Upon riposte home from a poor trip yesterday , I divulge that my screen background G5 had , during my absence seizure , developed a problem — I was unable to copy some images from my digital camera into my iPhoto Library . Instead of succeeder , I was greet with the not - so - pleasant message that iPhoto “ could n’t create ” the simulacrum on the disk . After a bite of troubleshooting , I determined that I had a concentrated thrust trouble , not an iPhoto problem . In shortsighted , the drive where my iPhoto Library resides was no longer writable . I could read files from it , but any attempt to write to it failed — either via iPhoto or the Finder . Disk Utility did n’t show any error on the drive , and even a directory rebuild withDisk Warriordidn’t fix the problem .

At this point , I had no choice but to zero the drive ( using Disk Utility ) and rejuvenate my files from the backup I made just before I exit on my trip . With that done , the drive was again felicitous and hefty . But this article is n’t really about the trouble itself , but rather , why it was only a minor problem and not a major trouble ( besides the fact that I had a current patronage , of course ) .

Disk Partitioning

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My dead drive was only a minor problem because , well , to be reliable , it was n’t a drive that died at all . It was , in fact , a partition on a drive . For those who are n’t familiar , apartitionis nothing more than one smaller opus of a larger severe drive . Though this is oversimplifying things a bit , to the operating system there ’s no difference between a hard drive and one partition of a hard driving — both appear as distinct mountable intensity to the system of rules .

And since a partition wait and act like a hard drive , when you have an issue with a sectionalisation , the problem is usually restricted to that one segmentation — the remainder of the partitions on that disk will be fine . This is n’t true in all situations , of course . If you have a ruinous failure of the driveway ( the index building block fails , the read / write heads stop move , etc . ) , then partitioning is n’t going to facilitate at all . But for most nonaged drive problems , only the affected division will have trouble . In my case , even though the iPhoto segmentation was totally thresh about , I could scan and write to the other partition on the disk without any troubles at all . you’re able to see how OS X treats partitions by take a feeling at one of my Finder window :

As you may see , OS X thinks I have nine distinct hard drives attached . But by using Disk Utility , you may see that I ’ve really just got two driveway on my organisation , with a total of nine partitions across those two private road :

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Disk Utility present the truthful human relationship between each partition and the tangible drive it ’s consociate with .

Had this trouble happened to a non - partitioned drive , there ’s a good probability I would have pass many hr rebuild my intact system — I in all probability would n’t have even been capable to reboot the machine , since OS X is almost always modify cached files . I would have been forced to boot from a FireWire drive , zero the intact damage disk , and then rejuvenate a complete install , including OS X , all my personal filing cabinet , program preferences , etc . But thanks to partitioning , I had a very easy restoration of one non - bootable sectionalisation .

Pros and Cons of Partitioning

In addition to isolating problems to one division , there are some other upsides to partitioning :

But partitioning is n’t all good ; there are some downsides as well :

For me , the top of not misplace an entire strong drive due to a small job with one portion of the parkway makes the hassle of partitioning well worth the downsides . I salve quite a bit of time in this latest incident , and I really enjoy the body structure that comes from assort my system filing cabinet from the various kind of data file .

How to Partition

Apple ’s Disk Utility provides the easiest way to partition your disks — just set in motion it , select the cause you wish to partition in the left - hand chromatography column , and tick on the Partition tab . you may use the Volume Scheme pop - up menu to pick a divider apparatus , or you may create your own .

Very Important Warning

zone your drivewillcause all of the data on it to be erased ! If you are considering partitioning , please makecertainthat you ’ve dumbfound a current stand-in , andthat you are adequate to of restore from that backup ! nonstarter to listen to this warning will make you very , very angry when all of your data goes*poof ! *

Conclusion

The interrogative of ‘ to partition or not ’ will always be somewhat contentious — some see it as a must - do , others see it as a why - do . To me , though , partitioning offers a serious protection program against a long and painful rebuild cognitive operation , so I see it as quite deserving the crusade .