vickzaz Posted May 3, 2006 Share Posted May 3, 2006 Hello there, I have ordered last week the new MPB 17" with the 100gb 7200kpm option. I plan on using bootcamp a lot, mainly windows for working and OSX for surfing, movies and so on. Later on I'll be using OSX for work too, when the Creative Suite and After Effects will be in universal binaries. For now, I'll have to stick to windows. So I was wondering, how to organize my partitions in the best possible way ? Here's my idea : One HFS partition of 18gb for OSX, one NTFS partition of 18gb for windows, and one HFS partition of 64gb for data files. I'b be using Macdrive in windows for accessing the 64gb partition fully and would set to read-only the OSX partition. That way, both systems wont be able to mess with each other partition, no viruses from windows, no intrusive meta data in the windows partition from OSX. With the data partition formated in HFS I'll be able to use spotlight in OSX, and with macdrive on Windows to work on it properly and without risk. The questions are : is this possible ? For example, can I tell macdrive to read and write only on the big 64gb partition and not the OSX partition ? Can I use the 64gb partition in windows with macdrive daily and seamlessly ? And, first of all, can bootcamp manage 3 partitions, if so, how to procede ? I'd like to avoid the fat32 file system because of its low reliability and its 32gb limit. I work very often with very large video file, sometimes more than 20gb so FAT32 would be a real bottleneck. But I'm afraid that planning on using a HFS drive for work in windows is a bit risky as I don't really know this product... Thanks for your answers ! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16611-best-way-to-partition-my-mbp-17/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgrimes80 Posted May 4, 2006 Share Posted May 4, 2006 Sounds ok to me... Just so you know, You're going want some scrape body fat in OSX because the stardard install it like 17Gs.... you can get it under 3G by eliminating all the other {censored}. Personally, I would just split the thing (HSF)/(FAT32)...(i did 80/20) decide what you'll need more of most often then get an external drive, format it to FAT32 for any extra space. I do intensive work in both os's (3D CAD/rendering in XP, movies in OSx) and after playing with it, this seemed to be the best solution for me. I've noticed no problems with FAT32 To answer a few of your questions; Anything is possible... BootCamp doesn't handle any partitions; the bootloader is a built-in feature. If there is no OS on it, it won't show. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16611-best-way-to-partition-my-mbp-17/#findComment-107673 Share on other sites More sharing options...
vickzaz Posted May 10, 2006 Author Share Posted May 10, 2006 Thanks for the reply. I'll stick on using a big HFS partition for data with the help of macdrive. The 4gb limitation of FAT32 will be a real problem for me. As for OSX, I didn't remember it ate up so much space, I guess I'll make it a 30gb partition. I have another concern now, as I read over the internet people experienced problem installing bootcam drivers on the MPB 17". They solved it by installing every single driver by hand... I hope apple will update their driver before I get the unit. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16611-best-way-to-partition-my-mbp-17/#findComment-110674 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgrimes80 Posted May 10, 2006 Share Posted May 10, 2006 Like I said earlier, OSX can be watered down pretty good - Minus 4G with just the canceling of trials. I'd seriously doubt Apple intends to do any updates for Bootcamp, so I wouldn't get your hopes up. This is a "beta", Apple just released it to calm the demand so they can keep schedule. The next OSX update is supposed to have "Bootcamp" built-in and by "built-in" I'm sure they have something up their sleeves. And I don't know much about problems with the 17" MBP... but on my 15" MBP, I did install the sound driver from wiki. (no speakers in XP) <-- the speakers would stay on with headphones plugged in. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16611-best-way-to-partition-my-mbp-17/#findComment-110798 Share on other sites More sharing options...
vickzaz Posted May 17, 2006 Author Share Posted May 17, 2006 Hi ! So I got the MPB 17" and I'm quite happy with it. I went on with the windows installation at once. I used diskutility in the terminal, and partionned the disk that way : one 30G HFS+ partition for OSX, one 40G HFS+ partition for storage and one 22G MS DOS FAT32 partition for XP. I installed XP on that partition, then used Macdrive 6.1 to see the HFS partitions. I only mounted the 40G and kept the OSX partition hidden. Everything worked fine for a moment between the 2 OS, then I couldn't have access to the 40G HFS+ partition on OSX. It still works fine on XP though. When I repair the disk with diskutility it says it can't repair it. I can't mount it even if i force it. Is there a terminal command that could help me ? Also I'm gonna try the sound driver too, as I listen a lot of music I'd really like to be able to use my studio speaker ! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16611-best-way-to-partition-my-mbp-17/#findComment-114217 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgrimes80 Posted May 18, 2006 Share Posted May 18, 2006 I know there is one, hopefully someone knows what it is... lol Can you post up the info on the partition (accessible via Disk Utility) if you can... And describe the circumstances leading to it's failure to mount... BTW, I still think you're shooting yourself in the foot using HFS+ instead of FAT32 for your shared partition... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16611-best-way-to-partition-my-mbp-17/#findComment-114784 Share on other sites More sharing options...
vickzaz Posted May 18, 2006 Author Share Posted May 18, 2006 I'm afraid you're right... The HFS performance on windows is not so great. I have a tif sequence for a video project that takes forever to load. That plus the risk of screwing it up each time windows crashes is just too much. I found out that the FAT32 32G limitation is windows only, if you format the volume on another OS, you can have a partition bigger than 32G in XP. Because I couldn't find a way to do it neither in OSX nor XP (OSX wouldn't format, XP neither, and Partition Magic won't start on XP, I doesn't recognize the weird MBR I guess, and on Linux I can't see the partitions...) So I restarted the whole installation process, with a big 50GB FAT32 partition. More news once I finish. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16611-best-way-to-partition-my-mbp-17/#findComment-114829 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgrimes80 Posted May 18, 2006 Share Posted May 18, 2006 I tried to tell you... just playing, post up if you have any problems Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16611-best-way-to-partition-my-mbp-17/#findComment-114845 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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