Windows convert in need of help
 

Hi guys I am planning on getting the eMac in about two weeks but before I do that I want to know one thing.

Ok, when I was using a pc I would rapartion the hard drive into 2 partitions. ONe for the OS only and one for all the other stuff. I am unfamiliar with Os X and I do not know how much space does it need to live comfortably in it's own partition. I am thinking that 5 gigs would be sufficient. What do you think?

80GB hard drive
5 GB: for OS
75: for mp3s videos and appz.

is this a good setup?

welcome xceptional_haz - I think you will enjoy the Switch. Please give it some time and take it slow. Its a whole new operating system for you and will require some relearning of old habits. I think in the end you will be very happy if you invest a little time and effort in making the switch.

As far as your question goes - I believe 5G should be fine for a basic install. Of course this completely depends on what you do with your system. Were you planning on putting just the system on the 5G and everything else on the other? I personally download and test every damn app that comes out so I need a LOT for room for my applications. Maybe you don't. I also like to compile my own programs using Fink, this can take a up a good bit of room also. If you have an 80G drive - I think what I would do is start out with 10G for OS X - this gives you plenty of breathing room.

Also - the process of partitioning an OS X System is nowhere near as hard as doing the same thing on a Wintel PC - but it is a different process as we live in the UNIX inner sanctum now. There are some good instructions in the main OS X Hints site, or any of us will be glad to offer assistance. Don't be afraid to ask .... we're all here to learn and share.

FYI - just to give you an example of what you could do with OS X partitioning - here's how I have my system partitioned.

Thanks for your comments they were very helpful. As for me I LOVE music and basically all I will be doing with my Mac is playing music. I also have a couple of ISO's that i will burn and install they include:
Virtual PC 6.0
Mac Office X
Illustrator 10
Adobe PhotoShop 7.0
Keynote
Move2Mac

So basically I will have those main applications and the rest will be music (I currently have 50GB) of music in my PC which I will transfer to the Mac using the Move2Mac software.

I guess your right though I should split it up into 10GB/70GB.

One more question, if for any reason I need to format the 10GB partition, will my programs in the 70GB partition still work or will I need to reinstall all the programs as in windows?

One more question. What are the names of applications that compare to Sound forge for the mac. In my opinion sound forge is the photoshop of sound editing. Any great mac sound editing software out there?

I think you will be fine with 10G and 70G then and making that one partition only music - is an easy task not even requiring any of the stuff I was talking about above for using seperate partition. You should be fine.

As far as paritition moving goes - you can not repartition a drive without losing the data on it. Yes there are some UNIX tricks, but they are dangerous. Its much easier to get yourself a cheap, external Firewire drive and clone your disks onto it then repartition and move the data back - quick and painless.

As far as audio software goes - the Mac platform has some incredible stuff available. Depending on what you want to do - eg. edit or compose...

For editing
Peak <-- expensive
ProTools <-- expensive
Spark <-- expensive
Deck <--- expensive, multi-track
Amadeus <--- shareware
SoundStudio <--- shareware

For composing (all FANTASTIC and expensive)
Rebirth
Reason
Arturia Moog

There are many more out there - I'm sure I am missing many. Get familiar with these sites - besides here ;) - they will lead you to whatever you need...

MacUpdate
http://macupdate.com

OSXApps
http://osx.hyperjeff.net/

VersionTracker
http://versiontracker.com
(I personally am boycotting this one - used to be THE place to go... now its all ad, popups, schemes, and membership)

Also - are you really sold on the eMac or is there some reason you are getting that machine? I think you would be much happier with an iMac, iBook, or G4 Tower - and you should be able to get the low end of one of those at about the same price. The eMac is specifically designed as a stripped down model of the "real thing" for educational institutions.

the great switcheroo
 

It tends to be a good idea to install all your appz on the X partition.
I have loads of appz installed....and still have space on my 8GB....

Virtual PC disk images can reside anywhere on the computer.
And with a few tweeks the iTunes music folder and iphoto libraries too can be anywhere.

good luck with the switch......OS X is very good and will only get better.

eMac
 

Hiya, actually the eMac is a very capable machine. We have several here and other than the fact they are amazingly heavy, they've proven to be just as good (ok not as nice to look at) as a new iMac.

Re: eMac
 

Hahaha - I get this picture in my head of grade school kids stealing the computers - dragging eMacs out the door, across the playground... maybe thats the purpose of the weight - as a theft deterrant.

Actually - I didn't mean to say the eMacs were NOT good machines.. they are loads better than any pc, but for the same price you can do better. Also - apparently there is a new batch of eMacs released this week which are quite powerful.

"are you really sold on the eMac or is there some reason you are getting that machine? I think you would be much happier with an iMac, iBook, or G4 Tower - and you should be able to get the low end of one of those at about the same price. The eMac is specifically designed as a stripped down model of the "real thing" for educational institutions."

Well I am a college student who wants a fast and cheap mac machine. That's why I want the eMac. The way I see it it's exactly the same as the iMac with the only difference being the monitor. And with the $1300 that I will invest in this purchase I can get a faster computer if I buy an eMac.

eMac: $1300
1GHz PowerPC G4
256MB SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA drive
SuperDrive
17 inch CRT
133GHz System Bus
ATI Radeon 7500 with AGP 4x support; 32MB dedicated DDR SDRAM graphics memory

iMac: $1300
800MHz PowerPC G4
256MB SDRAM
60GB Ultra ATA hard drive
Combo Drive
15-inch LCD flat screen
100GHz System Bus
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX with 32 MB of DDR SDRAM

Through sheer specs I see the eMac as a better option for the money. Now if there is a specific reason why the iMac would be better than the eMac I would REALLY like to know. I wouldn't want to buy a bad product.

Emac "performace and value all in one "

I see your point looks like a good deal. I think if I was a college student - I would go for portable - like this iBook $199 more - but you get portability!

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...9.3.1.1.0?36,9

I decied to put off th epurchase and buy it in late august... who knows the prices may go down. And maybe then the ibook would have a G4 (Hey anything could happen :D )


Hopefully we'll see faster cheaper Mac's by august.

Ah to be a dreamer again :) Faster, probably. Cheaper, i wish!

I think bluehz may have mislead you on this point. Any applications that do not install things onto the system partition, will still work on a new system partition if you were to reformat that 10GB partition.

Most apps only put a preference file in your user folder which will be recreated when you next run the app after the reformat. However, since you will hopefully backup your user folder before reformatting, your files and settings should be stored.

Any apps that require files to be added to the /System folder will probably not work since those files wouldn't be installed when you reformat and install the OS again, IYSWIM?

This is different to Windows, where if you install an app somewhere, tons of settings are made into the registry that say the application must be run from there. You could not move the application folder and its contents because the app wouldn't run (in 99% of cases).

Except in his case he plans on putting everything (Sys, Apps, etc) on the 10G drive and use the remaining for audio storage (MP3, etc), in which case - wiping out that 10G wipes it all out. If I understand him correctly. So as long as you are copying the Applications dir - you might as well clone the whole thing before repartitioning.

One thing to remember when making partitions for your OS X machine (eMac in your case) is that the built in burning software for the Mac OS needs space on the startup volume to make temp images on. For example if you want to burn a cd in your super drive you would need around 800mb of free disk space on your start up volume (the partition the OS is loaded on) so it can write a temp image to the HD then burn it to the cd. If you want to burn DVD's you are going to need about 5gig of free HD space. So I would make your start up volume around 10gigs (since the full install of the OS is like 1.3 gigs or about that). That way you will not have any problems burning CD's/DVD's.

When you compared the eMac to the iMac above the only major difference is you are getting a flat screen LCD at a cheaper price compared to a G4 desktop. The 15" studio display LCD that apple makes starts around $600.00 USD. So if you want a flat panel, but want it at a discounted price the iMac is a good buy.

What if the user was to not partition at all, thereby skipping the whole notion of having to worry about having enough space on the start up volume? What gains are there from partitioning?

"Except in his case he plans on putting everything (Sys, Apps, etc) on the 10G drive and use the remaining for audio storage (MP3, etc)"

You got it a little wrong. What I am planing on doing is installing all my apps on the 70GB drive and have only the Mac OS X operating system on the 10GB drive.

And to the guy who did not know why I would do this-let me explain. You see I am the type of person that does not like fixing things. So when my computer acts up in any way I wipe out the partition that contained the OS and reinstall the OS. I wouldn't be able to do this if i did not repartitioned the drive without destroying all my info. You get what I am saying and why I would rather leave only the OS in the 10GB partition by itself?

Being that all I would have in the first partition is OS X by itself do I really need to allocate 10GB to OS X? When all it takes up is roughfly 1.3GB? I am not getting a DVD-R only a CDRW. Being that now you guys know exactly what I want to do will a 5GB/75GB work out right.

Thanks for your help.

this is a perfectly reasonable approach.

partitioning advantages enumerated somewhere in here:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showth...D+partitioning

any app that is dragable installable gets on a distinct partition here. apps that need to poke their fingers in the boot partition go there. the key to this approach is awareness of what/where app components go.

i've never had any disjoint problems worth mentioning.

edit:

5GB system partition might be a little tight from time to time. give it seven for some wiggle room and you're good to go.

Well, there are a lot of advantages of partitioning. You can do it to orginaze your system, keep data and applications seperate. Make a scratch disk. Install mutliple operating systems. Combine several partitions into a RAID, and then stripe, mirror them with redundantcy for optimal performance. When you do back ups of your system you can back up applications and data sperately. You are correct in the fact that, no, you do not need to partition your mac in any way at all to make it run. However, there are some advantages if you do have a good partition scheme. Not to mention if you are a neat freak with your data, it helps organize it by having all data on one partition. These are just thoughts, and you do not need to partition your drive in several partitons to make your machine run.

I've nothing serious against partitioning.. I was just playing Devil's Advocate. Personaly, I am a data neat freak and I do just fine using directories to store my data :).

I wasn't trying to start a flame, I was just stating its nice to customize your system to how you want it. In a way its kind of like adding after market parts to your car to customize it. I agree with you, on some systems I have one partition and on others I have multilple, mostly for networks shares, and network back ups.

Along these same lines....
 

I have a Dual USB iBook and am about to receive (Postal Service willing) a new 17" iMac. I plan to partition the iMac's drive and was wondering if I would run into problems if I simply clone the iBook's singe partition as the iMac's boot (system) partition.

Specifically:

1 - Are there any system related hardware dependencies that might cause problems?

2 - Will I have any difficulty reinstalling any of the "free" software that comes with the iMac?

Hmmm... you might be pushing the envelope on that one. Theoretically - OS X should install hardware independent, unlike the older System installs that would install according to what hardware you were installing onto. Meaning "YES" you should theoretically be able to clone from one to the other. Now where this poses a problem is that often - machines coming out of the factory may have slightly modified/updated system installs than the ones you and I have on our latest System install disks. They may have little tweaks for that particular model, etc. You just never know.

Short answer: should be fine.

Long answer: maybe, maybe not... push the clone btn and see.... hahaha what have you got to loose....not like your new iMac will have any personal docs on it or anything, and I am sure it will have a System install and probably Restore disk included with it.

Well, I've got the iBook cloned to an external FireWire drive. I suppose I can just boot the iMac from that and see how it goes.

The iMac will have 10.2.5 on it as it was shipped before 10.2.6 came out. I would hope that the 10.2.6 that's on the iBook would have the latest tweaks....

That sounds like a great plan! And I bet your theory about the 10.2.6 update is correct.