01-23-2007, 10:43 PM

Hey guys, just bought a white macbook tonight and am LOVING it. Seriously, this is the most beautiful piece of hardware I've ever used in my life.

My question- once XP is installed through bootcamp, is it possible to uninstall OSX and use that re-partitioned HD space as storage? I ask this because I am going to need as much hardrive space as I can get, and OSX is already taking up nearly 20GB of space. I'm just wondering if it's possible to remove if and when my hardrive nears capacity.

Thanks

01-23-2007, 11:09 PM

why did you get a mac if your only going to erase osx.. you could have saved alot more money by buying a windows based computer from the start.

I can't see why not.. It should work in theory.

01-23-2007, 11:19 PM

I bought a macbook purely for aesthetic reasons. It's beautiful, no other laptop looks like it.

I'm not saying I'll uninstall OSX for sure, depends on HD space (and I have the discs, so I can always put it back), but it fills a significant amount of storage. If the time comes to remove the operating system, I want to know if I can or not without cripplig the notebook.

01-24-2007, 12:27 AM

Instead of deleting os, try getting an external hard drive. I got an old 80gb ide 3.5" drive from my old pc, baught a $45 enclosure and it works perfectly! In this case I have to plug it in to use it, but there are some firewire and usb 2.0 2.5" externals that can work on bus power too! If you can aford it, I'd recomend that instead of deleting osx!

01-24-2007, 01:17 AM

Heres a dumb question, is bootcamp not OSX or at least part of it? and if it is wouldnt removing OSX also remove Bootcamp?:radioacti

01-24-2007, 10:51 AM

I think bootcamp just facilitates installing Windows, but is not essential in running it. What I saw when installing XP was that you could partition the smallest possible space for the Windows partition and when you're choosing a partition to install Windows on, just pick the much larger OS X partition (E?) instead of the very small C parition made for Windows. That would completely format out OS X and install Windows where it was. Maybe after that you could find a way to get back in delete the small partition.

That said, I don't believe this is a good idea because (1) this machine is not made for Windows and there are probably going to at least be some minor issues and (2) if you want Windows only, you should get a good Windows-based computer.

Before the switch I was considering either a Thinkpad (very reliable and sturdy) or an LG T1 (thinner than a Macbook, bigger screen, very beautiful!) The LG may have you scratching your head because you can't buy it in the states, but you can order it from Canadian companies who will ship it here.Check it out on www.LGE.com.

01-24-2007, 10:54 AM

you can set it to boot from windows defult. in the control panel go to startup disk then change it to the windows partion.

04-01-2008, 07:32 AM

I was thinking of doing this myself after installing vista sp1 as I've only got 60GB space and an external hard disk is too much of a clutter, and I don't want to keep switching between OS's for specific applications.

I think you might have some issues with the firmware updates from Apple, not sure if the windows apple updater takes care of that, or in case windows decides not to boot at some point you'd have to go through maintenance routines which gets annoying after a while.

I will try to clean up the diesk, install OS X, remove all extra progs/features from OS X, shrink the OSX partition as much as possible, giving the remaining space to windows. I'm hoping this will give me about 50GBs for windows in the end.

I would never consider this before because os x was superior to xp, but with vista sp1, I don't think there's a competition anymore.

09-26-2008, 06:39 PM

You can simply delete the OSX partition. I have done it and it works fine.

1. Install OSX
2. Insert Windows installation disk
3. Install BootCamp and set it to boot from the optical drive
4. The computer reboots, then the Windows installation process begins
5. During installation you can choose which partition to install Windows to. You can also delete partitions.
6. Delete the OSX partition.

What I do is delete all partitions and then create one single NTFS partition. At that point the OSX partition is gone for good. Then I install Windows on this partition. Afterwards you Mac will boot into Windows automatically and natively.

I recommend you isntall BootCamp under XP (this is on the installtion CDs that came withyour Mac). This will allow you to change boot order in the future should you need to, and to use certain features of the Apple Aluminium Keyboard such as the Eject key.

09-26-2008, 07:02 PM

Scoox, your method has too many steps. To just install Windows and not have OS X at all, simply pop in the Windows disc, format the entire drive, install the drivers from the Leopard disc, and you're done. No need for partitioning or using Boot Camp at all.

09-28-2008, 07:05 PM

I would consider keeping OSX in a small partition - resize the OSX partition down to a minimum size. That way, you can still get Apple service if you need it and if/when you go to sell it, you are still selling an Apple not a very expensive windows PC. Just my two cents.

Cheers