3 Partitions

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Hi all

I am thinking about moving to a MacBook but I still wish to use Windows in Boot Camp. I am looking to install a 500GB 7200RPM internal hard drive (unformatted) and upgrade to 4GB of RAM. I want 3 partitions on the hard drive - one for Snow Leopard (10-15GB), one for Windows (50GB) and one for documents (the rest of the HD). I know the Windows partition needs to be in NTFS and the documents need to be in FAT32. Is this possible and if so could you give me some instructions to help me do it? Also, is it possible to install programs on a FAT32 file system? (Sorry for the idiotic question) Thanks in advance.
 
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Don't bother with Windows to start out with. You'll still have your PC to do all that crud on. Besides... what's the point of getting a Macintosh if you're just going to run Windows? :p
 
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Back to my old 2.2GHz C2D MB after selling my MBP and wondering what my next Mac will be :)
I don't understand why if you want to run Windows in bootcamp, that you don't just run Windows in bootcamp, and alocate a decent portion when you partition the HD to Snow Leopard and to Windows!
The above description of 10-15GB SL, 50GB Win, and 435-440GB Documents sounds bizarre, and problematic. The OS partitions will need to be bigger, or you will be erasing and reinstalling in no time, as for documents sitting in a seperate partition, I can't get a grasp on that one.

Please explain why you want to set up this way, even if it were possible, and maybe we can come up with a better way of going about things for what you want.
 
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You will probably want numbers more like 100 GB 100 GB 300 GB.
You can use disk utility from the OSX install disk (its available under the menus at the top on first few install screens).
You won't be able to select NTFS as a partition type but if you set a partition to MS-DOS (FAT) the Windows installer will see it and be able to reformat it as NTFS during the install process.
The reason the documents have to be FAT is because OSX cannot write to NTFS, however these days Windows can write to OSX partitions so possibly the documents folder could be this.
After you have installed windows you will need to put the OSX installer back in as it has a special Windows partition on it with the bootcamp drivers etc... if your using Windows 7 you will want it to be a Snow leopard disk and you will need to download the bootcamp 3.1 update and install that afterwards as well (330 mb).

Hopefully helpful info....
 
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I think I can help explain. My husband does this on every hard disk, so I think it's a Windows thing. If he's a run of the mill Windows power user, they seem to have a belief that hard disks must be broken into a partition for every specific purpose. If you don't, then your computer will explode like the Death Star.
 
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chas_m

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I think I can help explain. My husband does this on every hard disk, so I think it's a Windows thing. If he's a run of the mill Windows power user, they seem to have a belief that hard disks must be broken into a partition for every specific purpose. If you don't, then your computer will explode like the Death Star.

I think you nailed it, Jamie-Jamie.

Its a dumb idea in the PC world, and its an even dumber idea in the Mac world.

If you *really* need Windows, then a partition for Boot Camp is fine (but I would suggest that its WINDOWS that needs the smallest possible partition, as you'll not be using it much after the first couple of months unless you're a gamer).

Something like 50GB for Windows and the rest for Mac. KISS as they say, there's no reason to partition a notebook beyond this.
 

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