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Mac Disk Partitioning

C

chrisworld

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 14, 2006
76
0
Hi. I don't post here often and I'm hoping I put this in the right spot. I own a Nov 2006 iMac. Stock it came with a 250 GB HDD still in use today. I would like to upgrade to a bigger disk, preferably a 750 GB HDD. I still use Tiger and XP, so I know mandatory I will need to upgrade to Leopard/Snow Leopard to regain bootcamp functionality.

That aside,

Here is what i want to do and would like to know if this will work.

Install the 750 GB HDD, partition 20 GB for OSX, leave 730 GB freely open. Divide the 20 GB in half for OS X/Windows XP. 10 GB/10 GB each OS. Install NTFS 3G (which i use flawlessly in tiger) in Leopard so it can Read/Write the 730, go and format the big 730 GB with NTFS.

This would be so awesome if it is possible, so.. is it?
 
While everything sounds technically possible, there are a few things that come to mind.

1) Performance. NTFS-3G has been said by some to be performance constrained. There are reports of 100% CPU utilization by the driver during moderate to intense drive operations. The HFS+ system has been (obviously) optimized for OS X.

2) Default location of data. OS X drops data into the Users folder. This folder, by default, is placed on the root of the drive, which would be part of your 10GB partition. You could either manually change your apps to store data on the NTFS partition, or symlink the folders to folders on the NTFS partition.

3) Data loss. I'm all for experimenting. We are the bleeding edge here in many cases. But, keep a good backup. A hiccup of the NTFS-3G driver, corruption in the NTFS partition, etc., and you could be looking at a loss of 730 GB of data. If this is a "production" machine, it's best to try to keep it close to the way things are "meant" to be. While that doesn't guarantee everything will always be perfect, it is probably safer than essentially running OS X on NTFS (at least all of its data anyway).

Jeff
 
Thanks, Jeff.

With those words in mind I'm gonna cancel that idea. I think when I install I'll just put leopard on the entire disk, then give windows 200-250.

OS X will put things where OSX wants it to be, Windows will put things where it wants it to be.

I have a 250 GB backup now, and this drive will be used as a backup when/if i get the new one. All cool in the end. I'm very..no... extremely aware in how important backups are as well.

Thanks again
Chris

EDIT: This isn't a production machine at all (if you mean using it seriously edit movies and such), just a good ol mac thats generally been there for me for 3 years. I like OSX, but all the games play on Windows so having to been using windows this longs sorta sucks, lol.
 
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