Make XP Writable from OS X?

[audiologic]

Hello, is it possible to make the windows xp partition writable from OS X? (currently read only) Is it also possble to change it's name from "untitled"?

Thanks,
Ben

[maconlysource]

When I booted into my OSX, I was able to move files over to "Untitled" without any problems.

[maconlysource]

Also, I changed my lable to Windows XP on my OSX desktop, and it did not effect booting back into Windows.

[jann]

Hello, is it possible to make the windows xp partition writable from OS X? (currently read only) Is it also possble to change it's name from "untitled"?

Thanks,
Ben


When you install XP and you get to XP's partition screen, choose the windows partition and FAT (not NTFS)

You will get an option after that (next screen) that tells you FAT32 will be used if the partition is too large for FAT.

Then you can read and write to it.

As for NO NAME Or UNTITLED...

Someone else is going to have to figure out if the Finder's rename of a volume (click-wait-type new name) causes a problem with the booting or running of XP. It is just the disk label, so i doubt it does, but without being a HUGE windows guy, I cannot say .

Jann

[cnakeitaro]

This is probably a very stupid question, but I have yet to try loading windows on my iMac just due to the fact that I want to wait til everything is supported, but to the fact of the partitions....

I've been a Mac user since 2002 when I bought an iBook for college, but I still feel I havn't learned much about how the inner workings of OSX work. I assume that you can load any program you want to on the alternative WinXP partition if its using FAT32 (which I find a pain since its insecure). But, I guess the questions I want to ask are:

1. Are there any performance losses by running off of the other partition? I'm pretty sure that answer the answer to that is no, but I still just wanna hear the answer.

2. From installing programs with external drives available, some applications refuse to install to them, and only want to install on the drive that MacOS X is on. I assume its because the installer is adding files to the system directories. So my other question is, can apps be installed on the other partition? If so, are there some apps that won't?

This is really all in relation to the size of my partitions. I would like to maximize the drive space that both OS' have access to. Is there a way to point your personal account to the other partition as well, so that like your iTunes directory and such points to the other partition?

I also assume another danger of keeping your apps on the other partition would be the threat of viruses when running windows that could affect your files possibly. Especially if you had to wipe the partition. >.<

[sdavis]

cnakeitaro,

1 - there are really no noticable performance issues... maybe after a while(months) of using XP you might notice it getting slow but a defrag should fix that...

2 - you can install any program that you want, right now with the driver problems they all might not work, but you can install them all. im sure that you could even get viruses on your imac...

The iMac that i worked on has a 250GB drive so i partitioned 40GB for windows and 192 for mac... that made it so i HAD to do NTFS... the other thing that you can do is do 3 partitions, 80 - mac, 40 - XP, 100 - Fat32 (format it using MAC's formatter as MS-DOS and that SHOULD allow you to see it in windows... i havent tried it yet though but it sounds legit...

oh and by the way, i can see my NTFS partition perfectly fine in OSX... havent written anything to it yet, but will soon...

good luck!

[jann]

oh and by the way, i can see my NTFS partition perfectly fine in OSX... havent written anything to it yet, but will soon...

good luck!

NTFS is a MS closed format.

You cannot write to it.

You _can_ read from it, thou.

Jann

[sdavis]

very cool, i wasnt sure on that one and your right, it dont work :)

[Steve1496]

NTFS-Supports up to 16EiB Storage; closed format; cannot write to it from OSX.
FAT32-Supports (on windows) up to 32GB; Open format; can write to from OSX.

Hope that helps!

Steve

[cnakeitaro]

NTFS-Supports up to 2TB Storage; closed format; cannot write to it from OSX.
FAT32-Supports (on windows) up to 32GB; Open format; can write to from OSX.

Hope that helps!

Steve

Are you sure thats right? The information I have says that FAT32 supports up to 8 Terabytes in data and NTFS supports up to 16 Exabytes.

[Steve1496]

Are you sure thats right? The information I have says that FAT32 supports up to 8 Terabytes in data and NTFS supports up to 16 Exabytes.


Actually Fat32 supports up to 8TB but Windows XP only support 32GB FAT partitions.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314463

"You cannot format a volume larger than 32 gigabytes (GB) in size using the FAT32 file system during the Windows XP installation process. Windows XP can mount and support FAT32 volumes larger than 32 GB (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB by using the Format tool during Setup. If you need to format a volume that is larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system to format it. Another option is to start from a Microsoft Windows 98 or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Startup disk and use the Format tool included on the disk. "

NTFS does actually support 16EiB, sorry.

[mcnaugha]

File size limitations also affect how you decide to format your Windows partition(s).

FAT32 in Windows XP will only support files up to 4GB in size.

This affected me when I was looking at installing Windows Vista into a Virtual PC. The basic installation of "Windows Vista CTP Feb 2006" generated a virtual hard disk that was over 8GB in size. I couldn't then copy it to a Mac OS X-writable FAT32 partition.

If people don't want to invest in MacDrive, then they could simply create an extra swop partition that is 32GB or smaller in FAT32 format... provided files don't exceed 4GB.

[cnakeitaro]

I still think the best way to do this is to boot WinXP from an external drive when it becomes available. Partitioning is a pain and I need my 250GB for my MacOSX, and I really would like to have NTFS for Windows. Its a much more secure file system and it obviously is far superior.

Anyone know if we would experience any large slowdowns running Windows off an external? I mean 400MB/s (firewire) or 480MB/s (USB2.0) sounds fast, but is it fast enough?

[jerbare]

Anyone know if we would experience any large slowdowns running Windows off an external? I mean 400MB/s (firewire) or 480MB/s (USB2.0) sounds fast, but is it fast enough?

MBit / 8 = MByte (eight bits per byte).

So that means for Firewire/1394 - 400MBits translates to ~50MBytes total PEAK throughput.

Thats half ATA100 speeds (ATA100 rating is 100MByte PEAK throughput).

USB2 at 480MBits only gets you up to 60MBytes...

Any disk access will be a big different (booting up, launching apps, loading files, etc).

[mcnaugha]

The speed specs of data buses is the maximum the bus can theoretically sustain.

An external HDD might not even make it to half way. FireWire 400 equates to approx. 50MB/s. You'd need to do some testing on your external... I have a slightly old one and it does about 20MB/s (actual). So it's not even using half of the bandwidth available on the FireWire 400 bus.

An internal Serial ATA bus (running the 1.5Gbps standard) supports a maximum throughput of 187.5MB/s... but your typical Serial ATA HDD can only muster a seemingly poor 71.25MB/s (570Mbps).

You can only really take advantage of close-to-full bus speeds by using RAID.

In any case, you'd be better off with an internal drive for this if you're looking for performance. It's 71.25MB/s vs. approx. 20MB/s (depending on your make and model of external drive).