What's the best Way to Partition a 500GB Ext Drive?

[john edward]

Im a photographer and could easily fill it up with images.

My plan is as follows:

4 Partitions:
1. 50GB Swap/ Scratch Disk for Photoshop and storage of tempo files
2. 200GB Media 1
3. 200GB Media 2
4. 15GB Misc

Here's why:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_(computing)

1. Basically to allow head to travel shorter distances.
2. Protect other parts (data) of drive in case a part goes bad.
3. Greater File organizing efficiency
4. Preparation for possible multiple OS boot setup.

Your thoughts pls?

[john edward]

Also, im only getting 465GB usable from the 500GB physical drive. Anyway to bump that up?

[badw33d]

for me 500GB::::

1. 200GB saved files
2. 200GB backup files
3. 100GB garbage

[quietcynic]

Using the external as a scratch disk only works well if you are manipulating images which reside on your internal. If you intend on doing all your work off the external, you should know that it will end up being very slow. Your best use of the space on your external is as a vault for all the completed work. Mission critical and current files should exist on your internal drive (perhaps with a backup on the external).

Also, I don't really recommend you split up partitions unnecessarily. If you want 400GB set for your files, just set apart 400GB for your files. The redundancy of two partitions makes no sense when you consider that "soft" errors are very easy to repair, and it should be hardware failure that you worry about. Managing free space on two partitions is so much more hassle for such little net gain. I recommend that instead of worrying about the partitions, you consider your backup options.

Multi-booting from an external is really not an option on a Mac.

[maccentric]

Using the external as a scratch disk only works well if you are manipulating images which reside on your internal. If you intend on doing all your work off the external, you should know that it will end up being very slow. Your best use of the space on your external is as a vault for all the completed work....

Hi, @quietcynic. Could you please elaborate on this principle? I tend to use my external as bootup volume AND "photoshop playground" whenever I plan to do hi-res image editing. It's a non-partitioned 250G firewire. I thought it's a better candidate for such a task than my 80G internal.

I only feel it slowing down when the working file reaches more than 300MB, and even so, not significantly enough to impede work. Some commands in photoshop you just really have to wait. But that could only be because I'm on a G4 with 768MB RAM.

I'm only asking because I always thought Photoshop is "happiest" with lots of RAM and Disks with large contiguous space. Being external or internal, boot volume or passive storage, is not the issue. Or am I wrong?

btw, @john edward, "large contiguous space" is why I also think giving 50MB working space for scratch disk is too limiting.

Multi-booting from an external is really not an option on a Mac.

I believe you can, as long as you format and partition the drive correctly. As in you can only have 1 system per partition. You can then choose which partition or volume to boot via "Startup Disk" options in Systems Preferences Menu.

[carloslegarda]

I think one more factor to consider would be the speed of your external drive (7200rpm is faster than a 5400rpm internal drive of a MacBook) and whether you are using Firewire or USB and whether you are editing video or just photos.

"Also, im only getting 465GB usable from the 500GB physical drive. Anyway to bump that up?"

- The way to bump it up would be to create many smaller partitions so that the block sizes are smaller. But I agree with QuietCynic that it's more of a hassle to worry about how to partition your drives than it's worth, especially when they're so cheap now. Just buy another 300Gb drive for less than 4K if you want another "partition".

Backup your imporant finished files to DVD whenever possible and you should be fine.