Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts?

From	Matt Simpson <usenet@news.redhorse.me>
Newsgroups	comp.sys.mac.system
Subject	Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts?
Date	2018-09-22 10:17 -0400
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<po5iuj$bbs$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)

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For years, ever since my first install of OS X, I have partitioned the 
hard drive on every Mac I owned. I put the OS and its included apps on 
one partition, and my Users folder, third-party apps, and any other 
non-Apple stuff on a second partition.

The main reason for this was to facilitate clean install of new OS 
versions.  I could erase the system partition, clean install a new OS, 
and point it to my old Users folder.  I would have a fresh OS without 
any residual crap from the old version, and all my user data was still 
there.

I might buy a new Mac sometime soon (my mid-2010 iMac won't run 
Mojave), and that might be a good time to reconsider whether "what I 
have always done" is still a good strategy.

One problem with my old strategy is a lot of software just assumes 
everything is on one big system drive, and behaves funny if it's not.

Another is potential wasted space.  Since I can't accurately predict 
how big an OS will be, and how much a system partition might need to 
grow after installation, I have to include a generous cushion on the 
system partition, and that space is not available for other use  As 
long as hard drive capacities were growing faster than user needs, this 
wasnt a real issue.  On a 1 or 2 TB hard drive, 25 GB of unusable space 
was not an issue. On a 256 GB SSD, it might be more problematic.

Does anybody have any thoughts on whether partitioning hard drives this 
way is still a good idea, or more trouble than it's worth?  Does the 
system upgrade process do a pretty good cleanup job, so that an OS 
upgraded from a previous release doesn't have a lot of clutter that 
wouldn't exist in a clean install?

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Thread

Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Matt Simpson <usenet@news.redhorse.me> - 2018-09-22 10:17 -0400
  Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2018-09-22 10:32 -0400
  Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2018-09-22 22:29 +0000
  Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2018-09-22 19:53 -0400
    Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2018-09-23 12:19 +0000
      Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2018-09-23 13:03 -0400
        Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2018-09-25 12:19 +0000
          Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2018-09-25 18:23 -0400
            Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2018-09-25 22:38 +0000
  Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> - 2018-09-23 09:09 -0400
    Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2018-09-23 10:03 -0400
      Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> - 2018-09-23 10:32 -0400
        Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2018-09-23 10:54 -0400
          Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> - 2018-09-23 10:56 -0400
            Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2018-09-23 10:59 -0400
              Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> - 2018-09-23 11:10 -0400
                Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2018-09-23 11:19 -0400
                Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> - 2018-09-23 12:49 -0400
                Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2018-09-23 13:46 -0400
                Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2018-09-23 13:53 -0400
                Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2018-09-23 18:26 +0000
        Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? John McWilliams <jpmcw@comcast.net> - 2018-09-23 11:48 -0700
        Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2018-09-25 12:15 +0000
  Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Doc O'Leary  <droleary@2017usenet1.subsume.com> - 2018-09-23 17:01 +0000
  Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2018-09-23 17:27 +0000
  Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? Alan Browne <bitbucket@blackhole.com> - 2018-09-23 13:31 -0400
    Re: Mac Hard Drive partitioning thoughts? John McWilliams <jpmcw@comcast.net> - 2018-09-23 11:50 -0700

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