Should i partition my disk?

hi!
i have a 320 Gb @ 5400rpm hard disk on my macbook, running mac OSX 10.5 and i would like to know the advantages of partitioning my disk. does my computer go faster if i make an partition for the system and application, and another partition to the rest (music, photos)?
another question; is it usefull to defrag the disk? i bumped into a 3-party software to defrag - idefrag - should i use it or it is not necessary?
cheers!

ilucena wrote:
hi!
i have a 320 Gb @ 5400rpm hard disk on my macbook, running mac OSX 10.5 and i would like to know the advantages of partitioning my disk. does my computer go faster if i make an partition for the system and application, and another partition to the rest (music, photos)?
no, if anything it will go slower when you have to move files between partitions. there is never any reason to partition the startup drive.
another question; is it usefull to defrag the disk? i bumped into a 3-party software to defrag - idefrag - should i use it or it is not necessary?
it's normally not needed. OS X does a pretty good job of it itself. disk fragmentation can only become an issue if you hard drive fills up. if you keep at least 25-30% of the hard drive space free you never need to defragment.
the only exception would be if you often deal with large files (like video). but in this case you'd probably have an external for that. OS X doesn't auto defrag files bigger than 20MB in size.
cheers!

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Should I partition the disks using fdisk (300 GB lun) for ASM?

We've configured oracle 11g and asm on SLES10sp2 systems prior to the one I'm working on now. We use disks that are luns from SAN storage. The SAN devices vary (Tier 1 and tier 2). In earlier installs, we did not need to partition the disks using fdisk (luns up to 40GB in size). We did need to write a label using fdisk and 'w'. The asm that is being configured now is using 300 GB luns (on sles10 sp2 oracle 11g). I've needed to create a new primary partition using fdisk and then have asm 'look' as the partitioned device. If I did not do that, ASM would not look at the unpartitioned device.
The database in now built and it seems to be working ok.
Does this config sound ok?
Thanks,
Eleanor

I think this is right. I also always had to partition disks and let asm use the partitions because for some reason it did not accept the full device.
Bjoern

I erased my windows partition using disk utility then realized I should have used boot camp, because now I can't resize the original partition and seem to be stuck with a ghost unusable space. Boot Camp now doesn't give me the option to install or re

I erased my windows partition using disk utility then realized I should have used boot camp, because now I can't resize the original partition and seem to be stuck with a ghost unusable space. Boot Camp now doesn't give me the option to install or remove windows partition.

Hi, Ralph,
The problem is that I did erase the partition, using disk utility, but I can't go back to my original disk size pre-partition, as disk utility won't let me do it and gives the message "Couldn’t modify partition map because file system verification failed." When I try to use Boot Camp Assistant it won't let me select the third option to remove windows.

What's the best way to partition my disk with Vista, Arch, and data?

Hey everybody, I'm in a bit of a quandary here and I'd love a bit of help.
I have a 320 GB hdd on my new laptop. I want to dual boot Windows Vista and Arch, with a shared partition for data in between. I have Windows Vista installed with 110 GB of unallocated space. (Windows, being a piece of crap, has gone and locked some stupid system files at the end of its partition, completely preventing me from shrinking it any further.)
Vista has hogged two partitions for itself. One is C:, and I know what that's for; the other is D:, and I have no idea what lives on it. (In the off chance that anyone here knows, I'd actually like to find out what D: is doing there. It takes up 77 MB, 65 MB of which is empty, and is always "in use," and yet Vista's file manager says there's nothing in it.)
ANYWAY: Vista's taken up two partitions, and I need at least two for Arch: / and swap. Ideally, I'd like to have one for /home as well, but i don't know if that possible. I also really, really want to have a shared partition for music and documents and such for both OSes.
I thought at first I could stick all of Arch into an extended partition, but I read here that they can't be booted from. It doesn't make any sense to put my data partition into an extended partition, and Windows won't work either. What should my partition scheme be, since I apparently am going to need to put 5 primary partitions on one disk?
If you've gone this far, thanks for reading my wall of text. Any advice you can give would be deeply appreciated.
UPDATE: Okay, after doing a bit more research, I've read in a couple of places that Linux can be installed to a logical partition as long as I make sure GRUB (installed, I assume, on /dev/sda) points to it. Can anyone confirm this?
Last edited by wirenik (2008-11-29 07:27:46)

wirenik,
You can't have 5 primary partitions. 4 max, or 3 primary partitions, and a bunch of logical partitions grouped inside an extended partition. Arch will gladly install into a logical partition. (Yes, it will boot just fine too )
If you currently have 2 partitions, you could create one more primary, then use the rest of the disk as an extended partition. You will then be able to create as many logical partitions as you want (well, a bunch anyway).
Something like this:
/dev/sda1 (primary, Windows C)
/dev/sda2 (primary, Windows D)
/dev/sda3 (primary, Arch root)
--- Extended partition ---
/dev/sda5 (logical, Arch /home)
/dev/sda6 (logical, swap)
/dev/sda7 (logical, shared data)
Last edited by peart (2008-11-29 07:26:07)

Resized partition using Disk Utility and now Windows 7 will not boot

Hi,
Hopefully someone can help me!!
I had previously used Boot Camp to install Windows 7. However, I later realised I had not given myself anywhere near enough disk space as I started using Windows for things I hadn't originally planned on using it for.
Anyway, long story short, to solve the problem I uninstalled some applications on my Mac OSX and used Disk Utility to decrease the size of my Mac partition. My plan was then to reboot to Windows and use a Windows application to increase the size of the Windows partition. However - I coudln't even get that far.
Upon decreasing the size of my Mac partition (succesfully) I restarted my Mac in order to boot to Windows. However, I was greeted with a message along the lines of "unable to boot to Windows please insert boot disk and press any key" (I can't remember the exact message).
I was wondering if anyone knows of any way to restore my Windows partition, retaining all of my previously saved files on my Windows disk. It's probably a long shot, but the thought of losing everything I have been working on for the last few months is a sickening one.
What does give me a bit of hope is that, if I click Boot Camp it seems to recognise that Windows 7 is installed as the option that appears is to uninstall it.
Furthermore, if I view partitions in Disk Utility, a "DISK0S4" is listed. However, it's only at 20gb - if this WAS my BootCamp partition previously, it was originally at something around 60gb (I think - either way, definitely bigger than 20gb!).
On top of this, my current Macintosh HD parition is at 260gb and with the DISK0S4 partition at 20.21gb, there seems to be some space missing... I'm hoping this is the files I've been working on over the last few months!
Anyway, I've done some searching on the net and it *seems* that GPT fdisk *might* be my savour. I've downloaded it but have no idea how to use it and don't plan on playing about with it as I could no doubt do some real damage. If it is likely to solve my problem however, I'm certainly more than capable of being walked through what I need to do.
Please help!

Hi Christopher,
I also have problems with Windows rebooting after partition resize trying to reduce Mac side and increase Windows side. I do not see the BootCamp partition labelled as such while running disk utility. The Windows partition shows up when I boot up while pressing the ALT key. However, when I try to run Windows, it says " error loading operatig system".
I also followed instruction and went through to run gdisk successfully. Results towards the end.
What can be done? Windows still does not boot and It shows ? Suspicious MBR at sector 0.
Below is information based on typical questions you ask.
diskutil list
/dev/disk0   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE        IDENTIFIER
   0:              GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB     disk0
   1:                                           EFI                         209.7 MB     disk0s1
   2:                         Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            78.5 GB     disk0s2
   3:                       Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB     disk0s3
   4:                   Microsoft Basic Data                         31.7 GB      disk0s4
sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=120034123776; sectorsize=512; blocks=234441648
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 234441647
      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 153240016      2            GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
153649656    1269544     3            GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
154919200   17628896
172548096   61892608    4            GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
234440704        911
234441615         32                       Sec GPT table
234441647          1                        Sec GPT header
sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 14593/255/63 [234441648 sectors]Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE    0   0   2 - 1023 254 63 [         1 - 172548095] <Unknown ID>
*2: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 172548096 -   61892608] HPFS/QNX/AUX
3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.7
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
MBR: hybrid
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): r
Recovery/transformation command (? for help): h
WARNING! Hybrid MBRs are flaky and dangerous! If you decide not to use one,
just hit the Enter key at the below prompt and your MBR partition table will
be untouched.
Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 4
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): y
Creating entry for GPT partition #4 (MBR partition #2)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 07):
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): y
Unused partition space(s) found. Use one to protect more partitions? (Y/N): n
Recovery/transformation command (? for help): o
Disk size is 234441648 sectors (111.8 GiB)
MBR disk identifier: "DELETED INFO"
MBR partitions:
Number Boot Start Sector   End Sector   Status      Code
   1                               1    172548095   primary     0xEE
   2           *     172548096    234440703   primary     0x07
Recovery/transformation command (? for help): w
Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk2.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.

Change partitions on disk with NTFS and Mac OS Extended

I have a 1.5TB external drive formatted with 3 equal size partitions: 1 NTFS and 2 Mac OS Extended formats, each one ~500GB. I'd like to remove the NTFS partition and use the whole drive for the 2 Mac partitions. Could I copy the NTFS data to one of the Mac partitions, then delete the NTFS partition, and then enlarge the two remaining partitions, of course without losing the information that's already on each of them? My system is OSX 10.7.5 -- Lion.

Purple Finch wrote:
I have a 1.5TB external drive formatted with 3 equal size partitions: 1 NTFS and 2 Mac OS Extended formats, each one ~500GB. I'd like to remove the NTFS partition and use the whole drive for the 2 Mac partitions. Could I copy the NTFS data to one of the Mac partitions, then delete the NTFS partition, and then enlarge the two remaining partitions, of course without losing the information that's already on each of them? My system is OSX 10.7.5 -- Lion.
Probably maybe, with a fair wind & some luck…
It depends on a few factors, such as the order of the partitions on disk, how the disk was originally created, what partition scheme it uses (e.g. GUID, Master boot record…). It also depends on if all that data can be crammed into an existing partition.
I doubt you want to hear this, but it is the safest option… backup the data on every partition before you begin modifying the disk structure.
You have nothing to lose with solid backups on another disk, disconnect it to be extra cautious.
If this disk fails to repartition or you find that the 2 remaining partitions won't not expand to fill all the free space (it just happens sometimes) you can create a new partition table & start over.
Disk Utility may also complain when you try to resize or delete a partition - sometimes it waits until the last button is pressed to begin a task only to tell you something isn't possible!
I wouldn't attempt this 'copy, delete, resize' unless I could afford to lose all the data on this disk, it should work, but there is too much room for error.

How can you change the primary partition in Disk Utility?

I have made another partition using Disk Utility to install Snow Leopard. On my main partition Lion is installed but when i boot into Snow Leopard and try to delete the Lion partition it comes with an error "This operation requires a newer version of Mac OS X for this disk". I tried deleting the partition from Recovery HD but it says it couldn't unmount the disk.
Is this because Lion is the main partition, can you even delete the main partition?
And if I do delete the main partition will i be able to move the Snow Leopard partition "upwards" in Disk Utility?

ralphfromhome wrote:
1) First of all what is GUID.
It's the "partition map scheme" Apple uses so your firmware knows what is what on your boot drive, what partitions there are and what format they contain.
2) Secondly, would I just be able to make a new image in disk utility and use that instead of an external hard drive?
No, you need something to boot off of and remove all data off the internal drive that's going to be reformatted with a new parttion, that's why you use the free Carbon Copy Cloner, it does both in one shot and it "blesses" the drive to make it bootable.
3) When I use Carbon Copy cloner will it only copy Snow Leopard Installation or all of my files also?
It copies everything in your Snow Leopard partition to the external drive, files, programs the OS everything except whats in the Trash.
4) In your 8th step you mentioned repairing permissions on both. Both of what?
Both drives, the internal and the external clone in Disk Utility (ignore the long list that appears)
It's a safety check to make sure your permissions are set back to original settings, I think the newer version of CCC now does this, but I havent' checked, doesn't hurt to do it again.
5) If you still feel like typing can you tell me how long this whole process might take?
Formatting a external drive
You should Erase with Zero option first, that will take a hour per 500GB
Formatting shoud be rather fast, a few minutes.
Cloning Snow Leopard to the external drive should take about a hour per 500GB
Formatting the internal drive a zero erase first for safety should take another hour per 500GB
Reverse cloning Snow Leopard back onto the internal drive should take another hour per 500GB
Good thing about it, it's pretty much all ciick and go watch TV while it works.
I was actually planning to make a Genius Bar appointment to fix it, by the way does that cost much?
No idea, but you don't have to pay if you get a external drive for $70 or so, CCC is free.
You get to keep the external drive and use it later for cloning as hard drives die all the time, the clone would get you back to using the computer.

Partition with Disk Utility?

I just got a 500gb external drive that I want to partition. Disk Utility is supposed to be able to do this. The help file says "Click Partition" in the Disk Utility window. I see nothing in the window with "Partition" on it. A screen shot I've seen (from LaCie's hard drive manual) shows five buttons across the top of the window: First Aid, Erase, Partition, Raid, Restore, but my Disk Utility only has 4 buttons. The "Partition" button is not there.
Any ideas what's up? This is crazy. What am I missing?
I've clicked on the external drive icon along the left column but nothing pertaining to partitioning shows up.

That is because you have your boot volume selected in the left hand column, select the Hard drive itself, the one with the Manufactory ID number. It should be at the very top.
Joe

Partitioning new disk in AIF: cfdisk and fdisk disagree?

I am trying to install Arch for the first time and I am trying to do it on a new machine. I used the cfdisk programme to partition my disk. I made sure that no partition had an asterisk so they would all be aligned.
However, fdisk -l now tells a different story and reports all but one of my partitions as not starting on a physical sector boundary.
I'm wondering whether it would be better to cut my losses now and start again, first partitioning with a tool like gparted? I only mention this one because I think that's what I used on my current machine and fdisk doesn't have a problem with this one. However, this machine is using a different partition map (APM rather than MBR) so the initial partitioning was done with Apple's disk utility. Linux partitions were then created with gparted, though, and those are also reported as aligned by fdisk.
I would really prefer to use a GPT partition map on the new machine but I know I can convert to that later and I'm not sure if I can get things setup correctly if I do that initially since there doesn't seem to be an option to choose grub2 as a boot loader in installer (although the docs suggest it should be possible).
Note that I am not really familiar with my new machine yet and I am dealing with rather different hardware which may not be helping.

So I decided to cut my losses, persuaded my IT department to give me admin rights to a Windows box and created a USB key for Parted Magic. (I now realise I could probably have used parted but I didn't realise that was on the Arch install key.) After a lot of faffing with errors from gparted, I got my disk partitioned using GPT and I got my partitions set up with file systems, including an initial 2MB one with no filesystem which I think grub2 needs later.
I booted back into the Arch installer and tried to proceed. Obviously, I don't want to use cfdisk because it cannot handle GPT so I tried to skip to the configuring block devices step. However, the installer thinks all of my partitions are raw with no label and no filesystem on them. parted confirms they are set up correctly and I used parted to set the bios_grub flag as I couldn't figure out how to do this in gparted.
My question is: how to I assign mount points for the new system? Maybe that's not the right term. How do I tell the installer that root should go on partition x, boot on partition y, home on partition z etc.? It thinks that there are no filesystems on these partitions and I do not want it to change the partitions I set up with gparted/parted.
I've read the instructions for setting up grub2 but they seem to assume that I can get through all stages of the installation bar installing the boot loader and I'm obviously not getting that far. What I want to do is figure out how to do the very last part of the disk preparation - just telling it where to put things, basically.
One thing I wondered was whether I could just mount the correct filesystems in the relevant places under /mnt and skip the device preparation stages in the installer altogether. But I'm not entirely clear what has to happen at this stage so I'd like some advice.
When I exited the installer, I ran report issues. Not because I think there's an issue to report but because I thought somebody might ask me something I didn't think to notice. The url it gave me is http://sprunge.us/JjQH.
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Why should I partition my HD?

Just bought my first mac... huge step up from windows 98. The PC users I know seem to be all for partitions, but I've read that many mac users don't bother b/c it doesn't seem to speed up processing. I'll be using it mostly for internet research and word processing, with a fair bit of digital photo storage, and I'll proabably tinker with imovie and garage band.
What would the benefits be beyond greater organization. Would it restrict access if I were to catch a virus off the internet?
Thought I'd try to figure out if its worth doing before I start saving a bunch of documents and photos.
Also, is ilife included on the OS X install disc that came with my computer or will I lose that if I partition my HD? (Searched the disc but couldn't find anything)
I appreciate any advice you have.

wawalulu
You can partition your disk with Disk Utility. It's in your Utilities Folder.
But, if you read the thread above, why on earth would you?
have a 50-50 partition with my Toshiba. I mainly use the partition to save my important files so that I don't have to remove them every time when I reinstall my OS (I have to do it almost every 3-4 months ... because it's Microsoft...).
Well that reason is gone. I've re-installed my System software 3 times in nearly 20 years of use - and two of them weren't necessary. Also if you back up - and you should - that also removes the necessity. And if you do have to re-install an Archive and Install makes all that wiping of the HD unnecessary.
And no, copying to another partition on a disk in NOT a back up.
I will get a external hard drive to work with my iMac. Will I still need to partition my iMac's HD if I have an external HD?
You don't need to partition. You do need to back up.
Regards
TD

Partitioning secondary disk drive to install Snow Leopard OS X using a disk image.

Hello,
I had originally bought Snow Leopard OS X with a family licence. I installed it on my computer and then gave the disc to my cousin for him to install. Knowing he wasn't the best at returning things, I looked up how to create a disk image file from the Snow Leopard disc for extra precaution. As it turned out, I did not get the disk back, but I have the disk image saved to an external hard drive and burnt to a DL-DVD. I recently upgraded to Lion 10.7 but due to some compatibility issues (mainly Pro Tools) I wanted to partition a disk drive on my MacBook Pro's internal hard drive and designate it to Snow Leopard, to use when I run into a compatibility issue with Lion. As mentioned, I have a working DVD and .dmg of the Snow Leopard OS X, and have partitioned a 25GB drive for the install. However, I'm not completely sure where to go from there. I can the partitioned disk mounted on my desktop but I can not see it from "Startup Disk" nor using the "command R" keystroke at boot-up, only my primary disk drive. If anyone can give me some guidance or direct me to a link on this topic it would be greatly appreciated. I don't think it's very complicated, but this is my first time on these forums and the amount of information on here can get overwhelming for a new guy.
Thanks,
Chris

I've tried holding the C key during startup but that doesn't do anything, it just brings me to the regular start up screen and for some reason when I hold down the ALT key with the DVD inserted the only disk drives available are my system HD and "Recovery HD". I'm not sure why that is, I also have the disk image file saved to my computer. I read that using Disk Utility I can use the recovery option with the SL disc image as the "Source" and the partition as the "Destination" but when I did this, on reboot I got a 3-beep error sound. I'm not sure what the problem is but from my understanding it should be working. Maybe I didn't do something right when I backed up the SL disc but the files open on my system disk drive fine. I heard Apple will send you another disc if it's lost or damaged, I may just do that for safety's sake if there's nothing else.

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.

I can't delete partition in disk utility, it keeps telling me that "the changes are too small"

I previously split my disk into two different disks, however I want to combine them together again, yet i was unable to delete the second partition. I can't delete partition in disk utility, it keeps telling me that "the changes are too small"
Plz help!!!!!!

Make at least two complete backups of all your data. Boot from another drive and partition this one as desired. Restore the data.

When I restore my Mac with Time Machine and then want to partition my disk, Disk Utility always says incorrect number of extended attributes

When I need to restore my Mac from a time machine backup and then partition my hard disk (the disk inside the computer not the time machine disk), Disk Utility always says "Incorrect Number of Extended Attributes". I then boot into Recovery HD and run disk repair. The result? "The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK". So then I reboot into normal OS and try the partition again, still Incorrect number of extended attributes. I have even tried /sbin/fsck -fy in single-user mode but it still says the volume is ok. I have tried partition my disk in the recovery HD and it still fails.
Can anyone please help me solve this problem?

Try something stronger, such as DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro.
iMac refurb (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), SL & ML, G4 450 MP w/Leopard, 9.2.2

Can't create a 3rd partition in Disk Utility

Long story short I have used Boot Camp to get Windows, so I have 2 partitions. But, I need to create another partition to install another copy of Windows on it, but Disk Utility has grayed out the '+' to allow me to create a new partition. All I can do is delete the 'BOOTCAMP' partition which I don't want to do. I tried another way by going into Boot Camp Assistant and installing Windows through there. I have a bootable USB drive and I know how to install it, all that's stopping me is the partition issue.
Any ideas?
If it helps, I'm using a Late 2013 MacBook Pro with a 15" Retina Display, 2.5 GHz, 512 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM and a NVIDIA GT 750 M.
Thank you for your help

Good thing to mention that, I forgot to do that.
Unfortunately it did not help.. The screen to remove the existing Boot Camp partition does not pop up, it just tries to create the new Boot Camp partition.
The partition I'm trying to create it 150GB. The 50GB mentioned above was on the stock Fujitsu 250GB disk.
Edit:
I'm actually trying to avoid using Boot Camp Assistant.. I became to dislike the utility due to problems creating a partition on my previous HD.
I would like to create a partition using Disk Utility and then install Windows 7 by selecting that DVD to boot from.
Thank you for the tip though, I'll post it there as well!

Should i partition my disk?

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