Just ordered my MBP, have a few questions!

Hi everyone.

As I eagerly await my MBP to arrive next week, I want to make sure I am able to set up my laptop exactly how I want to.

I've read a bunch of threads on this, but I don't want to make any mistakes because I pieced together suggestions from various threads

Here is what I am looking to do:
My MBP has a 250 gig hdd. I want to partition it so that I have a 30 gig partition for Windows XP (for games) in NTFS, a 10 gig partition to transfer files between OSX and XP in FAT32, and a 210 partition for OSX.

I want to set this up right when I receive my MBP in the mail.

So, how would I go about doing this? Would I format the hdd and start from scratch, or?

Also, in what order should I create these partitions to make my life as easy as possible?

Thank You!

I would say after you setup your mbp partition your 10gb chunk of hard drive and then run bootcamp and install your xp partition.

Glenners said:

I would say after you setup your mbp partition your 10gb chunk of hard drive and then run bootcamp and install your xp partition.

Click to expand...

Agreed. Use disk utility to set up you 10 gig partition once you get it going, then install windows using boot camp utility. Good luck and congrats on the new Mac!

hm ok, so what you all seem to be saying is that within OSX, disk utility will actually shrink my 250 gigs to 210, and then I can partition the other 40 into my 10 gig piece and 30 gig piece for xp?

You will be able to use the Disk Utility application to partition your original 250GB to 10GB and 240GB. The 10GB obviously being FAT32.

After that you should run the Boot Camp installer application and it will partition your 240GB into 30GB and 210GB.

Alright, thanks for the clarification todd.

Quickly though, when my mbp arrives is osx already installed, or no? Because what you just described would make more sense (to me anyway) if disk utility was run off the cd before osx is installed

OS X will already be installed, you'll just have to run through a quick setup in the beginning to get your user account and everything configured.

You should be able to just turn it on without the OS X disc in the computer.

ok, so basically, turn it on, run disk utility, partition 250 into 10 and 240, run boot camp, partition 240 into 30 (for xp) and 210 for osx


EDIT: Ah ok, I just realized that leopard has live partitioning. Now this makes sense, lol.

Thanks everyone!

Yes, you got it!

Good luck with it and congrats on the new Mac!