On 23 October 2010 19:26, steve roche <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello- > I'm wondering if this should matter or not. I changed the HD on my Pismo a > year ago, > and put in a Seagate 80 gig model. When installing it, the Pismo told me I > needed to partition it, and asked how many I would like. I settled on 2 (I > really didn't care); it told me > I should choose more than two, so I chose more. I tried four, six, eight, > and so on. Each time, it told me that the partition would be too large, so > choose a higher number for a lower amount of space in each one. The Pismo > settled on 10 partitions, > which puts each one at just under 8 gigs each. > > IIRC, older Macs suffered from a problem (well, more of a misfeature) that required OS X to be installed entirely in the first 8GB of the drive. At a first glance, I would guess your problem is related to that.
The good news (if that is the case) is that there's no requirement to have 10 partitions...you can have two, one of <8GB, and one of the rest. > There was never much trouble from all this; I re-installed 10.39 (it's all > I had), and enjoyed the new HD. I've been told since.... that 10 > partitions is strange, or stupid, or may be contributing to the slower and > slower operations (it's all about beachballs, all the time). I've only > filled one partition now, with programs and files and such (I think number 2 > has a few things on it, but all the rest are empty). > > I use it only for internet; I have hardly anything else stored on it except > iPhotos. > There are probably 70 gigs still free. > > Will information retrieval spill over from one partition to the next > seamlessly, or do all these partitions confuse the Pismo? The Internet is > all beachballs... (firefox, safari, or Camino); and iTunes (4) > is almost unusable, stuttering and skipping. I know I should upgrade to > 10.4.11 > at least, but I haven't got a disk, and I can't afford Apple's price for > one (what, $300?) > and I'm unwilling and too lazy to seek one out on the sly. > Information won't "spill over" from one partition to the next....each partition is a separate volume, and as far as the OS is concerned - at the user level - they amount to separate drives. As to the beach ball issues....assuming adequate RAM etc., could be swapfile related, although I'd defer to someone more knowledgeable than myself. > > I check and repair disk permissions constantly; I know the iTunes problem > is a separate issue > perhaps, so I'll just ask about all the partitions first. Is it normal? > 10 partitions is a bit peculiar. I'll be honest, I thought you could only have 4. Not harmful, really, but so....untidy. I don't really know what to suggest, short of a slash-and-burn. Hunt down a copy of PartitionMagic and amalgamate partitions 2-10 is the other alternative, but that costs money. I can't remember if the version of Disk Utility included in 10.3 supported dynamic resizing, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't. To summarise, yes, it is a bit unusual, yes, it might be contributing to slowdowns. Regards, Dan -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Books, a group for those using G3 iBooks and PowerBooks (we run a separate list for G4 'Books). The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g-books Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/
