to partition or not??

There really is no advantage to partitioning anymore. It used to be that OS X had to be installed on the first partition in order to boot and still be able to boot into OS 9, but that is not needed anymore as Macs have not been able to boot into OS 9 for years now.

In Windows, I partition my drives just so that the bi-annual Windows reinstallation doesn't also have to mean reinstalling my data. On my Mac, I do not partition. Instead I clone my HD to a FireWire drive using SuperDuper. I have yet to need it for an emergency recovery, but it is still there is I need it.

If you run bootcamp, then you will end up partitioning your hard drive, but that is taken care of in the bootcamp install process 🙂.

At one time, under earlier versions of the OS (not OS X), you did need to partition your hard drive because of the allocation block size. At one time the allocation block size was dependant on the size of the partition. The larger the partition the larger the allocation block size. ABS is the minimum amount of disk space a file will take up. So if the allocation block size was 8k and you have a 2k file, it takes up 8k. A 9k file would take up 16k, etc, so if you had a lot of small files you could quickly chew up a lot of disk space. Under OS X, the allocation block size is fixed so partitions are no longer needed. The only reason I can see for creating multiple partitions is if you want to do it for data organization and even that is iffy since most applications want to be installed in the boot partition.

For you windows users out there, if you partition your drive in ntfs then you don't need multiple partitions, but if you use fat32 then the windows partition manager limits the size to 32GB. This is an artificial limit since 3rd party partitioners allows greater than 32GB. MS is probably trying to push windows users to ntfs for the added security benefits it provides.

Glor

There are still some advatanges to partitioning - particularly for those who do not have an external drive to use) although not so much for the general or average user. In my case, I always like to have a separate, clean drive for video capture/work. I use an external firewire drive these days but a separate partition also worked well.

When OS 10.5 Leopard debuts you can use a separate partiton (assuming again, that you don't have an external drive to use) to run it while maintaining your original Tiger boot in the event you want to go back and forth.

Partitioning will also allow for multiple OSes such as Windows and Linux (although running Linux will not be for the average user).

In the early days of Mac OS X, I do recall reading about some issues with having the OS VM swap files and Photoshop scratch disk files conflict from time to time (using the same disk/partition) and having a separate partition would help but that has not been a problem for a number of years (AFAIK).

Partitioning is still useful in a few cases (perhaps considered more of a 'poor man' approach) as an external hard drive (as mentioned by Eric) is - IMHO - the better, more efficient solution.

just my two cents....

The VM swap file issue was not concerning partitions. Some advocates promoted putting the swap files on a separate external drive to reduce drive contention. Putting the swap files on the same drive on different partitions would not alleviate the problem at all since the drive can not access itself more than once at any given time, no matter how many partitions (only one read head).

Mike Breeden from XLR8YourMac did some tests with swap files and found that putting them on a separate drive showed little or no performance increase.

Glor

You may want to triple boot OS X, Windows and Linux.

You may want to use a small 15GB emergency boot system on the end of the drive.

Drive performance drops off by a half as you get to inner 25%.

Keeping some of your media files out of the boot partition means that the system and home directory won't be spread out over as large an area of the platters which can cause longer and slower seeks.

Most directory errors are going to be the boot volume.

As mentioned, it is easier to restore the system if you have a partition. (I am not one who uses or favors the "Archive & Install" option - at all - zero).

I do think it is wise to test a drive before using. test for performance, for bad blocks, irregularities - all before using the drive and system.

Backups before applying updates are really important - any system - but it seems Mac OS X and particularly MacIntel/Univeral Binary might be even more important currently.

Partitions are never perfect or right and can be harder to deal with. It depends on the experience of the user. There is no one solution which fits and is good for everyone, and everyone has their own perferences... which will change over time!