Best advice for partitions?

[cutcopypaste]

I have a basically new 17" MBP 320 Gig Harddrive 4 gigs RAM. I am planning on putting windows on it (surprise surprise) I am just really stuck on how best to set up the partitions etc.
Is it true i can save all my files to the windows partition and use Macfuse to read/write to them from Leopard? would that decrease performance?
I'm basically gonna be largely running MacOS.. but some programs in windows and I'd like to set up some type of file syncing between my macbook and desktop pc.. thought it would probably be easier to do that through the PC partition with something like groove (which i have with pc office), but then i'd need to be able to access that from my mac... What are people's general experiences here? size of recommended partitions etc?

 

[drichards]

You will experience terrible performance if you decide to use ntsf3g and macfuse for all your files. Its just not fast.

In windows, you can install macdrive, it works well and its fast enough that you won't notice any lag during iTunes play on shuffle. If you want to sync your my documents folder, you can "move" it and change it to "/volumes/mac hdd/users/~/home/documents" if that should please you.

I understand Groove requires server access. Consult your IT department. There is no groove monitor for mac far as I know.

Your partition size will vary based on your needs, which you haven't addressed. If you use Vista 64 home super awesome edition with Halo 3 themes and so on, you'll need more space than if you'd run a light and clean XPsp3 install. If you want to install MS Office, Sony Vegas, Adobe Audition, Camtasia, every game you've ever seen on Steam, War and Peace audiobook edition, Vivid Video's home movie collection, and every Nick Jr related game, screensaver, and add-on for your kids, you're going to have to have a sizable partition. You only get one shot, make it as big as you think you'll ever need it.

I recommend not actually doing bootcamp if you don't absolutely need it. If its for games, go right ahead; if its for software that absolutely isn't available for the mac that you critically need and can't replace with mac software, do that too. But if its just so you can feel comfortable in your transition, don't. Its awkward. Install a virtual machine instead. Parallels is great, but its pay to play; virtualbox is nearly identical in performance, with none of the cost.

Welcome to the Mac. Enjoy it.

 

[cutcopypaste]

thanks for the response!

I am intending to play some games on the mac at some point.. not necessarily now, though. I only really need the virtualization at first, but I figure if I'm going to bootcamp eventually I'd be better off to bootcamp now kinda thing (or is that a false assumption?)

I'm not totally sure what windows software I'll need. the main thing just a little no-name hobby application. I would want to use 3D studio max as i'll need that for school but I understand it has serious issues on macs even in bootcamp so it might just be the lab computers for me there.

So actually yeah.. if I can easily just virtualize now and install bootcamp onto that partition later, I'd probably just stick with that for now. would that be advisable/problematic?

I've also heard that MACdrive can have problems and has been known to erase data, so I'm hesitent to go that route..

 

[drichards]

All Autodesk software has issues retaining its activation under bootcamp, the software can't deal with the system clock changing. People also whine alot on their forums about poor performance on macbooks, but the software isn't designed to work on Intel GMA integrated graphics. The activation isn't such a big deal though, a minor inconvenience which takes three minutes to correct and doesn't occur that often. I only had it balk when I accessed my bootcamp partition from Parallels.

You can add bootcamp whenever you want. I'm not a fan of it anymore because Parallels has become so good, but that's just me. I feel its awkward, so I use Parallels and Crossover when I run windows only software, which isn't that often anymore.

Macdrive had some issues with drives that had minimal corruption that OSX could deal with, and some other minor things that have all been corrected. I have macdrive on every windows computer I use, and keep a copy on windows live so I can install it wherever I need it. I've never had a problem, and I've been using it for over a year.

 

[cutcopypaste]

ok great.. one of my profs said something about 3dsm deleting files randomly...

but sounds like macdrive is the way to go then, as i don't think my harddrive is corrupted yet lol

is your unimpressedness with bootcamp just bc of the inconvenience of having to reboot? or does it go deeper?

 

[drichards]

I just found it was largely unnecessary and a crutch I was hanging onto. All the games I'd run, I either stopped playing or they work perfectly in crossover wine. When parallels let you use the gpu about a year ago, I moved my autodesk software to there and found no significant performance disadvantage. But I wasn't doing 3ds-max. And as to the random deleting of your work, I don't think it has that capability, at least when its not running. Bootcamp works very well if you need it.

I personally feel Autodesk is doing its users a disservice by not providing a mac version of their most widely used software packages, and they'll alienate themselves if they don't catch up soon.