>Subject: Quick partitioning question
>From:    Mark Andres <mark@ratbert.giganet.net> at Internet
>Date:    3/13/97  11:11
>
>First, thansk to those who gave me input on using a Quadra 800.  As it
>trned out, I found a good deal on a Centris 650 with 40! MB or RAM.  I
>grabbed a 1.2GB HD and I am trying to partition the HD.  I have my usual
>MacBSD box (IIcx) at home and I am at work now.  
>
>Using Silverlining, I partitioned it into 5 slices (in this order):
>
>1 Driver
>2 A/UX root
>3 A/UX swap
>4 A/UX usr
>5 Mac HFS
>
>Now comes the problem.  The Mac will not boot off of the internal HD with
>this partition set-up.  If I make one big Mac partition, it will then boot
>properly, so I think it is the partitioning not the disk.  I don't have my
>IIcx handy, so I can't check the partitioning on it.

It must be Silverlining, not the partitioning.  Try the patched version
of Apple's "Apple HD SC Setup" program.  (Instructions for patching it:  a. get
the latest copy {7.3.5 I think} b. open in resedit.  edit the single resource of
type "wfwr" and change the single byte it contains from "00" to "FF" c. save).
I use Hard Disk Toolkit myself.  <http://www.fwb.com/>  With Hard Disk Toolkit,
I have successfully booted of mac partitions anywhere on the disk.

Note that each partition can be marked whether or not to mount at start up and
whether or not it's bootable.  Silverlining may not have marked the Mac HFS
partition at the end of the disk both "mount at start up" (called automount in
Hard Disk Toolkit) and "bootable".

>
>Can someone give me the proper order for the slices?  Thanks in advance.

I personally have my swap before my root at home.  This seems to work fine too.

>Mark Andres                                       Head, Support Dept.
>              GIGANET by Business Network Telecom (BNT)
>E-mail: mark@giganet.net  URL: http://www2.giganet.net/private/users/mark/

I have developed some Disk Formatting/Partitioning Hints:

1. You MUST format your disk with 512 byte sectors.  If your formatting utility
   allows you to change it, DON'T!

2. Before partitioning your drive, it will consist of:
   a. Apple Partition Map
   b. Disk Driver Partition
   c. Free Space
   d. Possibly other little partitions specific to your driver (Iomega has
      these on their Zip drives).

3. When you partition the Free Space, create mac partitions at the end
   of the disk (higher numbered blocks).  Create Un*x partitions at the
   start of the disk (lower numbered blocks).  Why?  Because if you have
   several Mac HFS partitions and several Un*x partitions, and you put
   the Mac ones first, you won't be able to get to all the Un*x partitions
   because only the first 8 are available in Mkfs and Installer.

4. If you don't have some other large (>= 20 MB) bootable media (such as
   a Zip or Jaz drive) then I recommend creating at least two Mac HFS
   partitions.  A small one (32-64 MB) that contains disk repair utilities
   AND a system folder (Mark this one read-only after you've installed
   the software on it) and one or more others for day-to-day operations.
   If you have to do disk repair and you don't have another large bootable
   media, the separate read-only, bootable partition with the disk repair
   utilities on it will save your butt!

5. Hard Disk Toolkit (HDT) will allow you to do all these things.  It also
   will allow you to select a different partition to boot off at startup
   if you hold down the magic keystrokes.  (No, I'm not affiliated with HDT
   in any way, but it's one of the best disk formatting/partitioning
   packages I've used.)

Kyle McKay
Kyle_McKay@Intuit.Com