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From: HKR@psuvm.psu.edu (Ken Rosenberry)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Minor Hard Disk Question...
Message-ID: <91149.191525HKR@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: 29 May 91 23:15:25 GMT
References: <54870@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 26

In article <54870@nigel.ee.udel.edu>, johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu says:

>My question:  does anyone know what is the purpose of setting aside
>this space?  Is there any reason why one would NOT want to create
>a larger than default partition?

A likely reason that Apple formats all 40M drives at 40M regardless of
the extra space on the disk drive is to accommodate their tape backup
program.  Ditto for drives of other sizes.  If a 'volume backup' is
performed, the backup can only be restored to a disk of the same
partition size.

At PSU, we depend upon volume backups to upgrade our public lab
servers from a master server.  Because we load SuitCase files from the
servers, and because of anomalies with the method SuitCase uses to
find SuitCase files, volume backup and restores are useful.

If you don't depend upon image backup software, I see no reason why
you wouldn't want to use the extra disk space.  The 'free space' on my
160M drive allowed me to create a second partition of 14M (using
Silver Lining).  And unless I'm dreaming, I didn't have to reformat
because the original 160M partition was never altered.

Ken Rosenberry                    Internet:  hkr@psuvm.psu.edu
Senior Systems Programmer         BITNET:    hkr@psuvm
Pennsylvania State University     APPLELINK: u0485