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How can i create a third partition on my macbook pro? I have read other topics in the forum but I am still confused. i want to create 3 partitions (one for os x, another for windows and another to store my data files on). I tried reinstalling OS X first and tried to partiton the hard drive under disk utility to create one os X partition (30gb) and one data partition (FAT32 to be accessible to both OS's). However when i try to install windows during bootcamp it wont let me with the extra partition. How can I create a third (FAT32) partition to be used by both OS's? Thank you for your help. i appreciate it!!!

  • 2 weeks later...

If you have already partitioned using bootcamp the easiest way would be to backup and start over.

 

If not (and you have 1 large HFS+ GPT partition), then you are in luck.

 

Your partition table should look someting like this (type diskutil list in terminal):

 

w400-2222:~ root# diskutil list
/dev/disk1
  #:				   type name			   size	  identifier
  0:  GUID_partition_scheme					*74.5 GB  disk1
  1:					EFI					200.0 MB  disk1s1
  2:			  Apple_HFS Firewire Drive	 74.2 GB   disk1s2
w400-2222:~ root#

 

That's my firewire drive.

 

So If i wanted to create 1 HFS+, 1 FAT32 (later formated to NTFS if desired), and another FAT32 for storage i could just do a diskutil resizeVolume:

 

sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk1s2 40G "MS-DOS FAT32" WinXP 20G "MS-DOS FAT32" Storage 20G

 

From an 80Gb Drive that would resize the HFS+ partition to be 40G, give you a 20G FAT32 for Windows and another 20G FAT32 for storage.

 

But if you have already used Bootcamp. I would create an ASR image for restore of your HDD so you can restore it later then (booting from a bootable CD/DVD/firewire drive/etc.) run the command in terminal:

 

sudo diskutil partitionDisk disk0 3 HFS+ OSX 40G MS-DOS WinXP 20G MS-DOS Storage 20G

 

Change the sizes acordingly. Then restore the ASR image to your OSX partition and install Windows.

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