help disk utility

[fed]

Hi everybody,

 

I'm trying to install mac 10.4.8 on my dell m90. I wish to install it on the same hard disk of windows xp, as the pc has only one hdd. To do this I have free some gb of space and left 2 partitions with windows xp and my data.

Now, as the tiger needs its own file system I wish to use disk utility to do this, but I don't know if formatting the free space, disk utility will format also the ntfs partitions. I have seen that you have the option of locking the partitions that you have already formatted, but I don't know if disk utility will change their format anyway. Does anyone know it?

Thank you very much!

Federico

[Zulu.Walker]

Disk Utility can only format the whole drive, and cannot create HFS+ partitions using your drive's free space without erasing the whole disk itself. The partition only becomes locked after you apply the new changes, and it will probably erase your entire NTFS partiton that is already on the drive.

 

Tread lightly, I'd recommend a complete backup of your NTSC partition to another drive (or to DVD if that's your thing) before using disk utility to repartition it for HFS+. It might take a lot of time, but you'll be saving more time with this than with being troubled with a lost NTFS partition afterwards.

[Guest Ramm]

You could use diskpart in Windows. That always seems to work.

[sir mac alot]

yes use diskpart. or follow these directions I found in another post here.

 

There are plenty of ways to create the additional partition(s) needed for OSX. One straightforward way that I used a couple times was DISKPART as described in devilhood's dual-boot tutorial. For example:

1. Run -> diskpart

2. list disk

3. select disk 0

4. create partition primary size=60000 id=af

5. select partition 1

6. active

7. exit

If you prefer a visual interface, you can go into WinXP's "Administrative Tools" control panel, run "Computer Management", and

select "Disk Management" from the choices on the left. Then you can create partitions using the GUI (right-click on the "unalloced space" to create a new partition). Just be sure they are all "primary" partitions, do not assign a drive letter, and do not format them.