Partitions? what are they?

Partitions are a way to make a hard drive assume it is more than one hard drive. They offer the benefit of isolating a portion of the hard drive that can be erased for temporary storage of large data files that the built-in defragmentation can't take care of. In addition, you can use them to have a separate operating system to boot from to see if an issue you are having was with the operating system update or not. But they should not be considered a backup medium, since that should be something you have in case the whole hard drive fails. Speaking of backups, they have to be backed up separately from the main partition.

Hi Salvatore;

One thing about partitions is that because you have divided a single disk into multiple parts when you partition it, the heads must move back and forth between the partitions to access the data. So partitioning a disk where the partitions are to be use productiveely can have a negative impact on performance.

What I usually do is use the partitions for backup or archive data. I backup or copy from a partition on one drive to a partition on another drive. These backup and archival copies I do during off hours so I don't care about any possible performance impacts that might happen.

Allan

Hi Salvatore

You asked: " i have been hearing terrible and horrific complaints from people that there system is garbadge now or to some less extreme, now how would i back up my system in the future just incase soemthing this bad happens to me? "

What I do is burn DVD-RWs of the following in my user folder:

1. Documents folder
2. Library folder
3. Music folder
4. Pictures folder

I save the .dmg of every software that I download to a folder I call "Saved Downloads" and keep in my Documents folder so that, if I ever have to rebuild my iMac, I have everything that would take more hours than I care to spend locating and downloading. I keep this folder "weeded out" when updates are released, thus the reason for DVD-RWs. (The same reasoning applies to AddressBook, iCal, iPhoto, etc.)

I do this even though I have an external firewire drive that I backup my entire system to. The DVD-RWs are sort of a "backup to a backup". (Murphy's Law, ya know…when things go wrong they go really, really WRONG!)

All this being said, I've been using Macs for 22 years and have never had to rely on my "backups" due to failure of some sort, but I've used them when I've been bored and decided to "zero out" my harddrive and start fresh for a good "Spring Cleaning". ;~)

Judie