[alexandre]

Hello everybody,

it's my first message on this forum. I've found a lot of information here at mydellmini forums but I haven't been able to find whatever I'm looking for. Maybe some of you with more experience could help me.

Well, here we go. I've recently bought a Mini 10v (two days ago), which came with these specs: ATOM 1.66GHz, 1Gb RAM, HD 160Gb, 3-cell battery, OS Win7 starter.

After seeing that this machine is capable to run OSX Snow Leopard, I'd like to install it and use as main OS. I've an old mac G4 with Tiger and despite is a bit sluggish, I love it. I'd also have Windows installed because of some software than isn't possible to find for OSX.

Well, here are some questions about the choice:

1) It's possible to execute Windows software on OSX Snow Leopard via any cheat like bootcamp or similar? so is not necessary to install any Windows OS on the machine...

2) If not, which Windows OS would you recommend? Windows XP SP3 or Windows 7 (which version)? Which is your experience with these operating systems on the 10v? Which offers a higher performance?

Now the computer runs the pre-installed Win7 starter with all the additional software incluided (McAfee, Office evaluation, etc). I've removed some of them but the Task Manager tells a use of about 800Mb of RAM just after booting . I assume that Win7 eats a lot of RAM, but this is too much for me.

Will this memory use be reduced if I perform clean Win7 install? Which version do you recommend?

3) Well, after trying the appropiate Windows version. I'd like to divide the harddisk into 3 different partitions:
a) OSX
b) Windows
c) Data (shared partition between both OS)
My intention is to give a reasonable room for the Operating Systems at partitions a & b (but not so much), in order to have the partition c with room enough for all my stuff. I'd like the Data partition (c) to be accesible by both Operating Systems.
What king of scenario would you recommend? Which partition type should be compatible? FAT32? MACOS+? NTFS? probably linux-type EXT3?
How many space would you assign to each OS partition (OSX, Windows)? Well, I supose that it depends on the Windows choice (XP or 7); Which size would be right for each one?

Well, I hope somebody here could give some information related, and make the community advices the way to take the most of the beautiful netbook the 10v is.

Thank you in advance!
Alex

PS: sorry for the size of the message, to many doubts...

[w7ox]

Originally Posted by alexandre

1) It's possible to execute Windows software on OSX Snow Leopard via any cheat like bootcamp or similar? so is not necessary to install any Windows OS on the machine...

2) If not, which Windows OS would you recommend? Windows XP SP3 or Windows 7 (which version)? Which is your experience with these operating systems on the 10v? Which offers a higher performance?

Bootcamp does not eliminate the need to install some version of Windows or some other OS to boot to as the second OS. And I believe Bootcamp is not yet happy with Win 7. Plus I'm not sure Bootcamp will run on a hackintosh machine; seems like if it would work, someone would have done it by now.

Another approach might be a virtual machine running under OS X, such as Parallels (which I use on my MacBook and like) or VMWare. But these may depend on having Mac, not Hackintosh, hardware: Don't know.

Personally I'd go with Windows 7 Home Premium. I recently converted my desktop PC from Win XP SP3 to Win 7 Home Premium and it seems more stable and has a better user interface. Downside is that there are some older programs which run under XP but not 7, but I have none of those.

Caveat: I've only run Win7 Starter briefly on my 10v and now have only OS X 10.6.2 installed. I have WinXP Pro with Parallels on my MacBook and a full up Win7 desktop to meet my Windows needs.

Phil

[alexandre]

Phil, thank you for replying.

So I understand you recommend a OSX-SL on the mini10v. Well, for me it's OK because my intention is OSX-SL to be the main OS.

I've noticed that you upgraded your RAM to 2Gb. Is the performance improve noticeable with the upgrade? For the momment, I'd like not to open the computer, so it'd remain with only 1Gb RAM for some months.

Maybe any one with experience with the windows OS running on the 10v could tell which Windows runs smother in a 10v with 1Gb RAM system: WinXP or Win7?

I still have the idea to have win and OSX-SL installed and share a 3rd partition for DATA. I wouldn't install virtual machines due to known limitations in the 10v cpu and RAM, I think the performance wouldn't be acceptable.

I've seen that there are some drivers/utilities for being capable of accessing HFS+ partitions on Windows, and the opposite (NTFS partitions on OSX). Does anyone have experience with such an utilities? which one would you recommend? (pros/cons)

Thank you very much!

[Zirus69]

Dear experts,

I want to have following system (partitions) on my dell mini 10v.

a dual booting system and an additioal small partition to exchange Data between Win 7 and OSX in both directions without an USB-Stick.

1 partition OSX ...................... x GB
2 partition Win7...................... y GB
3 partition for Exchange .......... 6.5 GB

with the 3. Partition I want to format as an Win Partition and in OSX I want to use a programm to write on an Win Partition.

What did I do?

1.) Start from ziro.
2.) boot with NBM-patched OSX on USB in boot option.
3.) made 3 partition with diskutility before installing OSX
- 1) OSX spezific .... for OSX
- 2) Dos FAT 32 .... for Win 7
- 3) Dos FAT 32 .... to exchange data between the 2 Systems
4) installing OSX
5) installing Win 7
- 1) can only format and install on 2 partition (cannot format partition 3)

6) I made all the stes to get a dual booting system (works!).

my Problem!

now I can see the 3. partition in OSX (read and write) but not in Win 7

Do you know what I did/think wrong?

Thanks in advanced for helping me.

[Side.Step.Society]

I've got Windows 7 Ultimate on My Mac mini, using Boot Camp, and it works extremely well. Definitely gives OS X a run for its money. Windows 7 Starter is total trash, disregard your experiences with that. Especially when it's bloated with stupit included software. I got rid of it as soon as I got my 10v (which is now running just OS X 10.6.2, considering dual booting, but with the upcoming 10.6.3 update soon to be out, I think I'm going to hold off for a bit.)

As far as partition sizes and formats go, this is what I would do.

OS X - 20GB, HFS+
Windows - 20GB, NTFS
Storage - 120G, FAT, NTFS or HFS+ (All can be read/write from both OS's with some programs help, but for the best compatibility, FAT is probably the best bet.)

Of course, this could/should be different for you as I'm kind of a minimalist and don't install many programs, so, yeah, you might want more or less for your system partitions.

From what I've read, upgrading to 2GB doesn't offer a MASSIVE performance boost, just a slightly noticeable one.

---------- Post added at 03:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:37 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Zirus69

Dear experts,

I want to have following system (partitions) on my dell mini 10v.

a dual booting system and an additioal small partition to exchange Data between Win 7 and OSX in both directions without an USB-Stick.

1 partition OSX ...................... x GB
2 partition Win7...................... y GB
3 partition for Exchange .......... 6.5 GB

with the 3. Partition I want to format as an Win Partition and in OSX I want to use a programm to write on an Win Partition.

What did I do?

1.) Start from ziro.
2.) boot with NBM-patched OSX on USB in boot option.
3.) made 3 partition with diskutility before installing OSX
- 1) OSX spezific .... for OSX
- 2) Dos FAT 32 .... for Win 7
- 3) Dos FAT 32 .... to exchange data between the 2 Systems
4) installing OSX
5) installing Win 7
- 1) can only format and install on 2 partition (cannot format partition 3)

6) I made all the stes to get a dual booting system (works!).

my Problem!

now I can see the 3. partition in OSX (read and write) but not in Win 7

Do you know what I did/think wrong?

Thanks in advanced for helping me.

What format is your 3rd partition?

(P.S., don't hijack threads. :P )

[minimalpc]

Originally Posted by Zirus69

my Problem!

now I can see the 3. partition in OSX (read and write) but not in Win 7

Do you know what I did/think wrong?

I believe I do. From what I have been able to uncover, the problem is that what you think is the 3rd partition is really the 5th partition in the GUID partition table (GPT). There are two "hidden" partitions before what you think is the "1st" one. Now, since Windows does not fully support GPT, you end up having a hybrid GPT/MBR setup. An OS X and Linux program called "gptsync" syncs the MBR partition table to the GPT. The problem is that the MBR partition table only supports 4 partitions. So, the basic gptsync tool puts only the first 4 partitions from the GPT into the MBR. This means that the 5th partition (the one you want to use for shared data) is not in the MBR partition table and is, thus, not visible to Windows.

I believe, but have not verified, that you can use the enhanced gptsync tool to manipulate which GPT partitions get put into the MBR partition table in such a way that both OS X and Windows could see the shared data partition. Give it a shot and report back.