I am getting a mac this month and since I'm switching from the Windows environment and have some software that won't work on Mac it's important that I have some way of running Windows. I am still undecided between Parallels and Boot Camp, mainly because of a question I have about data.
I know with Boot Camp I'd have a 2nd partition on my hard drive. I imgaine I can easily use NTFS for that. My concern is that a lot of this data (office files, jpgs, mp3's, etc) I want to be able to use with both the Mac side and the Windows side. I know that Mac OS can't write/modify NTFS folders. Yet I know with Fat I can't go over 32 gb. My idea was to have the Mac OS partition, make the Windows partition (likely over 32 gb and NTFS) and then make a 3rd data partition that is formated with fat and under 32 gb which would hold all this data.
Some concerns I have is if I read right bootcamp only allows for one windows partition so would it mean I can't do this 3rd data partition. I would just put the data in the standard windows partition but I have a feeling with all the software I have I will have to go over 32gb, causing problems with the mac os side not being able to write to it. Is there any way around this or is it possible for me to make this 3rd partition?
I would say you should get a second HD for this third partition. If not, you can always use terminal code:
df
sudo diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk0 2 GPTFormat \
"JHFS+" "Macintosh" 100G "MS-DOS" "Windows XP" 50G "MS-DOS" "Windows 2" 50G
You'll need to change the numeric values to make it specific for your hard drive.
Also, you could use an external HD.
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You should be able to use more than 32GB. Windows 2000, XP and Windows Server 2003 can use larger than 32GB partitions, but Microsoft intentionally limited the FDISK portion in those versions of Windows in order to push people to use NTFS instead.
I could be wrong, but as far as I know you are not using FDISK to partition, so you should be able to just install XP on the partition you make.
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