jerkbag Posted October 30, 2006 Share Posted October 30, 2006 Sorry if this has been answered somewhere else, but: I'm planning to install osx86 to seperate physical drive, my concerns are: a) unless i do something stupid like format the wrong drive during install, will this ensure that I can't mess up my winxp install (on my other drive)? There's nothing I can do to one drive that could somehow mess up other drive / partition tables, is there? will i be able to dual boot by simply selecting the boot device in BIOS, and skipping all the dual-boot setup stuff? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted October 30, 2006 Share Posted October 30, 2006 When installing to an empty hard drive where OSX will be the only OS on the drive, you need to make special preparation. You are installing onto a PC with BIOS. BIOS expects the partitioning scheme to be MBR. Disk Utility on the install DVD partitions the hard drive as GUID - the scheme for Intel Macs with EFI instead of BIOS. You should partition the hard drive using a Windows/Linux disk/partition utility in order to obtain the MBR partition scheme. Simply formatting the entire drive as FAT32 will accomplish this automatically. Note: formatting FAT32 from within Windows should not be done because Windows has a limit of 32 GB for a partition. If your drive is larger than that, then use a 3rd party utility. The MBR scheme creates a teeny-tiny hidden partition at the start of the drive for the boot information and the index for the partitions. The remainder of the drive is one big primary partition. Be sure to set the primary partition "active", and if possible, give the primary partition the ID of AF. When you start the OSX installation, go to the Utilities menu and select Disk Utility. You will be formatting your OSX partition. On the left side, you will see the hard drive listed with one partition listed below it. Click on the partition (not the hard drive) and on the right side, click the Erase tab. Be sure it is set to MacOS Extended Journaled and click the Erase button. Then quit Disk Utility. In the installer, select your new OSX partition. When you get to the screen where you click the Install button, first click the Customize button and select packages for your computer. Click the little arrow in front of the patches category. Select Intel packages, not AMD. Select SSE2 or SSE3, not both, depending upon the capability of your processor. Select the Combo Update to get the latest OS version. Select other packages only if you are sure your computer needs them. http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?act...ost&id=4499 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McSkywalker Posted October 30, 2006 Share Posted October 30, 2006 It is quite unlikely to destroy your hard drive with Windows XP installation, since the installer of Mac OS X has a graphical user interface. But if you get a paranoid feeling about it, you can unplug your XP HD before installing Mac OS X. :glare: You'd want to install Acronis OS Selector in XP, if you want to dual boot more easily. Edit: Oops, Rammjet had already answered while I was typing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevlar Posted October 30, 2006 Share Posted October 30, 2006 The way you are thinking about setting it up is exactly how mine is setup. 2 Physical drives. One for XP, one for OS X. I just select the correct drive in the BIOS for booting (I rarely us XP). Just make sure you select the OS X intended boot drive before you pop in the Install DVD. You won't screw up your XP drive at all. And it then takes away all the headaches of having to setup a dual boot and in my case it's not needed cause I use OS X 99.99% of the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerkbag Posted October 30, 2006 Author Share Posted October 30, 2006 thanks guys. Rammjet -- so I can dual boot through BIOS if I follow your instructions? Or would you guys recommend I use Acronis OS selector anyway? Unplugging the winxp drive might not be a bad idea. . . :glare: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerkbag Posted October 30, 2006 Author Share Posted October 30, 2006 and if possible, give the primary partition the ID of AF. You just mean the label right? Isn't the drive ID hex (xxxx-xxxx) or something like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McSkywalker Posted October 30, 2006 Share Posted October 30, 2006 Rammjet -- so I can dual boot through BIOS if I follow your instructions? Or would you guys recommend I use Acronis OS selector anyway? In fact, both. Acronis gives you a graphical interface similar to the logon in XP. You can select the system to boot by a single mouse click. Just follow Rammjet's instructions. Acronis is not a must-have in your case, but it makes booting easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baliw Posted October 30, 2006 Share Posted October 30, 2006 Another option is to use Mobile Dock ( removable HD enclosure) just to avoid the hassle messing with the bios. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy Posted November 9, 2006 Share Posted November 9, 2006 in my case is different. I first boot the 10.4.8 installer DVD and disk utility automatic erase disk and repartition with FDISK partition scheme which is compatible with BIOS and automatically set the partition active (not in the case of 10.4.6 which i have to use Linux LiveCD to set it active). installation went well and boot like a real mac beside the about 20 seconds delay before load bootloader (chain0). i only have 1 HD and it all for OS X. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anibalin Posted November 11, 2006 Share Posted November 11, 2006 geez i cannt make the installer find the hdd. tried everything, logical - primary, slave, master. Its a pata hdd. running 10.4.8 jas fixed release. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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