[ValVashon]

I'll be setting up a friend's new (old) 333 grape iMac next week, and installing a new 40gb hard drive. I'll partition with two 4gb slices for OS 9 and OSX, and the rest will be the third slice. I'm formatting in HFS+ to allow for a future upgrade to OSX (not planned at this time) but an concerned with the ability to network with her old Performa which is probably in HFS. Will the HFS+ iMac be able to "see" and get files from the Performa via a crossover cable? That's the direction files will be transferred to clean off the Performa before it goes to her parents.

Thanks.

Val

[Camelot]

Volume format (HFS or HFS+) is irrelevant on any volume shared via file sharing. it's always the local machine the disk is attached to that handles file reads and writes and therefore that's the only system that cares.

When using something like FireWire Target Disk mode to directly attach a drive to a system, HFS+ will work on any recent (8.6+? 9.0+? I forget which) OS. Since you're probably not using Target Disk Mode with the Performa, this probably isn't an issue.

In short, the performa will be able to read/write to any shared disk attached to the iMac.

However, I wouldn't follow your thinking on partition scheme. There's really no/little need to have separate partitions for Mac OS 9 and X. I'd go with one big partition for the whole lot, or maybe one small partition for an emergency startup volume.

[bradoesch]

Just to offer another point of view, here are some reasons to keep OS 9 and X on different partiions:

• You can use the option keep during startup to select which OS to boot (no need for startup-disk control panel)
• If you find you don't like/want OS X anymore, it's easier to get rid of it on another partition.
• I've found defragging the partion with OS 9 and OS X made X run more slowly.

Of course I'm only giving more information. I have both OSes on the same partition, if you care to know.


Brad