Partitioning question

[daleth]

Hey everyone,

Basically I just need to create a new FAT32 partition. What's the best way to do this? How would I use Disk Utility in OSX to do this? It's claiming that I can't alter the current settings because both partitions "contain the startup volume and can't be partitioned."

I tried using Partition Magic in XP to do this, which I have experience with, but on init the program fails with an error that a partition's drive letter cannot be identified, so I can't even run the program at all.

Any insight? Thanks in advance!!

[imapetert]

is this in addition to the one you already have? obviously if you only need one, boot camp will do it for you .. if you need to do an additional one, you might have to wipe the entire hard drive to be empty and start from scratch, not too sure on that though

[McoreD]

Hi, I also have a quick Partitioning question...

As far as I understood, with Boot Camp, you can only create ONE partition for Windows XP. Is that right?

I would like at least 3 partitions for Windows. The way I set it up in winnt.sif I have

D:\WINDOWS (partition size is 5 GB so roughly 4.65 GiB)

E:\Applications --- this is the Programs Files folder (partition size is 20 GB so roughly 18.62 GiB)

F:\Users --- this is the Documents and Settings folder (partition size is all the rest available)

Source: http://wmwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Unattended_MCE

Thanks,
McoreD

[diamondsw]

Hi, I also have a quick Partitioning question...

As far as I understood, with Boot Camp, you can only create ONE partition for Windows XP. Is that right?

I would like at least 3 partitions for Windows. The way I set it up in winnt.sif I have

D:\WINDOWS (partition size is 5 GB so roughly 4.65 GiB)

E:\Applications --- this is the Programs Files folder (partition size is 20 GB so roughly 18.62 GiB)

F:\Users --- this is the Documents and Settings folder (partition size is all the rest available)

Source: http://wmwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Unattended_MCE

Thanks,
McoreD

Well, you're moving into uncharted territory. As you can see in this thread (http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=768#4), there are two partition tables on an Intel Mac's drive - the GPT for EFI-capable systems (OS X) and an MBR for legacy systems (Windows, Linux, etc). As far as I know, nothing natively understands the GPT partition layout except OS X right now, so any other OS will be using the MBR. Now, once you're at the mercy of an MBR, you're back in the ugly system of a maximum of four primary partitions, and I have no idea if extended partitions can be created at this point.

In summary:
1) Don't use any disk partitioning program except Apple's Disk Utility and diskutil.
2) Once you move past four partitions, all bets are off, and even getting all of these to work/boot is still difficult and uncharted.

[McoreD]

diamondsw, thanks for kindly pointing me to the right direction. Meanwhile I also emailed feedback to bootcamp@apple.com about the issue. Hopefully they listen!

Cheers,
McoreD

[ChrisBrownUK]

So just to confirm (sorry, only just starting reading up on Boot Camp today)...

I always setup my Macs with 2 partitions, one for system, the other for data. A shiny MacBook is on it's way and I was planning to do the same, but will BootCamp give me the choice of which partition to use for XP ?... alternatively I could simply create a suitable partition when I reinstall OS X, but would BootCamp accept an existing partition ?

[bdj21ya]

You don't really need Boot Camp to install windows. It is just a non-destructive partitioning program plus a driver CD image burner. If your drive is already partitioned, you can install windows without the Boot Camp Assistant. rEFIt 0.7 (http://refit.sourceforge.net/) will probably make things a lot easier for you (makes it simple to boot using your windows CD). Download it (the Mac disk image file) and install it according the the online instructions.