No erase install

Now, this is the question:
Can I install Mac OS X v10.4.6 on a hard-drive that has not been completely erased? My hard drive is divided into five pieces - 4-FAT32 and 1-NTFS. What I want to do is make an image of my Windows system drive using Norton Ghost and install Mac on it. From what I understood in a manual downloaded here I must completely erase the whole disk. But I want to erase only the system drive(call it C) and keep all the other drives? Is this possible.

...two more things...
1. Can Mac handle FAT32(at least) and NTFS filesystems?
2. Would 10GB be enough for the installation?

P.S. I'm a total newbie for Mac and have used only Windows 98-XP for the past seven years so I'm sorry if the questions above are dumb and unneeded.

No,...Mac won't like it unless you wipe it using Disk Utility. Also I don't think you'll be able to ghost you're XP image to the eventual windows partition you plan to create. I suppose there is a possibility but since I haven't given it a go I couldn't really say. I would try to create 2 partitions. One Fat and one for the windows boot partition. Copy the ghost image to the FAT partition. Then try to boot to a Bart's PE disk that has ghost on it. Then ghost the image to the other partition.

Mac can read/write FAT32 but only read NTFS

10gb is enough to get to know OS X but not enough to use it as a primary machine.

And do you think Mac would even run on a virtual machine? I kinda doubt it...

Pear PC is the only one I've seen and it's Sloooooowww!

I'm planning to try Mac on Microsoft Virtual PC 2k4. I think it's relatively slower than Pear PC. I'll see what I can do. I asked about the hard drive thing in another forum and I'm still awaiting reply... :black:

You can not install OSX onto a FAT32 partition, it has to be installed on an HFS or HFS+ partition. As has already been said, the Mac will be able to read/write to the FAT32 partitions but will only be able to read the NTFS partition.

I'm not planning to. I'll format the desired partition first. :miner:

Alright.. check this out...
I tried to boot my computer from the DVD. First I saw the boot screen with an apple symbol and a spinning indicator... then it went to a blue screen with a mouse only that after a few seconds turned to "busy" indicator and after 10-15 seconds it went to a black screen and stopped responding. I tried to start again with "-v" parameter so I can see what's happening and I saw a bunch of errors... something about USB. I unplugged all my USB things(Logitech Joystick and a USB-IrDA dongle) and restarted. Same story but this time it said it couldn't mount drives hda1,hda5-8(all the hdd partitions) and crashed the exact same way. Could the problem be in my configuration:
Mainboard: Albatron K8Ultra-V Pro(VIA K8T800Pro chipset)
Processor: AMD Sempron 2800+ 32bit s.754[...]
Video: ATI Radeon 9550 - 256mb(Identified as 9600Pro?)
Ram: 512mb DDRam(no idea of brand)
and what else... everything else is built into my mainboard except the LAN card.

Later I tried to boot the Mac DVD with MS Virtual Machine 2004 and it stopped in the position the screenshot shows..
Help me pls..

Have you looked at OSX86 yet? They are the ones trying to get OS X on generic X86 hardware. We folk are Mac users that may or may not care to go your route.

I had originally assumed you had an intel Mac and wanted to bring your PC image over by way of boot camp.

Wait, your trying to Install OSX on a non-Apple machine? From the looks of your above post you are. The retail version isn't going to work. You can find hacked versions on the web that have their origins in the Intel developers kit or you can try what MacsWork recommended above. Otherwise your going to be hard pressed to make it work and are not likely to receive the kind of help you need from folks here.

"Wait, your trying to Install OSX on a non-Apple machine?" - Yes

Mac.OS.X.Tiger.10.4.6.X86
Does this say if it's the right version and how can I determine if I have only an ISO image. The Nfo file says nothing about this neye: ...

What patch are you using? I haven't heard of the 10.4.6 patch and if there is one it may have bugs.

Patch? I downloaded this whole thing in a 4,37GB image, no idea of patches...

To install Mac OS X on a PC you need a patch for whatever version and a guide would help to. I hope its ok if I give you this one (A short guide for installing on a SSE3 chipset, which is a newer PC) : http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Installation_Guides/shortinstallguide

ARGH I knew I'd get in trouble for that. Sorry but I don't consider that piracy.