Dumping HFS+ for good

After using ZFS extensively on my FreeBSD box, I’m ready to take the plunge and use ZFS on my OS X laptop.

The main reason for moving to ZFS was to gain the ability to create snapshots since Time Machine relies on a secondary storage device to create backups, and my work and usage patterns emphasizes mobility. Being tied down to a USB drive so that Time Machine can run is just not going to work.

Originally I had planned to use a network share from my FreeBSD machine to do network Time Machine, but my apartment wireless bandwidth is tiny and my ethernet port on my laptop is a bit worse for wear after a travel through Europe so Gig-E does not function.

Anyway,

The first step is to download the latest binaries (or compile from source) from the Mac OS X zfs port

The second step for me is to copy all the large chunks of data from my laptop, which is mostly in the /Users hierarchy. Deleting that data will free up a huge amount of space, which can then be dedicated to ZFS.

Shrinking down the HFS partition is the last step in the process.