How to make NTFS partition and fat32 partition?

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Hey guys,

I was reading a topic on here ( I couldn't find it through search) where the members were discussing creating a third partition with fat32 that could be used for files to be shared between the Mac and XP partitions.

They decided the best way was to make a partition with Bootcamp that would later be split into the NTFS and fat32 during the Windows installer.

I was looking through the PDF readme that comes with bootcamp. It shows a screenshot of the Windows installer screen with the partitions on it.

I can't see how/when I would create the fat32 partition. The readme says not to create partitions at this point or to change anything because it could mess everything up.

I want to create, say, a 50 gig partition with bootcamp. I then want to split that partition into a 20gig NTFS partition for XP and a 30gig fat32 partition for files. How do I split up the C partition created with bootcamp to accomplish this during the Windows installation process?
 
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I would guess that you cannot do this at that point. However, once you have Windows up and running, you can use a commercial partitioner like PartitionMagic to resize the FAT32 partition to make room for NTFS. FAT32 resizing works well, unlike NTFS resizing.

As a last option, assuming Linux Live CDs boot in Intel Macs, you could do the same thing by booting a Linux Live CD (Knoppix, Ubuntu, SuSE...) and using either QtParted or SuSE's YaST Partitioner to do the same thing - resize that FAT partition and create a second partition for NTFS. Initially, since Linux doesn't support write access to NTFS, you would create the second partition as FAT32 as well, and then after you had rebooted Windows, reformat it to NTFS from within Windows itself..

If you CAN get Linux Live CDs to run on Intel Macs (and I suspect you can!), this would be the best approach, as it is FREE! Free is good!

BTW, I have used SuSE's partitioner, and QtParted many, many times on my Linux based PCs. They are both very solid, very effective bits of software. I can recommend them. SuSE's YaST partitioner seems to be the stronger of the two - it supports more capabilities, but is also more cautious, attempting to protect you from yourself.
 

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