Re: Desktop Drive Clutter

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <5djhig$4sj@strange.dfwmm.net>,
Martin Gruen <mgruen@chaos.dfwmm.net> wrote:
>  I have recently install a 300+ megabyte hard drive.  Because of apple's 
>30meg limit per hard drive partition, my desk top is cluttered with hard 
>drive partitions.
>  Does anyone know a way to over come this so I can have larger 
>partitions and/or less clutter from it on my desktop?????

   Quoting directly from the comp.sys.apple2 Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ) at http://www.visi.com/~nathan/a2/faq/csa2.html section 7.9:

--- Begin quoting

7.9 Why do partitions have a maximum size of 32MB?

A: ProDOS, the usual choice for Apple II disks (Hard Drives, CD-ROMs,
etc), is limited to 32MB per partition. It would require rewriting
large chunks to get it to work with larger partitions.  Just use the
partitioning tools (included with the SCSI card or the like) to make
several 32MB partitions.

If you have a GS with System 6.0, you can install the HFS FST (you
must do a customized install, not the Easy Update), which lets you
have partitions larger than 32MB. The System 6.0.1 HFS FST should have
the patch applied to it before it is used with volumes larger than
96MB, but I (Nathan Mates) have had volumes smaller than 96MB
corrupted and don't really trust the HFS FST. (See the System 6.0
Minifaq in this FAQ for details on where to download the patch.

The differences between HFS and ProDOS are as follows:

ProDOS partitions: Limited to 32MB, your boot (first) partition MUST
be a ProDOS volume.  Disk integrity checkers exist (ProSEL by
Charlie's Appleseeds, Salvation by Vitesse) to make sure your disk
remains uncorrupted as possible.

HFS partitions: Requires GS/OS System 6.0 or higher, and therefore
1.5MB RAM. You can not boot a HFS disk on an Apple II. Maximum volume
size is either 2 or 4 gigabytes (pretty darn big either way). System
6.0.1's default HFS FST has bugs that are know to corrupt disks >96MB;
even with the Apple-approved patches it may not be stable. The only
way to verify that a partition is uncorrupted is to take the HD to a
Mac and run Apple's Disk First Aid or Norton Utilities on it-- no GS
HFS disk verification programs exist.

Keeping good backups of your files is a real lifesaver when problems
happen, no matter what filesystem they're saved to.

--- End quoting

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein