The process of dividing a hard disk into different logical units is called Disk partitioning. These logical units are termed as partitions. For computer users, either a Mac user or a PC user, partition is a very general term which lets you to use one physical disk as several multiple disks.
Why to Partition a Mac hard drive?
1. Mac partitioning helps you to keep the operating system (and other applications) separate from user files.
2. If you want to create a clone of your Mac OS only you can do it without disturbing the user files.
3. Its ensures the required virtual memory for the proper functioning of operating system.
4. The hard drive partitioning helps to create multi-boot setups so as to install different operating systems on different partitions.
5. A user can install Windows, Linux and Mac OS X on the same hard disk .
6. On a large hard drive with single partition it takes more time to access the MFT (Master File Table) in comparison to multiple small partitions.
7. We can reduce the chances of file system corruption by creating a separate partition for read-only data.
Apart from partitioning a Mac drive there are some disadvantages of partitioning a Mac drive.
1. The total usable space on the disk gets reduced due to the delicacy of certain file system administration areas on the disk.
2. The size of continuous free blocks gets reduced and thus the chance of fragmentation of data arises.
3. Partitions break the free capacities of the hard drive which reduces the usage of complete disk capacity.
4. Moving data from one partition to another is slower than moving the same data between directories. In case of partitions the OS has copies contents of the data file whereas in case of directories it only alters the file system administration area.
As far as creating Mac partitions is concerned, a user can use the inbuilt disk utility or other specialized application like Stellar Partition manager. This third party Mac tool is capable to create, delete, resize and format Mac partitions.
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