Commands tips and tricks general questions

[Arthoes]

I dont really suppose it would be right of me to ask some one to answere all the questions I plan to list below. But if some one would be so kind as to Tell me where I can find such answeres I will be happy to look myself.

I googled Mac Tweaks and came up with limited resource other then a web forum that had a set of people answering questions. To me this was the best I could find. From the posts I have read I see you take pride in helping others understand and fix there problems.

Well mine is simple.
I have been a PC user for well we wont go back that far lets just say windows 3.1 was neat when it came out.

About 4 months ago I came accross a good deal on a g4 powerbook.

Not a bad little notebook! Matter of fact this post is the first time I have used my PC in a month...

Now what I am trying to find is how to's:...

How do I format the Hard drive on a mac, with OSX Panther I think? 10.3.9 version...

This used notebook came to me freashly formated I loaded the OS onto it no problem. Although I dont know how to create more then one parition.

So I plan on reformating and creating 2 partitions. One for data back up as I have always done with PC.

Now my next question I feel rather stupid for not being able to find online.
What are some basic key commands I mean such as CMD+? and also how to boot in firewire mode. I managed to find that booting from cd was holding down the C key as the system started.

Clean up... Yeah Caches etc... What do I do to clean this thing up in the 4 months I have had it I have only been able to clean Safari up. Now it seems to run a lot slower. I am sure its cluttered up or somthing. So what are some tips on keeping my note book running smoother?

Heck with PC there was all kinds of things i could do to speed it up.

Ok last one. Back ups. I recently bought a new External LaCIE 80 GB HD It came with software to back up mac. So I made a back up with this software SilverKeeper1.1.2 And saved it right on my desktop. Now I pluged my External HD in firewire and went to move the back up folder to my HD and I couldnt copy it all... After some research I found that moving the Mac format back up to a PC formated drive could cause problems. So what I want to know, and I am new to this. Is can I make 2 partitions on this Drive and use one for mac data per say back ups and the other for my PC junk? Is that possible..

Eric

[yellow]

Partitioning (the safest way):
Boot from the Panther installer CD/DVD. Run Disk Utility (from the Installer pull-down menu I think), select the drive (the manufacturer specific drive, not the current name of the drive (probably Macintosh HD)) you want to partition, a partition tab will appear on the right, select it, and the rest should be self-explanitory.

Caveats:
Partitioning this way will erase the drive.
Choose your partition sizes wisely. OS X needs AT LEAST 1.5GB of free disk space at all times to use as swap (virtual memory), so don't put yourself in a position where you will run out of disk space on your boot partition because of applications and the like installed.
Using a partition for "back up" is a Bad Idea™. If the hard drive fails, your "back up" goes with it. A partition is just a separation of 1 logical unit, if that unit fails, you've gained nothing.

To boot into target mode (this is what firewire mode is called), as you boot, hold down the t. That's it. Just t. There are a bajillion sites with many keyboard shortcuts for the OS. Here's a list of common ones, straight from the horse's mouth:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

If Safari is dragging ass, well it's possible that you are overloaded with favicons. Be sure to remove the contents of ~/Library/Safari/Icons/. This will remove all the favicons that you've likely accumulated.

If it's the comptuer running slower, I'd start with some normal troubleshooting steps, outlined here:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2004011205473937

As for 2 partitions, formatted differently for different systems:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030613121738812

[businesscards]

Where Did You Get A Free G4 Powerbook!!?!?!??!?!?!?