11-29-2008, 05:38 PM

I'm considering purchasing a black previous-generation MacBook and would like to dual-boot Windows XP and Leopard. Since I expect to spend most of my time in XP, I would like to have the NTFS partition be the first one on the drive, in order to get the best performance.

From what I've read on the diskutil man page it's pretty trivial to set up the partitions this way. So what I'm curious about are the following:

1. Can Leopard boot from a partition that isn't the first one on the drive?

2. Supposing I have Leopard and XP install disks, how would I go about achieving this?

I understand the process of installing OS X, then using Boot Camp to shrink the HFS+ partition, create a NTFS one, and install Windows. But that would result in the HFS+ partition being the first one. In order to use diskutil I have to have OS X installed, but if I use it in the manner I need to then it will result in me destroying my OS X installation.

Can one run diskutil from the Leopard install media, in order to partition the drive manually before installing OS X for the first time?

11-29-2008, 10:45 PM

You can run Disk Utility direct from the Leopard Install disk one.

To try answer your other question... Unix can boot from any partition as can Linux. The trick is to get the boot loader setup correctly and I have no idea how to do that for OS X or whether the following will work.

What you can try (after making a verified clone backup of the entire drive) is boot and run Disk Utility from Leopard Disk One and divide the drive into two partitions. One for Windows, the other for OS X. Format the first partition as FAT-32, the second as HFS +. (Disk Utility is unable to format NTFS)

Install OS X on the second partition. Install Windows on the first. Once in Windows use the built in FAT-32 to NTFS utility to convert the partition to NTFS.

I don't know if the boot sequence will show up correctly when you boot by holding the Option Key or even if it does, will it actually boot directly to either OS X or Windows. There's also the matter of the small EFI partition which is created when installing OS X.

Have fun experimenting and let us know if it all works out.

Regards.

11-30-2008, 12:01 AM

Hmm. Seems like if I can get OS X installed on a partition that isn't the first one on the drive, then I can use the built-in Boot Camp Assistant to set up the boot loader and start me down the path of installing Windows.

Alternately, if I make the first partition FAT32, I think there's an option during the XP install that lets you do a low-level format and use NTFS. It's been a while since I've installed XP.

11-30-2008, 01:38 AM

What is it you hope to accomplish in "making XP the first partition"? Is it simply that you want XP to be your default operating system at boot? If so, it's very simple to do this. Leave Leopard installed as it is from the factory. Run the Boot Camp Assistant and install XP. Then, just leave it be - Windows will always start first from that point forward. If you want to change the boot order, you can do so from the Control Panel in Windows or in System Preferences in OS X by using the Startup Disk applet.

11-30-2008, 10:36 AM

Was thinking to eke out a little better performance, since XP would be located on the outer tracks of the drive (i.e. higher transfer rate).

11-30-2008, 11:06 AM

Originally Posted by buddyglass

Was thinking to eke out a little better performance, since XP would be located on the outer tracks of the drive (i.e. higher transfer rate).

If you're really worried about the partition order affecting performance, I would just get a 7200rpm drive instead, which would probably give you more real-world performance increases.

11-30-2008, 11:39 AM

Originally Posted by buddyglass

Was thinking to eke out a little better performance, since XP would be located on the outer tracks of the drive (i.e. higher transfer rate).

I can guarantee you there will be absolutely no tangible difference in performance, regardless of the drive.

11-30-2008, 02:52 PM

Originally Posted by Aptmunich

If you're really worried about the partition order affecting performance, I would just get a 7200rpm drive instead, which would probably give you more real-world performance increases.

I was planning to do both, actually, replacing the MacBook's drive with a 320G WD Scorpio Black.

Originally Posted by cwa107

I can guarantee you there will be absolutely no tangible difference in performance, regardless of the drive.

If you're saying there is no real-world difference in performance between drives, then I have to strenuously disagree. Having used laptops with 4200 RPM drives and laptops with 7200 RPM drives, the difference is like night and day.

If you're talking about the partitioning, then I still disagree, but not as strenuously. If I'm doing database work and using the first partition means that restoring a 5G backup takes 12 minutes instead of 14 minutes, then it's worth it to me to install XP on the first partition.

11-30-2008, 08:48 PM

Originally Posted by buddyglass

I was planning to do both, actually, replacing the MacBook's drive with a 320G WD Scorpio Black.


If you're saying there is no real-world difference in performance between drives, then I have to strenuously disagree. Having used laptops with 4200 RPM drives and laptops with 7200 RPM drives, the difference is like night and day.

Not at all. I'm just saying that regardless of the type of drive, one would not find substantially better performance by placing data on one section of the drive over another.

If you're talking about the partitioning, then I still disagree, but not as strenuously. If I'm doing database work and using the first partition means that restoring a 5G backup takes 12 minutes instead of 14 minutes, then it's worth it to me to install XP on the first partition.

While in theory I can agree that there would be a slight performance advantage in doing this, I can't imagine it would be perceptible - particularly in the time it would take to restore a block of data - certainly not a matter of minutes - more like seconds.

11-30-2008, 09:06 PM

Originally Posted by cwa107

While in theory I can agree that there would be a slight performance advantage in doing this, I can't imagine it would be perceptible - particularly in the time it would take to restore a block of data - certainly not a matter of minutes - more like seconds.

Well, I don't have any benchmarks, so I'm speculating as much as you are. Mostly I based it on a few scattered articles I found online, and on the transfer rate numbers at the beginning and end of the disk. Check out this review of Hitachi's 7K200:

Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 | StorageReview.com

If they're to be believed, then the max. and min. sequential transfer rates vary between 40 M/s and 71.5 M/s. I could see that translating into a real-world difference.

Now, if I had to do something totally arcane like modify binary files or something in order to put XP on the first partition, then I wouldn't waste my time. But if it's as easy as running diskutil from the Leopard install media and manually creating the partitions, then why not?

11-30-2008, 10:19 PM

I agree with your last statement, but I do think it's a bit of a hassle for little net gain. If there were significant performance gains to be had, we'd be building our disk I/O intensive servers very differently. Additionally, you'd see the hardcore gamers being more concerned about partition structure.

11-30-2008, 11:09 PM

Originally Posted by cwa107

I agree with your last statement, but I do think it's a bit of a hassle for little net gain. If there were significant performance gains to be had, we'd be building our disk I/O intensive servers very differently. Additionally, you'd see the hardcore gamers being more concerned about partition structure.

If I'm bored some day, I'll test this out. Would need to create three partitions, one small one at the beginning, one big one in the middle, then one small one at the end. Install {insert OS} on the "middle" partition, then benchmark the two book ends.