YDL - newbie question

[Tim Seufert]

On Feb 24, 2004, at 7:11 PM, Stefan Bruda wrote:

> At 01:14 +0000 on 2004-2-25 Thierry de Coulon wrote:
>> sda? Does thisd mean you installed on a scsi disk?
>
> No, this is the G5's SATA which is viewed as /dev/sda (sdb, etc.).  If
> you initialized the disk using the MacOS-side utilities, /dev/sda3 is
> impossible as a root partition.  The MacsOS drivers are installed in
> the first partitions, typically up to /dev/sda8 or something.

MacOS X doesn't use those driver partitions, they're only needed by OS 
9.  Because of this, X's formatting utility has a checkbox to 
enable/disable installation of the OS 9 drivers.  If you don't plan to 
ever use the disk on OS 9, you can do without them.  (As a side note, 
OS 9 running under Classic can still see disks formatted without 
drivers.  It only needs them when booted natively.)

As of 10.3, Disk Utility doesn't even give you the option to install 
the drivers when it's run on a Mac which cannot boot OS 9.  So it's not 
at all surprising to see a G5 disk without the driver partitions.