Advice on how much disk space to give my bootcamp Windows 7 Ultimate

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I am a proud new owner of a Macbook Pro (500GB) and I'm a switcher!

I have successfully migrated all my Windows stuff to my Mac (mail, itunes, calendar, and contacts). I've also installed NTFS-3G to gain read/write access to NTFS drives. Now I want to install Windows 7 Ultimate via bootcamp.

I need some help on helping determining the amount of hard disk space should I allocate the partition for Windows.

Mac OSX (Main)
- Mail (contacts, calendar)
- Movies and Music (iTunes)
- Documents (Office:mac)
- Web surfing
- Few games (StarCraft II)
- Some Programming (iPhone, OSX)

Windows 7
- Lots of Games
- Lots of Programming for Windows and others (Visual Studio, SDKs, etc.)
- Movies and Music

Now I want to ask if it is possible to just allocate a huge NTFS partition and let Mac OSX and Windows 7 share and gain access to that drive to host my iTunes library??
 

chscag

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The amount of disk space to allocate to Windows 7 Ulitimate depends on what you're going to be doing in Windows. It sounds like from your post that you need quite a bit of space for Windows 7. I'd say around 150 to 200 GB should work.

I would keep the iTunes library, movies, music in OS X as it'll be easier to manage. No point in duplicating. Sharing a large NTFS partition for the iTunes library is not a good idea. For one thing, NTFS-3G is a bit buggy and has been known to lose data. Personally, I don't use it because I don't trust it. You can buy ($19.95) a commercial driver (Paragon NTFS) which works well and it also allows you to read write both ways. In other words, it also allows you to write to your OS X partition from Windows 7.
 
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Thank you chsag for the response!

Hmm, that definitely scared me on using NTFS-3G then. I'll definitely try to get that one from Paragon.

Hmm, not being able to access my music when in Windows is really a bummer but oh well. It is something I can live without.

Thanks again. Your reply helped.
 
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CodeCalibre says "I've also installed NTFS-3G to gain read/write access to NTFS drives." I'm puzzled by this as I seem to be able to read/write to PCs on my network without difficulty. Forgive my ignorance but isn't NTFS the standard Windows format?

I have successfully migrated stuff from PC to Mac. Although I installed Bootcamp with Windows XP on my previous iMac, which crashed, I've decided to put the old PC on the network so that I can still use expensive Windows only Fujitsu scanner and copy files to new iMac, no problem.
 

chscag

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CodeCalibre says "I've also installed NTFS-3G to gain read/write access to NTFS drives." I'm puzzled by this as I seem to be able to read/write to PCs on my network without difficulty. Forgive my ignorance but isn't NTFS the standard Windows format?

File format is transparent on a network, that's why you can read/write to your PC from the Mac. No special drivers needed. Network protocol does the job.

Yes, NTFS is now the standard format for PCs. You can not run Vista or Win 7 on any other file system except NTFS.
 
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As relative newbie far be it from me to advise but, if network protocol is as chscag says transparent, why doesn't CodeCalibre set up a network instead of spending money on NTFS converters?
 

chscag

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As relative newbie far be it from me to advise but, if network protocol is as chscag says transparent, why doesn't CodeCalibre set up a network instead of spending money on NTFS converters?

Setup a network on his machine? I don't think so. :) He's using Boot Camp, remember?

I need some help on helping determining the amount of hard disk space should I allocate the partition for Windows.

He's talking about reading his NTFS partition from OS X.
 

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