Mounting partitions

[rwillett]

This is probably a dumb question (and yes I have googled for the answer).

 

I come from a traditional Unix background and normally break a bunch of disks up into partitions and then simply mount them at the appropriate spot to create a large directory tree,

 

e.g. One partition might be at /home, another at /var, and yet another at /var/www.

 

Each of these partitions will be big enough to hold the right information, and by doing this I can take a couple of disks and make a simple directory tree thats bigger than one single disk. Nothing clever, nothing complicated.

 

I want to do the same with Mac OS X Snow Leopard, but nobody seems to be doing this (or at least I don't know anybody).

 

Can I simply edit /etc/fstab and add in the partitions so that I could create a large video directory (for example) in my home directory?

 

This seems trivial and on a Linux box would be trivial, Mac OS X treats partitions differently, e.g. by loading on the desktop.

 

Any ideas whats best practise, tips or advice welcomed.

 

Thanks,

 

Rob.

[neil43]

Well don't know what the best practice is with OS X, but the commonly accepted procedure is to use one partition for everything in OS X. The OS X disk utility will let you carve up a disk into a number of partitions (I do not know the maxium). Then OS X adds hidden partitions as dictated by the current scheme.

 

If you open terminal and issue a "diskutil list" command you will be presented with a list of the disks and the partitions on them. For example, the system that I am on has a 4 disk RAID 10 setup with a fifth disk for Time Machine. See below.

 

corp-200:Volumes neil$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_RAID 499.8 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 134.2 MB disk0s3

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk1

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_RAID 499.8 GB disk1s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 134.2 MB disk1s3

/dev/disk2

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk2

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1

2: Apple_RAID 499.8 GB disk2s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 134.2 MB disk2s3

/dev/disk3

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk3

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk3s1

2: Apple_HFS TimeMachine 999.9 GB disk3s2

/dev/disk4

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk4

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk4s1

2: Apple_RAID 499.8 GB disk4s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 134.2 MB disk4s3

/dev/disk5

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS RAID-0 *999.5 GB disk5

corp-200:Volumes neil$

So I have not answered your question, but a large space for video is not a problem today with cheap fast SATA hard drives (either internal or external). With OS X you have the option of seeing the "device icons" of mounted devices on the desktop. If this bothers you, you can turn off the display of the device icons in the Finder Preferences.

 

neil

[rwillett]

Neil,

 

Thanks for the reply. I was suspecting that people simply do not mount partitions under each other simply because I can't see how to do it (easily). /etc/fstab doesn't really exist, Mac OS doesn't have the equivalent of /etc/rc.d/* etc etc.

 

I think the concept of forcing separate partitions to be separate entities is wrong, it's not really different to the Windows and their drive letters, just a little cleaner in the presentation.

 

I recognise that multi-terabyte disks are easily large enough to hold everything in a single partition, but that doesn't mean its the right way to do it. Extra disks will normally mean faster access as you have more spindles to spread the load.

 

But anyway thanks for taking the time to reply, I do appreciate it.

 

All the best,

 

Rob.

 

Well don't know what the best practice is with OS X, but the commonly accepted procedure is to use one partition for everything in OS X. The OS X disk utility will let you carve up a disk into a number of partitions (I do not know the maxium). Then OS X adds hidden partitions as dictated by the current scheme.

 

If you open terminal and issue a "diskutil list" command you will be presented with a list of the disks and the partitions on them. For example, the system that I am on has a 4 disk RAID 10 setup with a fifth disk for Time Machine. See below.

 

corp-200:Volumes neil$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_RAID 499.8 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 134.2 MB disk0s3

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk1

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_RAID 499.8 GB disk1s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 134.2 MB disk1s3

/dev/disk2

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk2

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1

2: Apple_RAID 499.8 GB disk2s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 134.2 MB disk2s3

/dev/disk3

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk3

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk3s1

2: Apple_HFS TimeMachine 999.9 GB disk3s2

/dev/disk4

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk4

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk4s1

2: Apple_RAID 499.8 GB disk4s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 134.2 MB disk4s3

/dev/disk5

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS RAID-0 *999.5 GB disk5

corp-200:Volumes neil$

So I have not answered your question, but a large space for video is not a problem today with cheap fast SATA hard drives (either internal or external). With OS X you have the option of seeing the "device icons" of mounted devices on the desktop. If this bothers you, you can turn off the display of the device icons in the Finder Preferences.

 

neil

[mdnz01]

Hi,

 

In my point of view the reason why Mac OS doesn't include this feature is because it is a consumer OS. Server operating systems like Linux, BSD and UNIX include this feature for obvious reasons, and because servers usually have more hard drives.

 

None of the Macs come with a default option of installing multiple drives, only the Mac pro.

Like Neil already said, OS X automatically places a partition on your desktop, as well on the left side of the Finder, that's all there is to it I'm afraid.

[rwillett]

Hi,

 

In my point of view the reason why Mac OS doesn't include this feature is because it is a consumer OS. Server operating systems like Linux, BSD and UNIX include this feature for obvious reasons, and because servers usually have more hard drives.

 

None of the Macs come with a default option of installing multiple drives, only the Mac pro.

Like Neil already said, OS X automatically places a partition on your desktop, as well on the left side of the Finder, that's all there is to it I'm afraid.

 

These are good points, especially the lack of multiple drives, I hadn't considered that at all.

 

Apple had to go out of their way to remove this functionality from the OS, but I'm not going to get too worried about it.

 

Rob.

[mschilling]

Probably the best you can do is to move your home folder to another hdd, which makes sense when switching distros. Leopard and SL have that option in accounts, right click on your account for advanced options.

[TheKurrgan]

Hi,

 

In my point of view the reason why Mac OS doesn't include this feature is because it is a consumer OS. Server operating systems like Linux, BSD and UNIX include this feature for obvious reasons, and because servers usually have more hard drives.

 

None of the Macs come with a default option of installing multiple drives, only the Mac pro.

Like Neil already said, OS X automatically places a partition on your desktop, as well on the left side of the Finder, that's all there is to it I'm afraid.

 

 

The system does provide an actual mount point.. Default is /Volumes/[disk label]

 

That is handled by the automounter which is dimmly configurable via burried plist files in /Library

 

 

 

However, if you are *INTENT* on performing what is considered odd by non-hackintosh non-unix people, you can use sym links to the various things you want to be mounted... for example..

 

Drive 1: OS X Primary -- High Speed SSD

 

Drive 2: User Dir

 

 

 

you would need to label the drives and reference their mount point.

 

do a symlink to the actual spot. if you want to do a sym link of the entire /Users folder, you'll need to drop to single user mode and create the symlink forcibly without the drive mounted <eg, where it WILL be.>

 

 

 

I run my hackintosh on a 80GB intel SSD, which is adequate for most everything, but i wanted to have ease of use while having multiple disks, so I used a different disk for itunes which i linked the standard user dir/Library/iTunes to, and one for video and what not.

 

this is about as close as it gets without digging real deep, and I am not even sure its possible any mroe with 10.5 and up -- I did years ago define mount points manually on 10.2, but thats ancient history.

 

 

 

Good luck.

[neil43]

Maybe a little off topic, in the context of Hackintoshs, I have gone to using mulitple HDDs in RAID 0 for speed and RAID 1 for reliability (mashed into a RAID 10, stripped and mirrored). This results in better performance and low cost (far less then going to SSDs). The unknown is how long will a RAID 10 using current technology SATA drives work reliability. Also, just how good is TimeMachine?

 

Anyway at present I have two i7 machines with RAIDs running in production 24x7 and I will see how it pans out over time.

 

Of interest to build RAIDs on Hackintoshs you get a work out of mounting and unmounting partitions (terminal command is "diskutil mount disk0s3").

 

neil

[srs5694]

Thanks for the reply. I was suspecting that people simply do not mount partitions under each other simply because I can't see how to do it (easily). /etc/fstab doesn't really exist, Mac OS doesn't have the equivalent of /etc/rc.d/* etc etc.

 

Although /etc/fstab doesn't exist in a default installation, OS X does support it. See its man page, for instance. I've heard of people using it, mainly to prevent partitions from auto-mounting (Windows partitions, say). I personally have never used it to create a more Unix-like separation of different data types into different partitions, so I can't guarantee that it can be used for that, but I'd be a bit surprised if it couldn't be done.