS+ backup files in Windows, nor need to access files from an NTFS partition in OSX, so that seems to simplify things in that, at least at the moment, I will not need any Paragon software.
Currently my drive is partitioned as HFS+ and FAT32 as MBR, with the HFS+ partition set up with Time Machine. It appears to be successful, I see my files in Mac HD -> "users" and all my docs, desktop items, etc. are listed. Seems that there is in fact no limit on TM's use of MBR maps, or else it is way above 160GB.
Third, are you using CarbonCopyClone in place of Time Machine or in addition to it? If in addition would it create the bit-wise clone on the same HFS+ partition as TM is backing up to? Or a separate drive? I'd like to only have one external that I am backing up to for simplicity's sake. I've never used TM before, so this is all new to me. Also, I suppose I have been missing the distinction between storing copies of files, and making a complete backup of a disk image... just now realizing the difference. Thanks so much.

Yosemite damages its own partition on shutdown

Hi I'm having this issue since I upgraded to Yosemite where almost every time I shutdown my laptop (90% of times) I get the OS partition screwed, so in the next boot the Yosemite partition doesn´t show and the Recovery will launch. Disk Utility successfully recovers the partition (volume header need repair) and the system will load Yosemite OK
The setup is the following:
MacBook Pro 7,1 with 8GBs RAM and Samsung EVO 840 250GB installed in original bay
So far I tried: reinstalling Yosemite from Internet recovery (3 times), enabling Trim and disabling kext signing policy, not enabling Trim, resetting PRAM and SMC lots of times, installing Windows 7 (bootcamp)
I'm sure this is Yosemite related because:
I can work with Yosemite for hours, even days with no partition issues at all (except for the killer-shutdown)
I can use Windows 7 (restarts, shutdowns) with no partition issues at all
I was using Mavericks with no issues at all

As Malcolm says, don't partition. You have a relatively small drive and partitioning will cramp OSX which needs a lot of free disk space to run optimally. The only reason I can see to put OSX on its own partition is if you want to have multiple copies on a computer. The other reason to partition is for convenience in making backups but that's going beyond your immediate question.

Own partition for osx - difference in performance?

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