Dual boot scenario with multiple partitions to access

[blue_contact]

I'm new to mac (MacBook Pro 9,1), my question is, it there any way to run both OSX and Windows 7 and yet have multiple partitions accessible by both systems?

I'd like to have this scenario, to have have the choice to boot either in MACOSX or Windows7, and have full access (read and write) to two or more partitions from either.. I know BOOTCAMP does not allow it. Parallel, if allows it, does not seem like a feasible option to me.

Any advise please?, I'd really appreciate it.

[saturnotaku]

If you're talking about drive space separate from the operating systems themselves, you can format those partitions to the exFAT file system, which can be read from and written to by Windows and OS X.

[blue_contact]

If you're talking about drive space separate from the operating systems themselves, you can format those partitions to the exFAT file system, which can be read from and written to by Windows and OS X.

No.. I'm talking about installing (How to?) both systems on a single multi-partition Hard-drive that both OS(s) should have have full access to..

OSX requires GPT, While Windows requires MBR (Dynamic), If you install windows via BOOTCAMP, you'd only end up with 2 partitions for the two operating systems...

I know I probably have to use exFAT as it is supported by the two.. But here is what I have in mind

First Partition: MacOSX (Or Windows7?)
Second Partition: Windows7 (or Mac?)
Third partition: For Personal Data
4th Partition: Multimedia
and so on...

Any advise on how to accomplish this?

[saturnotaku]

No.. I'm talking about installing (How to?) both systems on a single multi-partition Hard-drive that both OS(s) should have have full access to..

OS X needs the HFS file system while Windows requires NTFS. There's no way around that, as far as I know. As such, you would need 3rd-party software to read and write files to and from the boot partitions if you wanted to access data on them from either OS.

This link might have some more information: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3044

[blue_contact]

OS X needs the HFS file system while Windows requires NTFS. There's no way around that, as far as I know. As such, you would need 3rd-party software to read and write files to and from the boot partitions if you wanted to access data on them from either OS.

This link might have some more information: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3044

Ok... Let us assume I installed Windows7 on Mac using BOOTCAMP, how to create more partitions (exFAT) on the same HD afterwards?

Can I simply use Disk Utility, after installing Windows 7, to create 1 or more additional partitions?

[Karamazovmm]

Ok... Let us assume I installed Windows7 on Mac using BOOTCAMP, how to create more partitions (exFAT) on the same HD afterwards?

Can I simply use Disk Utility, after installing Windows 7, to create 1 or more additional partitions?

yes, thats what he meant on the first place.

there is a limit to the active partitions though.

And yes you can redirect the personal folders of both OSes to the said partitions

[blue_contact]

yes, thats what he meant on the first place.

there is a limit to the active partitions though.

And yes you can redirect the personal folders of both OSes to the said partitions

I'm afraid this is not working. Create even a single exFat partition with Disk Utility (in MacOSX) after installing Windows7 and you'll be able to boot in Windows no more..

Just tried it many times and in many combinations.... Not working.

Any advice, please?

[Karamazovmm]

you are hitting the partitions limit that I talked earlier.

Download ML from the app store, save it in multiple medias, you are going to need it, since we are going to delete the recovery partition.

to delete the recovery partition you need to:

Launch the Terminal and type the following into the command line:

diskutil list

This will print out your drives partition scheme and look something like this:

Look for “Recovery HD” and see which identifier it is using, it this screenshot it’s disk0s4
To remove that partition we use the following command (you can also use the volume name):

diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ Blank /dev/disk0s4

The partition will be erased, you might want to do this with your standard Lion partition as well since you’ll be wiping the entire thing anyway. Regardless, you’ll now have a blank partition sitting around, so you’ll want to merge that with your other Lion partition:
diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ Lion disk0s3 disk0s4

This will merge the two partitions, with disk0s3 absorbing the space from disk0s4 and expanding, it causes data loss so don’t expect this to preserve anything

btw there is a limit of 5 partitions

[blue_contact]

[QUOTE=Karamazovmm;8864011]you are hitting the partitions limit that I talked earlier.

It worked! though you can create only one additional partition.

Thank you for the great tip..

[blue_contact]

Hello Karamazovmm;

I'm having another problem with the newly created partition... for some unknown reasons to me, the partition gets damaged and no longer accessible either form OSX or from Windows.

This particular new partition is formatted in exFat , the corruption seems to happen after copying data onto it and rebooting the system. This happened twice, exactly in the same way.

I thought I might be having problems with my harddrive and it is failing on me (that soon?) but smart status is verified and reading are all ok..

Any advice?