Bootcamp: accessing data from other OS

If i was to use Bootcamp to use Windows Vista/XP, While in this operating system is it possible to access data that i may have saved in the OSX partitioned operating system with out having to reboot into that OS? And vice versa if i am in OSX and need to access data from the windows partition?

tobywuk said:

If i was to use Bootcamp to use Windows Vista/XP, While in this operating system is it possible to access data that i may have saved in the OSX partitioned operating system with out having to reboot into that OS? And vice versa if i am in OSX and need to access data from the windows partition?

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I too am a recent switcher, running XP in Boot Camp. From the OS X desktop, you can access both partitions. On the Windows side, I can only see the Windows partition.
Caveat: if your Windows partition is formatted as NTFS, OS X can read (but NOT write to) the Windows partition. I had a big problem arise because of that fact, so after being required to reimage my Windows partition, my Windows is FAT. This allows maintenance on your Windows partition from the Mac side.
Good luck.

To be able to fully read/write the Windows partition from within OS X, the Windows partition must be formatted as FAT32, for as Neo said, OS X can only read a NTFS partition, not write to it.

Windows, however, is not able to natively read the OS X HFS+ partition. You'll need to get a program called MacDrive to enable that functionality.

can windows be installed on a fat32 partition? If so is there an option to do this with bootcamp and would this be better?

windows can be installed on a fat32 partition and when you do the install for windows you will get the options to either do a NTFS format, or FAT32... You will want the either the FAT32 format or FAT32 quick format

Is there a way to change the way it is formatted? I used NTFS, but now am wishing I had used FAT32.

Well, I found the answer to my own question. You can right click on the hard drive in my computer. Unfortunately, I didn't figure that out until I'd already fixed the problem by reinstalling the OS and reformatting.