MacOSX virgin needs an explanation on filesystems

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#62117 30-May-2010 11:41

So i've just bitten the bullet and picked up a new Macbook Pro with an i7 nestled in there for good measure. I plan on running it dual boot with Windows 7 64 and have my server and all the other machines in the house with Windows 7.

I've got no idea about anything mac based but am pretty confident around anything PC and have been reading stuff about NTFS not working on Macs is this correct?

What i wanted to do to the macbook pro was have 80GB OSX partition, 80GB Win7 64 partition and the remainder of the 500 as a general storage both could use. I would imagine i will have large files over the 4GB limit of fat32 at some point so was just going to format the win7 and storage partitions in NTFS but i've just read the other post on this subforum about NTFS support not working nicely with 64bit OS's...

Can someone help me get my head around how i need to format the partitions to get this working?

Cheers in advance.

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#336243 30-May-2010 11:52

Disrespective: So i've just bitten the bullet and picked up a new Macbook Pro with an i7 nestled in there for good measure. I plan on running it dual boot with Windows 7 64 and have my server and all the other machines in the house with Windows 7.

I've got no idea about anything mac based but am pretty confident around anything PC and have been reading stuff about NTFS not working on Macs is this correct?

What i wanted to do to the macbook pro was have 80GB OSX partition, 80GB Win7 64 partition and the remainder of the 500 as a general storage both could use. I would imagine i will have large files over the 4GB limit of fat32 at some point so was just going to format the win7 and storage partitions in NTFS but i've just read the other post on this subforum about NTFS support not working nicely with 64bit OS's...

Can someone help me get my head around how i need to format the partitions to get this working?

Cheers in advance.

Hi there,

Mac OSX isn't that much different from Windows, and you do find Win7 works quicker on a Mac.

You can either use BootCamp or you can install virtualbox or wmware to run Win7. I use wmware

I haven't used Boot Camp but if you run it, it should give you step by step instructions on the size etc, most things Mac have very good wizards.

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#336244 30-May-2010 11:52

If you'd like to create Windows partition for dual boot then use Bootcamp - it will help you create the partitions too. As for NTFS, search for NTFS 3G - that's what I use and it works just great.

Hope that helps. There are plenty of resources on Bootcamp out there.

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Disrespective

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#336245 30-May-2010 11:55

Yeah i'm dependent on windows for some software i use for CAD (I don't want to buy new versions...) so i need windows there but i do a lot of image work e.t.c. that i'd like to be able to cross over between OS's and would ideally like a partition to put all these files and music e.t.c. on and have access to from both OS's.

Is this even possible or am i wasting my time trying to get three partitions readable between each OS?

Disrespective

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#336247 30-May-2010 12:13

So as i understand it, i can install windows 7 with bootcamp, create a new main storage partition (somehow... haven't figured that one out yet) after getting OSX and Win7 locked in and then if i format the storage partition as NTFS and install NTFS-3G on the OSX partition i'll be able to read and write to the storage partition from both OSX and Win7?

I also have a bunch of NTFS network shares i might need to write to, will NTFS-3G enable me to do this too?

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#336249 30-May-2010 12:20

Disrespective: So as i understand it, i can install windows 7 with bootcamp, create a new main storage partition (somehow... haven't figured that one out yet) after getting OSX and Win7 locked in and then if i format the storage partition as NTFS and install NTFS-3G on the OSX partition i'll be able to read and write to the storage partition from both OSX and Win7?

Yes, Mac OSX can then read it. I'm not sure that's the best strategy though. Personally I have noticed a bit of a performance hit using NTFS 3G - not sure if I'm imagining that though. NTFS 3G will enable you to write to NTFS partition - I don't think reading was ever a problem. I haven't used Bootcamp for a while now but I think you can read/write to a Mac OS Ext partition, this may well be a better solution? I reckon don't worry about creating your third partition for now - just use Bootcamp to split it in two, and install Windows. See how that works out for you. If at a later stage you want to create a 3rd partition you can always use Disk Utility to do that.

I also have a bunch of NTFS network shares i might need to write to, will NTFS-3G enable me to do this too?

That's not a problem. You can use Finder's "Connect to server" option to mount NTFS network shares. The syntax escapes me right now but you can google for the smb URI - I think it's something like smb://ip_address/share_name or some such.

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#336261 30-May-2010 13:06

You can connect to the server/computer with smb://ip that hosts the shared drive and then select it from a list.

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#336279 30-May-2010 14:37

Why not create 2 partitions when doing BootCamp? Create a big enough partition for Windows 7 (20GB-25GB be more than enough for few apps), and another partition as FAT32 using MacOS X to format that.

So put the stuff you want to share between two OS in that partition.

If the stuff you want to share isn't too big, you can use Dropbox which has 2GB free, or slightly more if you complete few survey questions and even perhaps refer people to use it. then you can sync to cloud to Mac, Windows and Linux, and the documents be accessible via iPhone or supported devices.

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#336283 30-May-2010 14:46

chiefie: Yeah i've got a dropbox folder set to backup some uni papers i'm working on at the moment so will be using that for that use.

I regularly come into contact with files in the 5GB-10GB range working on video files so fat32 isn't really an option for me with its 4GB file size limit.

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#336286 30-May-2010 14:52

Hmmm... do you only need to read access to it? or read and write while on MacOS X?

Reason I ask is NTFS RW support is very very limited on non-NT systems.

Alternatively is one of those FileSystem driver that allow you to read/write MacOS HFS from Windows.

Some write-up here: http://tzechuen.wordpress.com/2008/02/02/tech-tip-readwrite-both-ntfs-and-hfs-volumes-on-both-windows-and-mac/
I have used MacDrive in much earlier version of Windows with MacOS and it works well.

And check this: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

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#336287 30-May-2010 14:57

Yeah i'd ideally like to have full R/W access to the drive.

I've just been looking at Paragon NTFS for Mac as well as NTFS-3G and it looks like it could be worth a shot except paragon makes the windows drive invisible to bootcamp or some such. There are workarounds, but it's not ideal.

I guess it's like trying to make square pegs fit in round holes, it can be done but you lose some of the features, i.e. corners.

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#336289 30-May-2010 15:03

Well... seems like NTFS-3G is a good start for full R/W from MacOS X on that storage partition (as NTFS).

Alternative idea is, storage partition as HFS and get MacDrive on Windows to R/W to it.

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#336290 30-May-2010 15:04

I'm beginning to think it might be easier to format a storage drive as HFS+ and then get windows 7 to view it and treat it as a native drive. There seem to be options available for that too by using Macdrive or similar.

EDIT: You just beat me to the punch on the HFS+ idea, it seems more usable that way.

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#336291 30-May-2010 15:07

Is there any reason why the file can't be compressed further? Seems pretty huge for... (i don't know)

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#336292 30-May-2010 15:11

Nope, no reason why it couldn't i guess, i just like to keep a fully raw backup in case i need to try something different when i do get round to compressing it.

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#336293 30-May-2010 15:13

So those huge files doesn't need to be actively accessible from MacOS X right? If that's the case, then you just put them in NTFS or external drive....

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