Partition boot volume?

I just bought a Samsung F1 750 to be used as solely as a boot drive (OS + applications ≈ 31 GB). To maximize performance, should I partition it to try to keep all activity on the edge of the platter(s), or leave it as one partition?

Hatter, I'm not the only one who finds Raptors to be noisy; they have reputation for it. Besides, they are expensive and have little if any performance advantage over the newest 7.5KRPM drives. (e.g.: http://www.barefeats.com/harper9.html). I am currently using my Raptor for Photoshop scratch because it is loud, and I want to hear the disk activity!
Why the talk about 74GB and 50%? I guess you're assuming I'm using the Raptor as a boot drive.
Anyway, I'm not going to partition, based upon http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668.

Similar Messages

Mac Pro will not find boot volume

Hello,
My Mac Pro will not find it's boot volume. Each time the computer is started, the blinking folder with the question mark is the result. A working install of 10.7 does exist on the machine's primary hard drive. If I were to press the option key on boot, I can select the primary hard drive (after entering the password) and everything boots as normal. I have run TechToolPro on the volume with no detected errors, even after a volume rebuild. A Recovery HD partition is not on the boot volume. Should that matter?
I really really do not want to reinstall Mac OS X. I have hundreds of gigabytes of data in question. Any reinstall/reconfig would take days to complete.
Thanks

So you are saying that setting the default in Startup Disk doesn't work?
And you have not got or been using Carbon Copy Cloner or another to provide working bootable backup?
You should have Lion Recovery on one of your drives, do a clean install.,
I assume TTPro media scan turns up no errors.
MOVE all your data OFF the boot drive. Keep the system OS and apps on its own drive.
Clone the system. Use TimeMachine and cloning for backup.
And how is the pram battery?
Any time you zap pram you lose the default and it will look for it like you see starting with SATA0 (bay 1)

IdeaPad U430 unmountable Boot Volume

My Laptop is not working.
When I turn it on, after Lenovo logo I see a msg "Your PC ran in to a problem and need to restart...... search online for this error Unmountable Boot Volume."
Then automatically PC go to Auto Repair but after few seconds that msg dissapears.
I selected recovery option but after LEnovo logo nothing come on the screen.
I boot up with usb recovery media then also I can not see anything on the screen after logo.
What I can do
Thanks

Hi Nalinpr,
Welcome to Lenovo Community!
As per the query we understood that you are facing issue with unmountable boot volume in your Lenovo U430 laptop.
If your BIOS settings are configured to force the faster UDMA modes, this error may occur. In this situation, restart your computer and enter the BIOS and load the "fail-safe" default settings and reboot.
If neither of these issues are the cause for the Unmountable Boot Volume, then the issue most likely is caused by a damaged BOOT.INI file in the root directory of the boot drive or file system corruption.
Follow the steps below to correct these file system issues:
1) Start your computer with your windows 7 or any operating system which you have installed in the system CD-ROM,
2) When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press R to Repair the installation using the Recovery Console
3) If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the Windows installation you want to access
4) Type the administrator password when you are prompted, if no administrator password is set then just press Enter
5) At the command prompt, type CHKDSK /R and then press Enter
6) Once CHKDSK has finished checking and repairing the hard drive, type EXIT and press Enter to restart your computer
If this procedure does not work, repeat it and use the fixboot command in step 5 instead of the chkdsk /r command. FIXBOOT writes a new partition boot sector to the system partition. The fixboot command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console.
As you also mentioned that the system hangs at Lenovo logo please try to remove the hard drive if possible and try to boot to BIOs and check, also try to run the LSC diagnostics.
Hope this helps. Do post back if issue persists!
Best regards,
Ashwin.S
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R61 R&R won't start after "unmountable boot volume" error

Hello all,
New user, first post - after problem, of course.
I have an R61 Thinkpad with Windows XP on it. (SP2 or SP3, not sure). Has worked flawlessly for years, then the other day I got the dreaded "unmountable boot volume" error and it would not start.
No problem - I re-start, hit the ThinkVantage button, then hit F11 to use the R&R hidden on a separate partition of the hard drive........I get the black screen with the big progress bar, ok, then a blue screen......then nothing. Hangs up and sits there. I have repeated this about 5 times now.
No problem! - I was smart enough to make an R&R CD set a while ago! Put the primary R&R disk in the CD drive, start the machine, ThinkPad button, F12 this time to choose boot from CD.....much CD activity ensues and I once again get the black screen with the big progress bar. It takes much longer, and I get teh blue screen - BUT - then it goes one extra step to display the "ThinkVantage Rescue & Recovery 4" screen with the life preserver image.
Excellent, I thing - except it then hangs there. Just sits there. No disk activity. No keys will do anything.
I can find no threads here or on any other forum with this particular issue.
Am I fubar? Or is there something else I can do?
Thanks a bunch.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi jim, welcome to the forums,
Is the hard drive recognised in BIOS, was there an entry in the boot list against HDD0?
Regardless of it being shown in BIOS / boot list or not, the first thing I would do is to reseat the hard drive and see if that helps, maybe over time it's lost contact to the mainboard socket. If you don't know how to do this you can find out at the R61 movies site.
The next thing I would do is run a hard drive diagnosis check from a bootable cd, these can be downloaded from all HDD manufacturer's websites e.g. Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test. It may be that the drive has simply gone bad after all those years of work.
Let us know how you get on
Andy ______________________________________
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Unmountable Boot Volume on XP and screen goes blank before repair begins

The XP Windows partition was seemingly working fine until I turned on the laptop this afternoon. Took a minute or so longer to boot than usual and I was prompted when it did load to update Acrobat, which I did and it rebooted. Took longer to boot, perhaps two or three minutes and I received an Unmountable Boot Volume error. I rebooted a few more times, same result. I tried system restore to three previous dates over past ten days and was told after attempted reloading that it had failed and I should try another day. Worried about my data, I went to safe mode to back up C: drive.
The general advice from MS is to use the Windows installation CD to repair the boot sector. With the CD in, Windows will boot and show my normal desktop and files, though will on perhaps the third item to load to memory, the screen goes blank and the loading seems to continue, as I hear sounds though not sure if it is the programs or the repair.
There does seem to be an ability for it to boot, just not maintain it through full load. Any suggestions short of reinstalling windows would be welcomed. Thank you.

I was unistalling some usless programs when my laptop died & when I turned it on I had unmountable boot volume 0x000000ED (the blue screen)
If I hit repair windows it goes to a black screen with the mouse (nothing else)
Now I tried f8 & then did command prompt but after it had gone to the loading files screen it had gone back to the blue screens with unmountable boot volume 0x000000E
I DL windows 7 repair but how do I get it to install when I cant get past the blue screen?
so i decide to repair it my self and then i found this great solution what helps me

Satellite A100: Windows won't boot - Unmountable Boot Volume

My son has a Satellite A100 running Windows XP SP3. Windows doesn't get past the Windows logo screen and terminates with an +Unmoutable Boot Volume+ message.
After this has happened, the HDD password status in BIOS is +HDD password froze+. Note that the HDD does not have a user password set.
What is happening here and how is it fixed?

Well, I persevered with Recovery Console and fixed the problem with the Fixboot and Fixmbr commands. It appears that viruses had corrupted the boot sector or master boot record, making the remainder of the Windows partition unusable. Once these were repaired, all the directories and files were still intact and usable.
Interestingly, there is a hit for a similar problem on the Microsoft Windows XP help, but their solution is more complicated.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310396

Safe to Erase External Boot Volume?

Naive question, I guess: I have one partition on my LaCie external FireWire drive currently set up as a boot volume (cloned as a Sandbox with shared users and apps. with SuperDuper from Mac HD).
Is it safe to use DiskUtility to erase this partition, so I can set up the other partition as the external boot volume?
Any assistance greatly appreciated...
Jim
iMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3) LaCie 160GB Ext HD

Charles-
Thanks for this. I take your point, but in this instance I'll need to erase the boot volume and copy the stuff over from the other partition to clear space in the latter for the "new" boot volume.
Kind regards
Jim
iMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Dedicated scratch not faster than scratch on boot volume

My Mac Pro boot OS is on a 150 Gb striped raid made from outer partitions on two 1Tb drives in bays 1 and 2. There is 95 Gb free on the boot. 8 Gb RAM.
My normal scratch is on a dedicated 150 Gb striped raid made from the outer partitions of the 1Tb drives in bays 3 and 4.
I ran the Retouche artists Photoshop speed test with the scratch on the dedicated separate scratch, and on the boot volume.
The results were:
Average time of several runs with dedicated scratch was 45.5 seconds.
Average time with scratch on boot was 43.9 seconds.
Since I was expecting the dedicated scratch to be faster I was a bit surprised so I repeated the exercise on my MacBook Pro (1.83 MHz, 2 Gb RAM). Normal scratch is the boot volume which a 5400 rpm 500 Gb Samsung with 150 Gb free, no partitions. For this exercise, I connected an eSATA via an express card to provide a dedicated scratch alternative.
Average time with dedicated separate scratch was 152 seconds.
Average time with scratch on boot was also 152 seconds.
All Retouche Tests were done with 40 history states and 4 cache levels, which results in about 7Gb of scratch being used. On both machines Quickbench shows the scratch as just a few percent faster than the boot.
I repeated the Mac Pro tests with the test file located on different drives, including the boot and the scratch, but there were no significant differences.
What has happened to the standard advice about dedicated scratch for Photoshop?
Any thoughts ? (other than that I have too much time on my hands!)
Mike

Important to note the buffer on those drives are the all 32MB or are some 16MB.
A drive with a 32 MB buffer is going to record data faster.
However if you are on a MacPro (Intel) which it sounds like you are,
I can confirm that using your start up disk as opposed to a dedicated
separate scratch will not be of any speed advantage with photoshop.
At least it does not seem that way from my own test.
I also found partitioning the drive does not seem to be necessary on the intel box?
I have a test that is fairly consistent regardless as long as you have sufficient RAM 8 GB or more a Raid O scratch and an the same amount of memory allowed.
I still find with CS 4 that using bigger tiles is helpful as wel as the Forced VM Buffer plug in.
They still seem to speed things up a bit.
My test work on my dual xeon core duo that way in 16-18 seconds ona 8 core MacPro with 2GB of RAM and with out the Raid 0 and using the startup as the scratch with no Raid configured and without the plug ins it takes about 3 minutes.
The Ram and the raid are the important things the other two help.

Mac boot volume screen as default?

Is there a way to have Mavericks launch into the boot volume screen as default, without having to hold down the OPTION key? I'll normally select the highlighted default but would like to be able to simply press TAB+ENTER when wanting the second volume. Thanks

I'd make a trip to the Apple Store - your hard disk may be dying (the Recovery partition is very small) or there might be something corrupt in your system. They'll be able to evaluate it.
Clinton

How to create and use a boot volume clone?

Hello. My name is Cassiano and I'm NOT a system administrator. I'm an architect. I design and build houses, not systems. And the reason I'm telling you that is because I need your help.
The short version of my problem is this: "How do I create a boot volume clone", but I think I need to tell you the whole story.
Here at the office I work we have 18 iMacs and 1 Xserve running OS X Server 10.4.9.
Although I'm an architect I'm responsible to keep the computers up and running.
This is not because I want, but just because I'm the one here that knows a bit more about this stuff and although I'm not an expert, I know quite a lot about this stuff. I did pretty much everything here. Configured the network, firewall, installed the Xserve, etc, but of course that if something breaks we just take the computer to apple store and wait for it to be fixed
The Xserve has 3 HDs inside. 1 at bay1 which is the boot and 2 others on bay2 and bay3. The HDs on bay2 and bay3 are working as one using SoftRAID and we use this volume to store all of our data. That is the reason we chose to mirror them using softRaid. If one fails, the other has everything and we just have to get a new one.
Last week we decided to setup the Xserve to be our mail server as well, so I turned on the Mail Service and after a lot of reading I managed to configure it correctly. In fact we have our MX records pointing to a company that relays the email to our Xserve, so it is not really accessible from the outside world.
But this Mail thing made me loose my sleep. The reason is: before that our Xserve was used only as a file repository. So if it would break or something all we have to do is take the HD out of it, send it to apple store and plug the HD on another computer. All of our files would be safe and everybody would be happy. Of course this is an over simplificated situation, but that is pretty much how it would go.
But now everything is different. Every person here has the email account configured to the Xserve, which means that if it breaks or something goes wrong, no one will be able to send or receive emails. The new messages will not be lost, because the company that relays the emails to us will keep them there, but things will get chaotic here.
When reading this document here: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSXServer/Conceptual/XServerProgrammingGuide/Articles/abpinstall.html I saw this section that said: "Cloning the Boot Volume"
Where it says: The use of the boot volume clones is entirely to ensure the highest availability possible for your system volume, not your client data.
So, finally, my question is. How do I implement this "boot volume clone"? If I buy a new HD and place it on bay4 will I be able to do that? How?
After doing it if something goes wrong how do I use the "clone volume"?
Thank you for your patience and any help is greatly appreciated.
Best regards,
Cassiano Forestier
Specs of the Xserve
Machine Name: Xserve
Machine Model: Xserve1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: XS11.0080.B00
SMC Version: 1.11f5
LOM Revision: 1.2.1

Yes, your server is becoming central to your business universe. Mine, too.
Boot from DVD, and use Disk Utility to create the clone. Another way of looking at this is as a photocopy or snapshot or block-by-block copy of the state of the disk at the moment the clone is made. You can then either boot from the clone (if needed; assuming the clone is on a bootable device), or boot from the DVD and copy the clone back to the original (or replacement) disk; this restores the disk state to that of the time the clone was made.
Yes, you'll need a disk to clone to. Probably more than one, since you'll probably want to set up a rotating pool, should you need to go back to an older snapshot.
You're undoubtedly also approaching a requirement for either an add-on storage array or storage shelf via one of your PCI-X or PCIe I/O expansion slots, or adding a FC SAN into an open PCI-X or PCIe slot and adding the external FC SAN Xserve RAID configuration that Apple sells.
The external storage can be "just a bunch of disks (JBOD)" in an external disk shelf, or an external RAID via add-in eSATA or add-in SCSI controller, or via Fibre Channel for the Xserve RAID configuration for the FC SAN configuration, or (for lower speeds) FireWire or (lowest) USB.
If your data is worth it and you want to deal centrally with Apple and your budget allows it (qv: "if your data is worth it"), Xserve RAID is the way to go. The external storage shelf is certainly a feasible approach -- but you'll likely end up dealing with a third-party for the configuration, set-up and third-party storage gear.
If you're looking for things that can go wrong here, recognize that RAID only protects against drive failure. RAID does not protect against accidental nor malicious file deletions, fat-fingered operator commands, nor against application or system-level disk corruptions. RAID (only) seeks to protect against disk errors. This gets into tapes, or near-line disk copies, or other such media. External tape, or other such archival media, and particularly media that can be sent off-site on a regular basis.
It's good that you're thinking about this stuff, too.

Selecting Alternate Boot Volume on Startup

I want to select an alternate boot volume on startup.
When I hold down the Options key while booting, I get the following text message on the screen:
"ALL -MEM request too big!
Apple PowerMac3,3 4.2.8f1 BootROM built on 10/11/01 at 14:12:47"
--- copyright and welcome to Open Firmware ---
"To continue booting, type "mac-boot" and press return.
To shut down, type "shut-down" and press return."
I never get an oppertunity to select the boot volume. If I enter "mac-boot" it starts up normally in the default startup volume.
This seems to be an error message, but I have no idea what caused it. Does anybody know?
1.5 GHz G4 tower Mac Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I have just sent an email to tech support at FastMac to see if they have ever heard of this problem before, but of course, I have not yet received an answer.
Unfortunately, after keeping the original CPU around for about a year, I recently decided that there was no way I would ever want to go back to it, so I tossed it out in an effort to get some extra storage space. Therefore, going back to the original is no longer possible. And, the change to the current Apple firmware was a requirement for using the CPU upgrade.
I do have an external FireWire drive for backup --- the one that I had hoped to boot to by using Option key, so I could probably set up the test that you suggested.
If I really did have a default startup disk failure, I could probably boot from a CD, and then use the System Preferences Startup Disk dialog to select the backup disk, and then restart to run from it. I'll conduct a test to be sure that this will work. If so, I can probably live with the problem.
Thanks much for your help in understanding it.

UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME

I have a Hp pavilion g6 with windows 7 & os factory stored.
from last night it not working i have uninstalled google chrome and restart the system as it was stop working.
now when i tried to boot my system it shows an error UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME error 0x000000BD
i have used the HP Advance System Diagonstics :- Run in Test its failed its ID is GGE04F-69J751-MFPX1G-60Q503
PLEASE HELP...HOW CAN I CORRECT THIS ...IS THERE ANY WAY OR SOFTWARE WHICH CAN CORRECT UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME...
THANKS

Hi
The test failure indicates the part has failed you need to replace the part only then the unit will work fine.
Let us know how it goes!
"I work for HP."
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****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****
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Manjunath

Unmountable Boot Volume, need help. trying to fix the problem via lan if posible?

any information i could recieve from Geek Squad would be appreciated. i have my computer purchased from best buy that i'm happy with, but my cousin's computer died with the unmountable boot volume error. i want to use my computer to fix his, or if possible fix his directly from the internet. any assisstance in this would be nice. thank you.

Hi AngeNeedsHelp!
I hope your cousin got the computer fixed. However,
this Unmountable Boot Volume error is not always fixed by simply reinstalling
the Operating System (OS). In fact, you may need to back up the drive using an
external USB Hard Drive Enclosure. Even
then the drive may not be readable if there are physical errors/damage, and
this is nearly impossible to do over the internet since they likely cannot boot
the computer? If there is important
information on the drive I would recommend taking it to a professional such as Geek
Squad® before attempting anything. Best
of luck!
Matthew|Community Advocate | Best Buy® Corporate
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HP DV7-7338ea Windows 8 Unmountable Boot Volume BSOD

The product concerned here is a HP DV7-7338ea with operating system Windows 8. I have been using it for just under 11 months and bought it with Windows 8 installed.
Problem descrpition:
I recently installed a new sound update for my laptop. I was promted to restart and once that happened, I recieved a BSOD with the error message: unmountable boot volume. When that happens, it restarts and goes into "preparing automatic repair" mood after which the screen goes black and the windows cursor shows and then that's it. I am left with no options or anything. I have tried pressing F11 on start up and then it says "please wait" and goes back to the same black screen. I have left it on for over an hour but it just remains there until my computr switches itself off for overheating (this has never happened before). I haven't recently installed any thing new apart from the HP update. Please help as I do not know what to do now. I have not backed up my files yet and they are too important for me to loose. Thanks
Update:
I ran a system check and it said the Hard Drive Short DST failed. Does this mean I have lost my files? The laptop had been operating very well until this latest HP update which may have corrupted my hard drive.
This question was solved.
View Solution.

A harddisk short DST fail means that either your harddrive is failing or have failed alltogether.
If you're still under warranty, contact your retailer or local HP store and get a replacement harddrive that you can switch yourself or have it sent in for service.
If you have an IT knowledgeable friend you might be able to salvage some of the data on the computer.
You can try removing the harddrive frmo your computer and connecting it to his.
Please let me know how it works.
AlHaste - HP Notebook Technician
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HP Pavillion DV9700 - Vista 64bit - "Unmountable Boot Volume"

Hi there,
The problem I have with my DV9700 is it will no longer boot. It was working great, but the other night, I had to do a hard re-boot, and then it failed to start with a blue screen with "Unmountable Boot Volume". This is with the original Vista 64 bit Home Premium version. I chose the option "Self Recovery" but it just finishes up sitting there continually scanning for something?
The hard drive is the original factory installed setup. My question is, how do I get my machine back up and running please? I have a Windows Vista Backup that would run each week to an external 2TB USB drive, but I am guessing that this will not recreate an exact image of my computers state? I would also need to have Vista running to use the backup? Some years ago (2010), I created a complete backup to about 20 DVD's, but I am not sure how to use them as they are for recovery I think?
It looks like I need to buy a new hard drive but how do I go about using the backups I have to install to a new drive? Also, what is the largest hard drive I can use? Should I buy a SSD drive? I wanted at least a 1TB primary drive. Fry's Electronics has a Hybrid drive where the disk cache is solid state making it more affordable. I was thiking of getting one of these?
I would like to use my old original drive as a secondary drive if it is even possible to access its files. I have ordered a SATA caddy so I can mount it into the unused drive bay of the DV9700.
Anyway, I would truly appreciate any help please?
Thanks a million!!!

Hi mtrappett,
Thank you for your inquiry, I will do my best to assist you.
I grasp that after restarting the notebook you got the error" unmountable Boot Volume" and a blue screen. Here is a link to a document on Troubleshooting Error Messages on a Blue Screen that may Occur During Startup or Boot. For your convenience I am also providing the HP Pavilion dv9500, dv9600, and dv9700 Entertainment PCs Maintenance and Service Guide. Please note page 23, item 23 for a list of recommended hard drives. I hope you find these useful.
Sparkles1
I work on behalf of HP
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Partition boot volume?

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