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Is it possible to have a Mac partition, an NTFS partition and Bootcamp on the same drive?
Is it possible to have a Mac partition, an NTFS partition and Bootcamp on the same drive, and an NTFS drive in place of the superdrive?
Furthermore, if it is not possible to have the NTFS partition in the previous arrangement, is it possible to have an NTFS partition just on the separate drive installed to replace the superdrive in a macbook pro?
I had a setup which had windows XP running within Parallels, within the Mac OS ( Snow Leopard), with a separate NTFS partition for Data, and a separate NTFS drive, which replaced the superdrive.
I recently started having problems with my Mac OS so decided to make a clean sweep and reformatted the drive and did a clean new install of everything.
To cut a very long story short, after installing the Mac OS, I then added bootcamp and Windows XP as a fresh install from CD. I installed parallels on the Mac and then tried to install XP from the bootcamp. It did not work and XP install failed, I then tried the migration tool that came with Parrallels...that did not work well either, so i installed XP using the CD....I then created a new NTFS partition ( i have Paragon NTFS), and then swapped out the superdrive and installed a pre formatted ( NTFS) extra hard drive. Unfortunately when i rebooted i found that XP would not load in bootcamp as some of the drivers had disappeared.
I decided to wipe everything and start again, and now i have mac 10.6.8 running on the mac, with parallels and XP, and XP on the Bootcamp partition. All works well, but i do not have a NTFS partition for Data.
I would really like to have an NTFS partition or even drive, but do not want to damage the clean install again, until i know for sure what is a safe move.
Trial and error is all very well but enough is enough :-)
Furthermore, if it is not possible to have the NTFS partition in the previous arrangement, is it possible to have an NTFS partition just on the separate drive installed to replace the superdrive in a macbook pro?
I had a setup which had windows XP running within Parallels, within the Mac OS ( Snow Leopard), with a separate NTFS partition for Data, and a separate NTFS drive, which replaced the superdrive.
I recently started having problems with my Mac OS so decided to make a clean sweep and reformatted the drive and did a clean new install of everything.
To cut a very long story short, after installing the Mac OS, I then added bootcamp and Windows XP as a fresh install from CD. I installed parallels on the Mac and then tried to install XP from the bootcamp. It did not work and XP install failed, I then tried the migration tool that came with Parrallels...that did not work well either, so i installed XP using the CD....I then created a new NTFS partition ( i have Paragon NTFS), and then swapped out the superdrive and installed a pre formatted ( NTFS) extra hard drive. Unfortunately when i rebooted i found that XP would not load in bootcamp as some of the drivers had disappeared.
I decided to wipe everything and start again, and now i have mac 10.6.8 running on the mac, with parallels and XP, and XP on the Bootcamp partition. All works well, but i do not have a NTFS partition for Data.
I would really like to have an NTFS partition or even drive, but do not want to damage the clean install again, until i know for sure what is a safe move.
Trial and error is all very well but enough is enough :-)
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I have had both. But this time I just installed it via Bootcamp. I dont use parallels at all anymore.
The idea of the second hard drive being only NTFS seems good to me.
The idea of the second hard drive being only NTFS seems good to me.
when i tried to load
bootcamp via the
external drive, the
automatic install refused
to recognize the drive
this is because you cannot install XP from USB or external connection.
bootcamp via the
external drive, the
automatic install refused
to recognize the drive
this is because you cannot install XP from USB or external connection.
I must have missed something. I am not using an external drive. I have two drives IN my macbook. I am pretty sure that natively (it is possible I think but you have to play around with it) you cannot boot into windows from an external drive even if bootcamp recognized it.
sorry, I misread your last comment (I am via mobile at the moment), and thought that you tried to install OS to am external drive. now I see that you were talking of the bootcamp.
anyway I am happy to see that all has gone ok.
regards.
anyway I am happy to see that all has gone ok.
regards.
ASKER
Johni......It is strange, but when i tried to load bootcamp via the external drive, the automatic install refused to recognize the drive, so i had to take the replacement HDD out and put the superdrive back in, at which point the install of bootcamp went fine.
I already have XP installed now, in parallels and Bootcamp, but if there is a next time, i will surely use your method. Will the Mac OS recognise the install files on the windows disk though?
Also, there is a windows .exe file on the CD from Mac which has the windows drivers for my machine, however downloading new versions from the MAC site always fails.
There is also program that Bootcamp installs which gives better control of a few Mac peripherals like the trackpad, so it would be handy to find a decent and complete set of drivers.
Darbid....Mine is a MBP 2010 as well. .....Did you install Windows 7 via bootcamp or withinn the Mac OS, or both as i have?...
I wanted to have XP installed inside the Mac OS ( parallels) for convenience, and a freestanding version of XP as well, as i heard it runs faster if running from inside Bootcamp.
The reason i want a spare hard drive in NTFS, is because i do not trust my Mac OS not to fail ( which it already did once), and reading the data from the MAC drives outside of the physical machine is not straight forward.
My plan is to have the second HDD formatted in NTFS ( Paragon NTFS works well for me), and then send all data from both systems to that drive. Then if ever there is a problem i will simply pull the extra drive out and recover the data easily.
Many thanks again for replying and i look forward to any further comments you canm make before i stick the second hard drive back in.