InfiniteMac OSx86 - View Single Post

naquaada · 07-01-2008, 11:45 AM

Are you using a complete HD for OS X ? If yes and you still want to reinstall your system, try my 3-partition system. I'm always using a drive with two boot partitions and a system storage partition. A system with two boot partitions make the life extremely easy if something wents wrong.

Boot the install DVD, enter Disk Utility and partition the drive in three partitions. The first one is the big main partition, the second is a small recovery partition and the third is the storage partitions. Best start the partitioning from the bottom. On a 320GB HD the partition sizes are following:

Leopard: 251,42 GB (the rest if you begin partitioning from the bottom)
Recovery: 15,90 GB
Shared: 30,90 GB

I used rather curious sizes but it's ok this way. If you have a smaller harddrive resize the partitions, but the Recovery should not be smaller than 10GB (my 10.5.4 Recovery system is 7,17 GB, but is very optimized), and the Shared partition (which has access from both boot drives) shouldn't be smaller than 15 GB becuase it needs to store drive images. Format the partitions with zeroes after that.

Now start installing - but first on the Recovery partition! After it's finished, optimize it. You can do this by removing all unneccessary kexts, so if you have an Nvidia card you can remove all ATI kexts. But backup them - for this reason the Shared partition exists. Now you can configure you system as perfect as possible, but install only programs which are useful for the system. OK, I have a lot of progs installed, so Firefox, DivX, VLC and so on. But no text program or other apps. Use XSlimmer to reduce the sizes. I also would install iDefrag and Onyx.

After the system is finished, boot into the install DVD again and enter Disk Utility. Select the Recovery partition and overwrite the free bocks with zeroes - do not format it again. Now create an image of it and save it on the Shared partition. Name could be 10.5.3 Recovery 1 and/or the date. After it's finished, select in the 'Image' menu the point 'Check image for Restoring' or what's it called. It's the last point in this menu. After is process was finished successfully, select the Leopard partition and click on 'Restore'. Select the image you just created so that it will be written on the Leopard partition. Activate the marker 'Erase Drive'. Now the image will be copied blockwise on your main partition. When it's finished - voilá - you have two identical volumes called 'Recovery', but only one time the work.

Reset and reboot the installation DVD in -s mode. Now the main boot partition must be made bootable. Best use only one drive on the computer. Enter these commands:

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0

update
f 1
w
q

Reset and enter the Darwin boot menu. Now the first partition should be selected. Boot into it and rename it back in 'Leopard' or whatever you like. Then wait if all drive access is finished. Best start Onyx after this if you have it installed. Boot in the Recovery partition and optimize your main partition f.e. with iDefrag and create with Disk Utility an image of it. use Image/Check for Recovery again.

Now you have backups of your main and backup partition. You can now use the Recovery partition for experiments, f.e. the 10.5.4. Update or new drivers. If something wents wrong, like Quicktime 7.5, boot back in your main partition and restore it from the image. If you crash your main partition f.e. by modifing kexts you can recover it in the most cases by booting into the Recovery partition and fix it from there. How exactly you are with the installation is your thing, in my last installation I created the Recovery partition and the copy on the Leopard partition, but I first optimized the Recovery partition. I had 9 different versions as it was good enough for me to be copied the first time as main partition. An image of a very well installed Recovery partition with 60 apps and 7,17 GB size is 2,6 GB in size, the enhanced Leopard partition with 86 apps was 3,13 GB. It's also always possible to keep an image on a DVD.