Dusky said:
All you have to do is search, either in this forum or just about any other Mac-related forum and you'll find plenty of comment about it.
Basically, there's almost no reason to partition in OSX. It was helpful in pre-X days and so many peecee users have it ingrained into them. Unless you're a developer, or have specific needs, a partition is something you don't need.
But let's narrow it down and go over your first comments.
Dusky said:
I partition my hard disk into three sections. One partition holds panther, another holds my user folder, and the third partition is where I place files that are neither part of the operating system nor personal stuff. I do it this way so that I can do a fresh/clean install/reinstall of the operating system when needed. I suspect this will bring me problems in the future, though... (a newly installed OS not recognizing the user partition as the user's home directory... making files inaccessible?)
Unless you have scads of hard drive space, why limit yourself? Adjusting partitions isn't like in Windoze. And tell me what the advantages of keeping files in different places accomplishes? A folder will do the same thing.
If you're worried about corruption, create a new user with admin rights and only log in to that account if you suspect a problem. That'll determine if the problem is software- or hardware-related.
Repairing permissions is a must-do in OSX. And you have the potential for greater problems with partitioning than just keeping things on one drive and keeping partitions up-to-date.
You even admit that you could face problems in the future with the structure you have. And if you really want to do a clean install, you could just copy from a CD or DVD or external hard drive after the clean install. And if you don't have a backup in one of those media, you're really taking a chance because a hard-drive failure (or theft in a laptop) will not be deterred by a partition.
So, let's see. I have a G4 iBook, 60GB hard drive, with about 57.5GB of it usable. Why not take advantage of the entire hard drive. And if you need extra security, create an encrypted disk and store files/documents in there.
Maybe you're a developer or you have special needs and require partitions. And if so, that's fine. And maybe you're so used to it from a PC background (or you just jumped to OSX) and you're used to it.
But if you check around a little, you'll find plenty of advantages to NOT having multiple partitions on a hard drive.
And if you want, I'll be happy to locate scads of information on it for you.