[dhaber22]

Hello all,

I am new to the forum and this is my first post. I just got a Dell mini 10v with the goal to run OSX. After doing some research I found that many people partition the HD so that the mini can dual boot. This is very appealing to me! Ideally I would like to have a dual boot 10v with OSX and XP. However my question concerns file compatibility.

If I create to equal partitions I will not have enough room on either to load all my files (music, pictures, documents).

I think that I could make the XP NTFS partition larger and load all my files on it since OSX can read write to NTFS but not the other way around? Could I direct the OSX programs like iTunes, iPhoto, and Finder to the XP NTFS partition to view and edit files on the XP partition?

Another thought would be to create a third Fat32 partition for the purpose of keeping all of my files. Then I could direct both OS partitions to this third partition.

What I am really trying to do here is avoid having duplicate music, photo and document files on both OS partitions.

Not sure if I am looking at this problem correctly, or if there if the solution is simple or complex.

Any help or direction is greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Danny

[canada eh]

OS X can't read to a NTFS drive and I could be wrong, FAT 32 can only be read up to 32GB. Windows can't read the OS X drive at all unless you can find an application that will allow you to do so. The boot camp software (3.0) does allow you to read and write to a OS X drive in Windows, but the install will also install the drivers for a bootcamp system, which is not good.

[minimalpc]

Actually, OS X can natively read NTFS drives. It can read and write them using NTFS-3G.

The problem you will likely run into with trying to create a shared data partition is that Windows likely won't be able to see it due to the 4-partition limitation of the MBR and the default way gptsync syncs the MBR to the GPT. You can probably get around that with the enhanced gptsync tool, as I have described elsewhere in this forum.

[dhaber22]

So by using the NTFS-3G I could read and write files on the windows XP partition?

[minimalpc]

Originally Posted by dhaber22

So by using the NTFS-3G I could read and write files on the windows XP partition?

Should be able to, yes. Of course, keep in mind that there is an increased risk of data corruption when writing NTFS from anywhere other than Windows (the only OS with "official" NTFS support).

[davey.mac]

OSX 10.6 (i.e. Snow Leopard) has native NTFS support. So you don't have to download 3rd party software. Out of the box you can read NTFS partitions from Snow Leopard, however you need to enter some terminal commands to enable write support.

Copied from macrumors.com forum by user http://forums.macrumors.com/member.php?u=72989 (you will need to create an account password for this to work, you can remove it afterwards):

First, uninstall NTFS-3G/Paragon if installed.
Open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
Type "diskutil info /Volumes/volume_name" and copy the Volume UUID (bunch of numbers).
Backup /etc/fstab if you have it, shouldn't be there in a default install.
Type "sudo nano /etc/fstab".
Type in "UUID=paste_the_uuid_here none ntfs rw" or "LABEL=volume_name none ntfs rw" (if you don't have UUID for the disk).
Repeat for other NTFS partitions.
Save the file (ctrl-x then y) and restart your system.

[ronin510]

As someone that used Snow Leopard's NTFS write capability for a couple months, I can attest that it's still fairly unstable.

There are many users who use it and report no problems. It corrupted a few hard drives I had (luckily I had backups or lost files I didn't mind too much losing). Doing the traditional google search turned up others who've had problems. Just a fair warning if you're considering using it with important files.