Beyond Leopard's Blue Screen of Death

[Gregg]

QUOTE(krissel @ Nov 29 2007, 02:08 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Gregg: that was 8 GB for X. Many of the Macs built at a certain time had to have the boot system installed within the first 8 GBs of the disk.

Thanks. I figured I might have used the wrong "Roman numeral". I stopped at The Store on the way home last night. (I love having the new store on my route!) I looked at an iMac which had OS 10.5.1 and the System Folder was 3.89GB. So that 11GB install must include iLife, iWork, iPlay, and iGet A Life too!

[Xairbusdriver]

The actual size will depend on many variables that the user selects on the installer. Some suggest the minimum space required is closer to 9GB. With everything included, including X11 files, it approaches more like 15GB. While the "System" folder may be much less than either of those figures, you must remember that OS X has another critical folder/directory called "Library" (as does each user created) and that may be much larger than the "System" folder. I don't think checking the size of the "System" folder would include all the files in the root directories, either. This OS has stuff literally all over the place, much of it invisible to the Finder and the 'normal' user. Makes guestimating the size of the System installation much harder than in previous Apple OSs. Just another reason for not attempting an install on a drive with 'little' usable space. Some of the space requirements for the install may not be needed after the OS is installed. Moving duplicated items/files to temporary locations until their final location is created and the original is deleted, for example, will require some space that will be recovered. But the space is needed, in any case, for a successful install.

[Gregg]

Yeah, and I bet for one who partitions the drive, it makes allocation a little more difficult! I imagine that when you install from the 10.5 disc, you can't put some things on one partition, and others on another. Once installed, moving things around could create headaches also. So how does one decide?

[Mayo]

I don't recall being able to simultaneously install items on different partitions when using an installation DVD. I think that the installer only allows the user to select one volume at a time... At any rate, unlike the OS 9 and earlier-days, there is no benefit to be gained from splitting-up things and placing them on separate partitions.  It can even cause problems because it is common for the OS and some applications to expect a file to be in a particular location.  If the file isn't where it should be you can experience some strange symptoms, if the application will even start-up...  And making the drive move between partitions to access data can slow-down your Mac.

So I usually keep all the basic OS files and user folders together on a partition.  The exceptions are large folders such as my iTunes library and image folders (I don't allow iPhoto to import images into its library) that reside on external drives. My scratch volumes also live on external drives.

[Gregg]

QUOTE(Mayo @ Nov 29 2007, 12:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

... unlike the OS 9 and earlier-days, there is no benefit to be gained from splitting-up things and placing them on separate partitions.  It can even cause problems because it is common for the OS and some applications to expect a file to be in a particular location.  
...

So I usually keep all the basic OS files and user folders together on a partition.  The exceptions are large folders such as my iTunes library and image folders ... that reside on external drives. My scratch volumes also live on external drives.

I would think an advantage would be that the unused portion of the drive would not need to be maintained as vigilantly as the partition with the OS and applications. This would also mean that some maintenance operations would take less time to execute, since the whole drive would not be examined.

The large library type things could be stored on a different partition than the OS and apps, rather than on an external drive. Of course, it depends on the quantities we're talking about, and the size of the drive.

As for scratch volumes, I'm totally unfamiliar with the concept....

[Xairbusdriver]

Just got through starting up a new machine and it operated just a little differently than was described above. The setup assistant decided to name the new machine the same as the old one except it added " (2)" to the end of the old name, but on the new machine not the old one. No changes were made to the old machine, AFAICT.

My son, the programmer, mentioned to me that he keeps his home/user folder separate from his System partition. As a matter of fact, it sounds like he keeps the System in one partition and everything else in the separate one(s). He says he does this because he needs to install updated systems quite often and this allows him to wipe that partition clean each time without bothering to move his apps/user settings/etc. I probably don't have all the facts straight, he talks over my head and quite fast, also. And yet he is shorter than I am....

I'll try to get the real info the next time I talk to him. BTW, I'm using my new 24incher he bought for me (after I sent him the money!), so I don't yet have all my customizations done yet. Man! This screen is MASSIVE!

[Mayo]

If there is a large unused portion of a non-partitioned volume it won't slow down typical maintenance tasks because there is no data to examine. The entire drive surface is scanned only during certain operations. The only reason I can see for partitioning a volume is if you have a reason for two or more partitions, such as having two separate boot volumes, etc.

I began using external drives to store large amounts of data when internal drives were still relatively small. But even though my new iMac has a 250GB internal drive, it would quickly fill-up with image files that would then have to be moved elsewhere. My iTunes library is approaching 40GB and it will only get larger over time. An amateur photographer friend is setting-up a RAID enclosure that will eventually hold five terabyte (1000GB) eSATA drives. At her current rate I wouldn't be surprised if she had all five drive bays filled within a year if she follows a back-up protocol with at least two copies of every image file.

Scratch volumes are used by some applications for temporary storage of data during operations that max-out the available RAM.  Photoshop is one such application that can run out of RAM during complex image editing... Any volume can be a scratch volume; the boot volume is typically the default scratch volume.  But if you lack sufficient free-space on the volume it can cause problems, and the data on the volume can become badly fragmented in a very short period of time, even under OS X. So it is preferable to designate an empty partition for scratch use. One benefit to using an external drive partition is that external drives are often faster (usually 7200RPM) than internal drives, particularly if the Mac is an older model, a "stock" portable or a Mac Mini.

I have partitioned my internal Mac drives for years, but these days I don't have a reason to do so.  I don't miss messing with and keeping track of multiple internal volumes. A number of years ago I got into the habit of banning volume icons from my desktop because it had become so cluttered with partition icons... To this day I still don't have any drive, CD or any other volume icons visible on my desktop.

[Gregg]

Thanks Mayo. Very interesting. I guess if I were a real digital photo buff, I'd have known that stuff already. I don't see myself ever needing as much storage as you describe, nor using Photoshop. Like another thread says, it depends on how you're going to use it.