Partitioning drives is a topic of much dispute, endless heated-debate, and can appear quite daunting to a new Mac owner.
Some Mac enthusiasts even see little benefit to using partitions because they feel it takes too long to configure, or believe it no longer provides appreciable benefit under the Modern Mac OS. Others are just lazy, or of a different mindset, and don't like a lot of volumes lying around to be cared for. The irony is, partitioning reduces that need for care, and indeed still provides much benefit, especially under the Modern Mac OS with larger drives.
While it is not necessarily right for everyone, this article will attempt to explain why it might be right for you, and that, while it takes some additional time to setup in the beginning, will pay off a thousand times-plus over in the long life of your Mac.
If you use your Mac to make a living, and/or for capturing, processing audio or video, and/or creating graphics or photographs, we promise you can benefit from this article. Even the casual home user is offered considerable benefit from simple partition schemes. Read on, and decide for yourself.
Before we get too far along, let's clarify a few terms you'll find frequently used in this initial discussion.
For the purpose of this discussion, the words 'Partition' and 'Volume' are effectively interchangeable. You are probably used to seeing just one volume icon on your Desktop, called 'Macintosh HD' by default. It is a visual representation of your entire physical Drive, with one Format making it into one Partition and seen as a single Volume or mounted Disk. It may be Formatted into either HFS or HFS+, which you can see for yourself by first selecting (highlighting) the Volume icon, then executing a 'Get Info' command (Command-I, or Get Info from the File Menu). You can see all the information about the drive, such as its Format type, driver version, physical size, space used, space free, etc.
If you have more than one drive or volume, each will be represented on the Desktop by its own icon, and may not appear until media is inserted, such as a CD in the CD-ROM drive, etc., when the volume or volumes are then mounted to the Desktop.
Hard drives are fascinating devices, extremely useful and indispensable with modern computers. They store our data (files), our applications (programs), and they assist the computer in executing commands (functions) you make within a program (application). They are not, however, without fault or disadvantages.
One frustrating reality about hard drives is that some parts of the drive media can be read from and written to faster than others. The outside of a drive is faster than the inside, because a single line around the outside of the drive media contains more physical blocks than a line around the inside, thus, as the drive spins at a fixed speed, the drive head can read or write more blocks in a single revolution around the outside than on the inside.
If you've ever seen an old vinyl LP record, then you can easily compare the two. An LP always spins at a fixed speed, and the stylus (needle) reads more information per revolution the outside than the inside.
The major difference between an LP and a hard drive is that the hard drive can be easily written to (record), instead of just being read from (playback).
By partitioning a drive, you may designate which files are devoted to the fastest portions of the drive platen (media), and which go to the slowest, thus increasing your System and application performance. Don't forget that the Finder is just another application, and it is central to using most others. If the Finder is unhappy, so will your other applications, because they must work with the Finder to use your hard drives and other media.
With partitions, you further reduce the effects the every-use occurrence of file fragmentation has on your System performance, and the need to optimise and defragment (two different things) large portions of your stored data, thereby reducing maintenance times, and maintaining optimal performance for longer periods of time. (see: Optimising versus Defragmentation for more information)
You get the added benefit of better-protecting sections of your data by providing a different Directory structure, MountCheck and Desktop DB/DF files for each partition, so when directory damage occurs during crashes, conflicts, etc., typically only the directory of the partition involved gets hammered, leaving your other volumes intact. (see: Caring for Your Directory and Desktop Rebuilding for more information)
This volume should contain the current System Folder and only the System Folder. Its size may be dependent on how large your temporary printer-spool files typically are.
Frequently changed files, normally found in the Preferences Folder, like browser cache, email, scanner-captures, printer-spool files, etc., should be aliased or retargeted to another volume (or RAM Disk) whenever possible to reduce file fragmentation.
By keeping the Finder, System, System Resources, System Enablers, Mac OS ROM, extents, inits, libraries and preferences in the fastest portion of the fastest drive, your overall System and application performance, from startup time to application-launch time to object-rendering time, is dramatically increased over a single-partition drive (especially one "optimised" <snicker> by TechToolPro™).
By segregating the System Folder and its minimum-required contents, you also decrease the frequency required for System Folder backups, decrease the time required to make a backup, and make initialization and restoration of the primary Startup System Volume (the volume that takes the most damage in a crash/freeze) a breeze.
It is especially important to leave a large amount of free space on this volume, for use by temporary printer-spool files and other applications that you can't retarget the temporary files creation location (see: Printer Spools and You for more information).
*Format in HFS Standard so you can use a genuine disk optimiser like DiskExpressPro™ , MacToolsPro, or SpeedDisk (at your own risk!), not a simple defragmenter like TechToolPro (TTP can actually slow your performance), until such time as a genuine volume optimiser for HFS+ format is released. (see: Optimisation versus Defragmentation for more information)
This volume is where you target the Virtual Memory map, PhotoShop scratch disks, video or audio capture, and any other disk-intensive application that uses such targetable temporary files. The size is dependent on your total physical memory (RAM), the amount you devote to VM, and your application scratch-disk needs.
This volume is especially important for those who depend on VM, or use VM with large amounts of RAM for better System stability, and for those who work on large files like those in Freehand or PhotoShop, whose scratch-disk speeds can make or break your minute-to-minute performance.
It is so important, that if you are so short of space you feel you can't afford to create one, we strongly advise you move your rarely-used, and even your every-day used applications and resources to removeable media, such as CD-R or even Zip. Applications typically load all they need into RAM upon launch, but application operations may be, and are disk intensive in many cases (absolutely true when VM is used).
By keeping this volume dedicated to the purpose of VM and scratch disks, and free of any other files, you are always guaranteed a clean, contiguous write of the Virtual Memory map and scratch/temp files, thus increasing the performance of your entire System and applications, rather than letting such files be fragmented across the entire drive and into slower portions of the platter on a default, single-partition drive.
No need to backup or optimise this volume typically exists, and you can even avoid Directory repair and Desktop DB/DF rebuilding and repairs altogether by using the Finder 'Erase' command now and then.
If you can make this volume large enough, you can also use it as a convenient place to assemble the contents for a CD-R or CD-RW burn session (usually 650MB plus the amount used for VM and scratch), and then erase the unneeded, and now archived files when complete.
It's also a great place to drop a copy of your entire System Volume immediately before you install a new and untested application or System extension, so, if you have a problem, all you need to do is either restart from this backup, and/or simply delete the affected original System and restore from this current backup without worrying about annoying and lengthy uninstall and conflict testing procedures, etc.
This procedure is highly recommended prior to installing a new OS (see Upgrading Your OS Safely and Easily for more information).
If you are hurting for available backup space, you could keep a minimal System Folder backup on this drive, as long as you optimise the volume to prevent fragmentation of the VM and scratch files.
In a perfect world, you would dedicate an entire, super-fast drive to just this purpose. If you are working with audio or video capture, you should, if you aren't already, and you should keep a separate scratch volume dedicated to just VM.
For many economy-minded dual-drive configurations, you can split off the slower portions of a second drive to other lower-priority purposes, leaving the largest and fastest volume(s) to System, VM and scratch needs.
A dedicated volume gives faster, more stable performance to Microsoft Windows, and reduces file fragmentation both inside and outside the Windows environment. A typical installation of VirtualPC/Windows95 requires around 350MB, but total size depends on user needs, and the amount of additional storage needed for DOS file-format applications and resources.
If you need to use Windows applications frequently, you should give it a higher priority for faster partitions. If you use it infrequently, or for very light usage, you may lower its priority, at a sacrifice to overall performance of Windows and Windows applications.
A segregated volume also makes backups of the MS Windows environment fast and easy. Given the volatile and unstable nature of MS Windows, we strongly advise you use a separate partition for Windows, so that, in the event of a hard-crash or freeze, you substantially lower the risk of MS Windows causing damage to your Macintosh-dedicated volumes.
This also makes backups and restorations from backups a breeze. Windows feeling wonky? Why bother to reinstall the OS from CD, and have to hunt and delete the MSN applications, and all the other useless fluff that it installs. Just erase the volume, and restore it from your backup image.
In that perfect world, you would dedicate an entire, super-fast drive to just this purpose, to insure that Windows can run as fast as possible on your Macintosh. For many dual-drive configurations, you can split off the slower portions of a second drive to other lower-priority purposes, leaving the fastest (or second-fastest with Scratch) volume to Windows.
You might also want to format additional partitions in the PC-DOS format, allowing you to store more DOS/Windows files without going through the troublesome procedures outlined by VPC and SoftWindows. These kinds of volumes can be seen and shared by both Macintosh and Windows environments (you will likely wish to give such volumes lower priority).
By segregating your temporary files, such as project rough drafts you are working and reworking, a pile of clip-art you temporarily import from a CD, your Internet downloads, including your browser cache files, you decrease the likelihood of a corrupt or infected file being written to your critical volume(s), and you can more-easily use virus protection on a single area, rather than needlessly scan your entire volume(s) for viruses and corrupt files each time you introduce new files to the Macintosh. The size required is dependent on your application and download habits.
Use this volume to temporarily add and use files from outside sources, inspect them for viruses, then move them to the appropriate volume for long-term storage, or delete them if no longer needed (e.g., leftover SIT, HQX, ZIP, BIN files from d/l's). This segregation also allows you to erase the entire volume once in awhile, rather than bother Caring for the Directory with utilities or needing to Rebuild the Desktop.
No backup of this volume is required (typically).
*note: A better target for browser cache files is a RAM disk, which will give you the fastest reloading of web page components, and gives the added benefit of automatically erasing the easily corrupted files on each shutdown or restart (when configured correctly), thus reducing volume fragmentation, file/directory corruption-risk, and offers increased performance, etc. See: Using RAM Disks for Fun and Profit for more information.
If you can make this volume large enough, you can also use it as a convenient place to assemble the contents for a CD-R or CD-RW burn session (usually 650MB).
If you are short on available drive space, this volume-purpose may be combined with a Scratch volume, but file defragmentation is required more frequently, and your VM and scratch disks will lose considerable performance for those purposes. It may also be combined with your Current Work volume, but at additional risks discussed in that section.
Safer is better than faster, in most cases, so we advise combining its purpose with the Scratch volume, if you must conserve space.
Use this volume for your current and evolving work requiring daily backups and continual storage. The total size depends on your needs.
This is where you store the stuff you are working on daily, weekly, and monthly. You should keep a fair amount of free space on this volume, so applications like MS Word that create temporary files in the same directory (folder), or the same volume as the original have room to expand and prevent crashing and fragmentation.
This volume, unless exceptionally large, requires only simple defragmentation once in awhile, depending on how much and how often you add, delete, or modify files.
This volume is arguably the one that is the most important to segregate from other purposes, since its contents are not always easily replaced. If you make no other partition, please make this one for your critical, irreplaceable work, in case a crash, freeze or application-write-error causes catastrophic damage to available directories, and thus reduce the risk that it hits this one.
Combine its use with the Temporary Files Volume, when working with volatile applications and files for added security.
At this point, many people start thinking I'm crazy. However, heavy duty email users whose stored email is in excess of 50MB (just my current stuff exceeds 250MB, dating back less than six months) may wish a dedicated email volume, providing relief from frequent System and email-client performance degradation due to fragmentation of compressed or non-compressed email storage files.
It also makes for fast and easy defragmentation; Just copy the email folder data to another volume, erase the original, copy it back, and, voila! Instant defragmentation, and you didn't have to use a utility. It also makes for faster backups and restorations of the entire email client and email database.
If you use an all-in-one browser-email client like Netscape Communicator-Messenger, you can easily move your User Profile folder(s) to such a partition. If you use a poorly made client, like AOL, you will need to use an alias-method to fool the client into following the path you create (see: Folder Aliasing for more information)
You may combine this volume with a Documents volume when less space is available on smaller drives.
Priority for Speed is Low
HFS+ Format
Size is Optional (see user formula)
This volume's purpose is likely self-explanatory, but, to be clear, it first includes all the extra stuff that the Apple OS CD installs, like Apple Extras folder, Apple Applications folder, AppleScript folder, Utilities folder, Internet folder (web-browsers), etc. It is also where you will store your standard, frequently used applications (programs), but not your extra fonts, clip-art, templates, stationery, and other infrequently used resources.
The total size depends on how many applications you need to have installed, and you should also consider having room here for future application purchases and needs.
Many people are surprised to see this volume given such low priority, but it doesn't need to be on a very fast portion of the drive, as most applications load all they need into Disk Cache, RAM and Virtual Memory upon launch, and few applications force you to create new or temporary files in the same folder or volume as the parent folder of the application (some scanner and FAX software creates the capture archive in the application folder, but you can usually alias-it out to another volume, such as Temporary Files or Scratch).
You may also wish to further subdivide your applications into like-groups on separate volumes, to aid both in organization, and also making convenient groups for backups. For example, if you are a Web developer like me, you might wish to keep all of the various versions each web browser you need to keep on hand in one volume, making it easier to share plug-ins and other resources. My Internet Applications Volume is currently a cramped 750MB, and ready to grow into a new one for the next generation of browsers.
It is, however, the perfect size to burn on a single CD-R disk (after you account for free space). In fact, I typically make all of my volume sizes in multiples of 750MB, which, once you subtract the needed free-space, makes it easy to burn archives CDs in one write-session. You may wish to factor in the size of your chosen backup media, and make it easily divisible by that number.
Some folks who know me well are also surprised that I'm not bent on optimisation for applications volumes, but, if you don't store resource and work files here that don't need to be here, and you don't make it unusually large, the HFS+ format is fine, since a simple defragmentation is all that is required to keep most applications running at top speed.
Use this volume if you want to test an application you may not keep (demos, shareware, etc.), or use it for unstable Alpha and Beta versions of applications that may crash or accidentally overwrite file information, and cause severe damage to other files/directories.
Until about a month ago, I would also tell you to store Microsoft Office98* on such a volume, but since MS released the last Downloadable patch for Office 98 , MS Word and Excel no longer absorb data from other files, nor do they appear to cause appreciable corruption to other files.
*note: If You are still using Office 4.2, or older versions of Word and Excel, you are strongly advised to segregate it and its documents from your other critical, or sensitive applications, due to, among many others, a known bug where its components may inadvertently absorb data from other documents, and become visible on other platforms. You might also want to use a dedicated secondary Startup Volume and System Folder configured for this version of Office, to prevent the numerous known-conflicts with MS Office 4.2 extensions and libraries.
Frequently used clip-art, templates, stationery and fonts that you can't stand to keep on CD or other removable media should be stored on their own volume, and due to the very tiny size of these files and the sometimes thousands and tens of thousands of icons associated with them, HFS+ format is an obvious must for these types of files (unless you must share this volume with pre-OS8.1 users--see: HFS or HFS+? for more information).
These kinds of files also consume a tremendous amount of time and processor resources during maintenance and virus scans, and as they rarely change and are rarely corrupted, you can segregate them and inspect them only now and again, as you suspect a problem. These files also are rarely fragmented, but, when kept with other data, may be needlessly moved around your drive by certain disk defragmentation and optimiser utilities, increasing downtime and increasing the risk of utility error or failure.
To lend further insurance against corruption of the files on this volume, you can write-protect the entire volume or select directories to further-insure against data corruption or virus-infection.
Its total size is optional, but you may wish to leave a fair amount of free space if you plan to expand your applications, thus giving you room to absorb the new resources here.
Use font manager utilities and Folder Aliasing to quickly navigate and direct your parent applications to the needed resources.
The need to backup this volume is rare after the first time, dependent only on your need to modify its contents and maintain any changes. Again, choosing a size that is a convenient multiple of your backup media capacity is beneficial.
This volume may be combined with either Storage or Applications, should you be short on available space.
The packrat volume. Store all the stuff you're too lazy to archive out to removable media here. Also a great place to keep a backup of your current System Folder and/or core System parts (Finder, System, System Resources, System Enablers, Mac OS ROM), allowing you an extra volume to boot from for maintenance, testing and emergencies, such as when catastrophic damage occurs to the Primary Startup Volume Directory or boot blocks, rendering it unuseable as a Startup Disk.
In such instances, the Mac ROM will look for any available System Folder, and select it automatically, allowing you to attempt damage repair without needing to restart from emergency CD or floppy.
It seems as if there is little need to discuss this volume further, but if you have questions left unanswered, feel free to ask.
If you don't have room for a storage volume, then you probably need to clean house, or add another drive.
Of course, having more than one large and fast hard drive, or only one small hard drive radically changes the possible volume configurations and combinations listed above entirely, requiring you to assess which of your drives is fastest, and splitting up the higher-need tasks amongst the fastest volumes of each drive (e.g., the fastest volume on the fastest drive goes to the primary startup System, the second fastest on whichever drive to scratch/VM, etc.).
Further, older, smaller drives make it much harder to employ these methods, but a revised approach is still advisable. I will even partition drives as small as 500MB into at least two partitions; One for System and VM, the other for the rest.
If you are struggling with available free space ( a bare minimum of 5% per drive is needed, 10% advised), and given the extremely low costs of hard drives these days, you might want to consider purchasing a new, larger and/or faster drive. A 2-4GB SCSI HDD can be had for as little as US$50 today; a 8-12GB ATA HDD for less than $100; unlike the days when a drive, any drive, would cost you a month's salary.
Remember, you can almost always carry your new drive to a new Macintosh, or even a Wintel machine, should you decide to go over to the Darkside in the future <shudder>.
Since these areas of need assessment are highly personal, we've decided to create different articles to assist you, but you will still need to adapt them to your own needs, based on your own judgment. However, we are happy to make suggestions, should you wish a second opinion. (see:Partition and Volume Configurations and Macintosh Drives and Performance for more information)
This can be a bit tricky. You must first determine the drive type and interface you are using, or plan to use (see: Macintosh Drives and Performance) to find out which drive should be fastest. Then, you will need to use your drive initialization utility (see: Using Drive Setup) to create and designate which volumes will be slowest and fastest therein.
Many third-party drive utilities offer advanced features and may also offer tools to test your current configurations and drives abilities to perform (see: Third Party Disk Drivers and Utilities for more information).
Once you get all your new volumes named and configured, don't forget you can have fun with them, and make them easier to identify visually by using custom icons. This is what one of my simply-configured machines looks like.
We hope you find the information in this article useful, or at least informative. If you have any suggestions, or would like to submit your own partitioning strategies or opinions, we gladly welcome your contributions.
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Article last revised on: 14 August 1999
Author: Frederico
Editor: WebClub '99
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