3 replies to this topic

[saitunes]

Hi all,

EDIT: I realized that doing this would eleviate nothing. I re-install because my home folder gets so full of junk its easier to re-install then sort. I do not need this advice anymore. But feel free to reply, someone might one day

I was wondering if I could partition my harddrive in my macbook while doing a clean install of os x tiger like this:

partition 1 the 'system' partition – Install the OS there, have it approx 40-60GB (Minimum for install with 5 gig or so extra space)

Partition 2 the 'files' partition – Where I keep all my docs and drag and drop applicationss and music and such, In other words this would be my 'home drive' (like the home folder)

I know I could do it, but will the OS X system partition be able to read the 'files'

The reason for wanting to do this is every now and then (probably 3-4 months) I like to do a fresh install just to tidy up everything and I'm tired of having to backup 70-odd gig of data.

Thanks

Edited by saitunes, 21 October 2008 - 11:35 AM.

[curtis07]

Okay, you're getting advice from someone that has quad-booted a MacBook, so I should be fairly credible, if I do say so myself.

Use the "Disk Utility" after booting up with the OS disk. I believe that on the live disk, it is on one of the top menus during the beginning of the install, before the files start copying. Click on your hard drive on the left. Then click on the "Partition" tab at the top. You can create your Mac partition and leave the rest with another partition. If you only use MacOS, make it the normal "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" file system. If not (if you want to dual-boot with Windows, etc.), post back and I can help you with a list of good file system alternatives. Actually, I'll list some in a second. I also have another post here: Quad-Boot a MacBook that may help in that case.

In the Mac file system, Tiger will be able to read and write. No worries. Macs can also read and write to fat32, but there are serious stupid setbacks to using fat32 (2GB file size limit, for example). NTFS (Vista and XP) can be read, but not written to. Ext3 (popular Linux file system) is excellent, but there is only a partially-working open source driver for Macs. I would suggest going with the default Mac HFS+ (the extended, journaled one, as I suggested earlier).

I am kinda wondering why you would want to freshly install Mac every 3-4 months. That seems a bit extreme. I only reinstall Windows every year, and never reinstall any other OS. You may have some issues with a program if that's what's necessary.

Best of luck! Hopefully I'm not too confusing. Excellent idea to have two partitions, by the way.

[galexcd]

Yes this is completely possible as long as you format your "Files" partition to a file system that OS X can read and write to, I'd recommend Mac os X Extended (Journaled). You can read more about what advantages Journaled has here. Although I don't recommend messing with the internals of your system very much you can move your home folder over to your "Files" partition that way all of your music in iTunes, photos in iPhoto, desktop items, movies and documents are all stored on the partition rather than on your system partition. To do this, first partition your drive and set up your account as normal, then copy your home folder from your users folder over to your other partition. Next, go to System Preferences > Accounts, and right click on the user that you just dragged over and select "Advanced Options...". Be careful when messing around in here because you could do irreparable damage to your account. Next to Home Directory: select "Choose..." and navigate to the copy of your users folder you have created on your partition. After you do this, you can delete the users folder on your startup disk and keep only the system there. If you don't want your entire users folder to go over onto the other partition, but you still would like iTunes and iPhoto to store their data on the "files" parition rather than the folder in your home folder, hold down option while starting them up, and you will have the option of creating a new library on your other partition.

[saitunes]

curtis07, on Oct 21 2008, 10:33 AM, said:

I am kinda wondering why you would want to freshly install Mac every 3-4 months.

It's a purely cosmetic thing... Actually doing that would probably make the reason I do re-install it redundant. I normally re-install it because My docs get so full of cr*p I either re-install or backup, wipe and copy the extra-important stuff back.

Boy am I glad I realized that.

I am thinking of dual booting it. I'll let you know.