Best way to run Mac OS - Partition HD?

In windows XP I get the best performance out of partitioning my hard drive into 2 areas. One is a smaller partition which only has windows XP installed on it and the larger is one is for programs and games to be installed to. I then use a 2nd hard drive for storage only.

For the Mac OS should I also partition the drive for the Mac OS X to run on and the rest for installed programs? If so How much room does the Mac os need? Is it easy to change the partition size after the OS is installed on a mac if I need more space?

 

You don't really specifically need to do this (or at least, you won't get any significant performance benefit from running OS X on a separate partition).

 

Wouldn't it run faster having it's swap file away from the running programs so it frags less?

What if you get a virus and you don't want it to attack all your other files? Would it still protect you from that?

 

I guess that would be one benefit of doing that. Someone has put some informatin together on doing this:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060206013801960

I am not sure how necessary this would really be though.

Regarding a virus, it's hard to say (there haven't really been any viruses in the wild, so how much of a difference it would make having separate partitions isn't something I really know about).

 

I guess I'm just coming from a pc gaming mind from years of using windows. It also helps out when the OS gets bloated and you want to do a fresh install. Just transfer everything to the other partition and do a fresh install.

 

Yeah, OS X works a bit differently in that regard; there usually isn't anything like having to do a fresh install of the OS every 6-months to a year.

 

Partitioning is not necessary with OS X. It really is no longer necessary in Windows either. The only reason to partition in Windows nowadays is to keep data separate from the OS, not so much programs, but data. OS X does not really fragment, so that is not a concern. You can do a non-destructive install of OS X so your data is protected. And in neither Windows or OS X will you see a performance gain from partitioning. Most of these things, like moving the swap file, separate partitions for programs and such, come from a time when you really had to squeeze every little bit of performance because the computers were not very powerful. Now, these computers are so powerful a lot of those little tweaks are unnecessary.

 

Yup, partitioning does not help performance one bit. And hasn't in a very long time.
You still have the same number of read/write heads no matter how you partition. The largest difference it made was compartmentalize the fragmentation. While this is still somewhat of a problem with Windows, you should be defragging XP at least 2x a week anyway...

 

That makes it easy then

So my next questions will be with dual booting/parallels

How big of a partition should I make for windows vista premium and which OS do I have to install first? Or should I just wait till I get the mac book then buy the software and this will make things easier for me to understand?

 

Uh well, from waht I heard, you need 60 gigs for Vista Premium. I'm not sure.. but the install is at least 8 gigs then it needs a bunch of space for some thing.
Just what I've heard in Vista forums.
I'd plan on 30-40 depending on how much software you plan to install.
But... why in gods name would you even think of running Vista? Right now it's not ... very good. Wait for SP1 :-D
Thats what I plan on doing before I try to buy a new Vista machine (for gaming).

 

Can you run Windows XP SP2 with parallels/dual boot?

 

Yes, you can.

 

I can have one of my friends buy a copy of windows xp from there college for me and get a nice discount