1 Topic by Lateralus (edited by Lateralus 2008-06-13 22:59:42)

  • Lateralus
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Topic: Create a Windows-compatible NTFS partition alongside a Mac HFS+?

I have an external USB+FireWire HDD that I want to partition into 3 bootable HFS+ Journaled partitions for Mac, and 1 NTFS partition to be used in Windows. The NTFS partition doesn't have to be bootable.

Here are the steps I used but that did not work:
1. Used OS X Leopard's Disk Utility to create 3x30 GB HFS+ Journaled partitions and 1x208 GB partition of free space (unformatted).

2. Unmounted the external HDD, got a PC, started up the GParted live CD, and formatted the 208 GB partition of free space to NTFS.

3. Rebooted into XP, but the NTFS partition (none of them, actually) is NOT recognized by Windows. Disk Management sees the entire drive as unallocated space.

Now, I imagine that I have to create a new MS-DOS partition table and then format the 208 GB of free space to NTFS. I held off on creating a new partition table, however, because of the warning about erasing all of the data on the drive. I have no data on it yet, so it's of no concern, but I want to know if creating a new MS-DOS partition will screw up the Apple partition map already on the drive. (Having the two different partition maps on the same drive has to possible, how else would Intel Macs dual boot?)

2 Reply by class413

  • class413
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Re: Create a Windows-compatible NTFS partition alongside a Mac HFS+?

Creating a new ms-dos partition table (named ms-dos disklabel in older gparted versions) will delete any actual disk structure + partitions. I don't know well Mac's preferences about partition table specificities, but I guess Mac could use the ms-dos partition table too.

In the case of mswindows+linux dual boot setup, we use the ms-dos type as both work on it. It is easier to install mswindows first, although the inverse is possible too. I really don't know what is needed for Mac+mswindows dual boot.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***