Sharing data between XP and OSX?

[mattw18]

Hi there,

This is my first post on any of these forums, and as far as Macs go im a complete newbie!

Im not a programmer or IT professional, but I do have a pretty good knowledge of computers and how they work, although I have only ever used Windows based PCs. As im doing more and more work with audio editing and graphic design, and am looking to buy a laptop, so the Macbook looks like an option I should consider. Ultimately, i'll probably end up mainly using Adobe Creative Suite and Digidesign Pro Tools.

Anyhow, I would want to have XP on the machine as well, but was wondering if work I do on XP for example could be retrieved when booted in OSX and vice versa? I have had my PC at home dual-boot linux and Windows before and getting them to share information was a right pain in the backside, so hopefully this will be easier!

thanks in advance,

Matt :)

[sjrowe]

Hello

MacOSX can read and write to FAT and FAT32 formatted partitions that Windows can use. MacOSX can also read (not write) to NTFS formatted partitions that Windows NT, 2000, and XP can use instead of FAT32.

Therefore if you are using Apple Bootcamp to dual boot between WindowsXP and MacOSX, depending on which format you have used, you should be able read and write or only read file between the partitions.

I know people have documented on the internet (perhaps elsewhere in this forum if you search) ways of using Bootcamp, but creating a third partition, so a setup of:

One Partition: MacOSX - HFS+ formatted
Second Partition: WindowsXP - NTFS formatted
Third Partition: No operating system - FAT32 formatted

The third partition is used to store files that you will want to share between the WindowsXP and MacOSX, as both can read and write to the third partition.

You could also use an external FAT32 formatted hard disk (iPod for example) or flash memory stick to swap files between WindowsXP and MacOSX.

Instead of dual booting you could just install MacOSX and then run WindowsXP (or another version of Windows) as en emulated PC using Parallels, Qmenu or VMWare Workstation. These all support file sharing between the emulated PC running Windows and the host operating system - in this case MacOSX.

Simon

[Paul2660]

I would love to know how they did it? Under XP, you can create multiple partitions, but with XP you can only format them in NTFS. XP will work fine on a large Fat 32 parition, but with XP MS did away with that format option. You have to go back with a 3rd party tool like parition magic to reformat the NTFS to Fat 32.

You can only create one extra partition with Boot camp. Yes you can make Fat32, but you are limited to only 32GB or something like that. That still only gives you one partition.

If you create one large NTFS partition during the boot camp install say 80 GB, then during XP's load on the first boot, you can cut that 80GB into smaller partitions, still both have to be NFTS as far as I could tell as there is no Fat 32 option. However when you reboot, you get an error even though you have copied the XP files to drive C.

I have done this at least 3 times,
XP will see the entire boot camp created partition as one physical hard drive. During the initial boot, when you get to the partition screen (right after you hit F8 and agree to MS T&C's) you can hit the delete key on a mac keyboard to change the total amount of hard drive selected, by default XP will take the whole disk. You will then format the selected amount and that will be drive C. The balance of the drive will be D but you won't be able to format that. XP will format C and copy it's system files, then reboot. In a normal Wintel environment, you then reboot, and finish loading up XP on C. Then once the OS is loaded you would use the disk managment tools under XP to initialize and format D.
Under boot camp when XP reboots after the partition/format/system file copy, you will get an error and the process stops.
You have to go back to the Mac side and blow all the Boot camp parition away, create a new one and start over, giving all the hard drive selected under boot camp to XP.

Paul C.

[sunsneezer]

Fat32 is good for sharing between the two systems but files are limited to 4gB, so it's no good for, say, large video files and DVD images.

Is there a way to use the virtualisation in OSX with a very minimal version of windows or even something else that just enables it to access NTFS partitions?

[digitalb0y]

I would love to know how they did it?

I have a 100 GB drive on a MBP partitioned like this:
25GB OS X
25GB WinXP (NTFS)
50GB (actually comes out to 42.8GB once everything is setup) shared FAT32 space
I did it using these two links as guides:

http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp
http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Extra_Partion

The first wiki looked confusing to me, but when I got into the OS X diskutil stuff it was very straight forward. Watch your syntax and you're golden. I had a dual boot setup within 3 hours of owning my computer, and I already had a partition set aside for the shared FAT32 partition. The only snag I ran into was in the final step. Windows couldn't see the shared partition, no matter how many times I tried to reformat it using the disk utility on OS X install CD. Finally, I stumbled upon a forum post somewhere (sorry, can't seem to find it again) that recommended using PTEDIT32 (ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip) to make sure the "Type" was set to 0B (zero B) for the FAT32 partition. It turns out that following the wikis above had me making the extra partition some type associated with Linux. Once I changed the value in the Type field for drive 3 to 0B and rebooted, Windows found the shared partition and everything has been fine since.

I hope this helps some people, that last step was all I was missing, and after a 2 minute fix, my drive is setup exactly the way I want it.

C

[Mufasu]

Digitalboy, will you marry me? :p

seriously i've been looking for this for a week and while i was able to piece together the fact that the triplebooting process had something to do with it i couldn't find details...THANK YOU! i'm so excited for when i get my macbook, i'm going to set it up right away. Not to mention i'm getting a 160gb hd from newegg to replace the standard one, you know, for that extra little "kick" :cool:

[the_unsound]

This data sharing issue has been bugging me since I bought my macbook.
FAT32 really isn't an alternative, as it's so limited with file size etc (for example, you can't extract a full DVD-iso to a FAT32 volume).
However, Ext2, the linux file system, does not have those limitations, and free drivers exist for windows and os x. So if I would repartition my drive today, I would make two OS partitions (HFS+ and NTFS) that are quite small, and one larger Ext2-partition for the data.

If you don't want to do that, there's of course the possibility of reading NTFS from os x (no write support though). Windows can't read HFS+ partitions, but I'm writing a program that's able to extract files from an HFS+ volume from inside windows. I guess that could be useful to some ppl that don't want to buy that MacDrive stuff. Check it out at http://www.typhontools.cjb.net/hfsx . It's a very early version, but it's able to extract files from my HFS+-drive at least. (:

[peterjolly]

digitalb0y thank you so much. I have been searching the net for someone whjo knows how ot simply create a third shared data partition under OSX for weeks. You are a champion. you've made my week.

I got it all done within a day of reading oyur post and links and know I have a perfect working data bridge between XP and OSX. You post was excellent. Can I recomend that oyu write a guide on how to make a FAT32 shared partition as I beleive a well written guide would solve a lot pf people problems. People are trying to use this MacFuse and NTFS-3G mod for OSx to read their NTFS partition and it just doesn't work. This is much more simpler and smart in my opinion. Two OS and a shard data partition. Simple but it works. Thank you.

PS I had to follow every step you spoke about. Including using PTEDIT to alter the partition identifier. You have got it in a nutshell. Cheers