Leopard+XP+Data+Linux=What format(s) to use?

[muymoo]

I just bought a brand new hdd for my 1 year and 8 day old Macbook. No Applecare and a dead hard drive. The new one is a 320GB 7200RPM WD Scorpio. I am starting all over. All i have backed up was my music on an external. I now want to use bootcamp to run XP, Linux, and Leopard. I also want a partition for my music. I was wondering if there was a way to partition it so my music partition could be accessed (Read/Write) from all three systems. What type and size of partitions would you recommend for each.

XP:?
Linux:?
Leopard:?
Data/music:?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

How much do you plan to use each OS? That will influence how to partition the drive. Also, keep in mind that Boot Camp doesn't support triple-boot with a data partition but it is possible to do - you'll have to make the initial Windows partition big enough for Windows, Linux, and the data partition, then split the Windows partition into three.

Primary OS: 75 GB
Secondary OS: 50 GB
Tertiary OS: 25 GB
Data: 148.02 GB

If you're going to have lots of data, this layout makes sense - the data partition should be the largest.

 

[muymoo]

Thanks, but what format (FAT32, HFS+, NTFS, etc.) should I make each?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Thanks, but what format (FAT32, HFS+, NTFS, etc.) should I make each?

The Mac OS X partition must be HFS Plus.
The Windows partition must be NTFS due to being >32 GB in size.
The Linux partition should be whatever the Linux installer suggests you use - probably ext2 or ext3.
The data partition should be FAT32 - this is the most universal format.

 

[muymoo]

Thanks!

 

[pinktank]

and install the ntfs extension for os x