Tackle stubborn disk partitioning in OS X If partitioning a drive with Disk Utility gives you unmount or resource busy errors, there may be workarounds you can use.

Apple has publicly touted a significant new feature in OS X 10.9 Mavericks designed to maximize RAM, storage and CPU use while also boosting power efficiency: Compressed Memory.

It notes: "Unlike most other UNIX versions, Mac OS X does not use a separate partition for the virtual memory swap file.

As most OS X users are probably aware "virtual memory" (or paging, in OS X's case) is always "on," as is the case with any modern operating system. It is an integral part of the kernel's ...

I'd like to allocate 256GB for data that can be read from/written to by both Mac OS X, and Windows. Each OS partition would have 128GB to themselves.

The 499MB in the front is wierd. Usually it is that 100MB up front. OS and then maybe a manufacturer OS recovery partition. But I wouldn't touch them other then moving the 560MB to the end.