[Ham-Mac] Re: ] Why Partition vs. Erase a SATA hard drive?

Dick Kriss, AA5VU aa5vu at arrl.net
Wed Aug 3 05:58:11 EDT 2005


Carl,

Thanks for the explaination I wanted. I have learned something new and
will us the Partition option in the future.


On 8/2/05 8:36 PM, "Carl Makin" <carl at stagecraft.cx> wrote:

> Hi Dick,
> 
> On Tue, 2 Aug 2005, Dick Kriss, AA5VU wrote:
> 
>> Stay tuned for the response from SIIG regarding their manual that says to
>> use the Partition function.  I talked to an Apple tech who said he always
>> uses the Partition function for new drives but he could not remember why he
>> uses Partition vs. Erase.
> 
> Using the partition function rewrites the partition information to the
> disk and then formats the partition.  This would get around any problems
> with the partition info possibly being corrupt, or incompatible (old
> version?).  The erase function just reformats the partition without
> rewriting or updating the partition information.
> 
> If you were working with an old disks partitioned pre-MacOS X then it
> might be a good idea to use partition otherwise it shouldn't matter
> (Although it won't hurt).
> 
> Be careful with the partition function though if you have an external disk
> with existing partitions that you want to keep.  The Apple Disk Utility
> has limitations in how it can partition drives.  For example I have a
> 120Gb disk partitioned as two 60Gb volumes, the first being DOS, the
> second HFS+.  Disk Utility wouldn't let me do that and I had to do it on
> my FreeBSD box.  Once partitioned though, it works fine on the iMac.
> 
> 
> Carl.
> 
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