Listening to local gurus, I have seen patterns in some of the most experienced veterans OSX use and abuse.

Recently I wrote a post that discussed the pros and cons of multi-booting and multiple hdds.

For this post, I'm curious about people's opinions and experiences of formatting and partitioning.

Keep in mind that various OSes have limitations and file formats also have limitations.

Formatting:

MBR:

GPT:

GUID:

Partitioning:

XP: fat32 (4GB file size limitation)(4 primary partition limitation), ntfs (4 primary partition limitation)

Vista: ntfs (4 primary partition limitation)

Win7: ntfs (4 primary partition limitation)

OSX: hfs, hfs+ (journaled)

Linux: ext2, ext3 (journaled), ext4, zfs

Technically your headers on those should be reversed hehe.

"Partitioning" is sectioning the drive into multiple pieces, and the partition table is either in "Windows/DOS style" (MBR) or in the GUID Partition Table (aka GPT).

"Formatting" is the process of erasing the current filesystem on the drive, and replacing it either with a new filesystem (ie moving from FAT32 to NTFS) or wiping the current one and starting with a fresh copy of the same one (HFS+ full to HFS+ empty).

The MBR partition table is what causes the 4 primary partition limit, so you can have either four primary partitions, or 3 primary partitions and an extended partition.

GPT has a 128 primary partition limit.

Also, Windows introduced a new filesystem (specifically for flash drives) in Vista called "exFAT".

NTFS sucks an incredible amount, and Windows allowing multiple programs to be installed at the same time doesn't help the fact that it needs defragmenting a lot to stay "fast" (ie uncluttered).

FAT32 sucks more.

OS X and Linux seem to have mastered the art of locking down the filesystem during an install to create a very minimal need to defragment. (HFS+ and Ext2/3/4/XFS/JFS/ReiserFS/ZFS)

I'm still up in the air on my opinion for the most "multi-platform-friendly" filesystem, it's going to be a tough choice between HFS+ and Ext3, especially if Snow does bring about full read/write with an official HFS+ driver for Windows.

as of now it stands like this:

HFS+ = read/write on OS X (native), read/write on Linux (can be messy with permissions), read/write on Windows (requires Transmac or MacDrive).

Ext3 - read/write on OS X (requires Paragon Ext3), read/write on Linux (native, if it's built in to the kernel), read/write on Windows with Ext2IFS (Ext2 Installable FileSystem, and yes Ext3 is backwards compatible with Ext2, just like Ext4 with Ext3).

NTFS - read/write on OS X (requires NTFS-3g or Paragon NTFS), read/write on Linux (native, if it's built in to the kernel/NTFS-3g), read/write on Windows (native).

FAT32 - read/write to OS X (native), read/write to Linux (native), read/write to Windows (native), 4GB file limit so not useful/practical for transferring large files between OS's.

That may have made things clear as mud, or genuinely been helpful, let me know ( lol ).

@Realityiswhere

That was very helpful.

I know this forum is supposed to dedicated to education and proper information.

You should DELETE my post above, migrate your post into a sticky in the appropriate section.

My vision would be to then discuss my thread regarding multi-booting vs multiple hdds.

Then proceed through additional progressive conversations/posts/stickies guiding people through their process.

In the meantime, while getting educated and creating a solid library of reference material people gain a valuable resource.

The only thing missing from your post is the discussion on limitations of Windows installations on GPT.

Something that might be worth adding that I saw the other day - courtesy of SticMac and Azimutz:

HFS+ must be journaled and reside on a GUID partition table if you want to use Disk Utility to resize your partitions.

Fortunately, if you formatted as non-journaled for some reason, you can simply convert it to journaled in Disk Utility.

Anyone with the powers to do so, feel free to add this to the final guide (if that's the idea) and delete it from here.

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My OS X drive is GPT/HFS+ Journaled. I used Apple Disk utility to make a second FAT32 partition on it, then later I converted it to NTFS from within Windows. It's just for storage. The partition being NTFS, all I can do with it from Disk Utility is delete it, it can't be re-sized or moved.

Later, I wanted an extra partition to hold my retail 10.5.6 DVD. So I shrank my OS X system partition, created a new 10GB partition and restored my DVD to it, all using Disk Utility. Now I can boot it with a Chameleon 2.0 boot CD and install retail from it. One big plus to having it on HDD is that it boots and installs a lot faster.

Disk Utility is a lot more powerful than it looks.

GPT can handle up to 128 partitions...but there are limitations in OSX that cannot support that many.

How many GUID partitions can be created and seen by OSX, specifically, Disk Utility?

And does Chameleon 2.0 also have any such limitations?