I just got my first external Firewire drive (200GB Icecube) for a
Macintosh Powerbook running OS X 10.3.5. I'm wondering if anyone can
recommend the most suitable partition sizes and formats to use on this
external drive?

If I were doing this on a Windows system I'd know what I wanted to do,
but I'm still feeling my way in the Macintosh world. I imagine there is
no point in leaving the drive formatted as NTFS for Windows, which is
how it arrived?

If I were putting a drive of this size on a Windows box I'd partition it
into at least three or four partitions. Is this a reasonable thing to
do for Macintosh drives, or is a Macintosh happy with it as one giant
partition?

Finder (and Disk Utility ) show the drive as a Windows NT File System,
and show an empty set of directories (as does ls -a and du), however
Disk Utility indicates 70 MB of file space is used by 32 files that I
can't locate. I am hoping that these mysterious files are an artifact
of the Macintosh reading NTFS (in searching for suggestions about using
external drives I came upon several items claiming the Macintosh could
read FAT and FAT32, but not NTFS).

In case it is relevant to responses, I plan to use the drive for backups
of my own files, storing surplus photos in a moderately accessible
place, storing surplus music files, historical records, and anything
else that seems likely to eventually crowd out my portable drive space.
I've seen suggestions that having a bootable Macintosh file system on
the external drive is also a good idea. Any comments about the merits
of doing that also?

In article
<NOSPAMjune2004-53CC02.18190613092004@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
Eric Lindsay <NOSPAMjune2004@ericlindsay.com> wrote:

> I just got my first external Firewire drive (200GB Icecube) for a
> Macintosh Powerbook running OS X 10.3.5. I'm wondering if anyone can
> recommend the most suitable partition sizes and formats to use on this
> external drive?
>
> If I were doing this on a Windows system I'd know what I wanted to do,
> but I'm still feeling my way in the Macintosh world. I imagine there is
> no point in leaving the drive formatted as NTFS for Windows, which is
> how it arrived?

If you're never going to connect it to such a machine, then there is no
point leaving with that format. It will work, but there will be
overhead and it will probably be slower than an HFS+ format. (It has to
do more work to keep up with the Mac-specific information about files.)

>
> If I were putting a drive of this size on a Windows box I'd partition it
> into at least three or four partitions. Is this a reasonable thing to
> do for Macintosh drives, or is a Macintosh happy with it as one giant
> partition?

If you want to install several different versions of the OS, this is
right thing to do. Otherwise, there is no need. One partition will be
fine. HFS+ (A.K.A. Mac-OS-extended) does a good job of allowing a lot
of files on large drives without an overly large penalty in drive
overhead. You no longer need to break up a big drive to make efficient
use of the space.

>
> Finder (and Disk Utility ) show the drive as a Windows NT File System,
> and show an empty set of directories (as does ls -a and du), however
> Disk Utility indicates 70 MB of file space is used by 32 files that I
> can't locate. I am hoping that these mysterious files are an artifact
> of the Macintosh reading NTFS (in searching for suggestions about using
> external drives I came upon several items claiming the Macintosh could
> read FAT and FAT32, but not NTFS).

They must have meant Mac OS 9 and before. Could the 32 files include the
directories themselves? Or perhaps be some overhead files of NTFS?

>
> In case it is relevant to responses, I plan to use the drive for backups
> of my own files, storing surplus photos in a moderately accessible
> place, storing surplus music files, historical records, and anything
> else that seems likely to eventually crowd out my portable drive space.
> I've seen suggestions that having a bootable Macintosh file system on
> the external drive is also a good idea. Any comments about the merits
> of doing that also?

If you want a bootable Mac disk, you need to check with the manufacturer
to be sure that it will boot. There are some will will not be Mac
bootable for reasons I don't understand.

That said, you'll also need to format the drive as either HFS+ or UFS
(Unix file system.) Use UFS only if you intend to connect the drive to
Unix computers. Otherwise, choosee HFS+.

It is a good idea to keep a second bootable drive available with
backups. If your main drive goes down, you can keep working (assuming
you have the needed files backed up.) You will also be able to quickly
run Apple's Disk Utility and potentially fix the problem quickly.
Thirdly, you could boot any other compatible Mac and run software to fix
problems on any Mac you can connect to. Lastly, OSX often has problems
that require the repairing of permissions. Sometimes, you must repair a
drive before permission repairs on it will "stick". This is much more
quickly accomplished with a hard drive than a bootable CD like your
Panter Disks (and you can't "repair" a disk when you've booted from it,
you can only repair its permissions.)


--
Walt Sellers
Macintosh Programming and Support in Central Florida
www.VirtualOutpost.com
ws_usenet@virtualoutpost.com - include the keyPhrase "WhoYaGonnaCall?"
in the body or subject of the message to get past the spam filters.
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