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Bootcamp questions

H

Hazzarell

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 24, 2010
6
0
Okay. If there is a FAQ on this somewhere, please feel free to hunt me down and smack me upside the head.

I'm thinking of upgrading to Snow Leopard, and using Bootcamp to install Windows XP on my Mac. I have 57gb of unused hard drive on my Mac. I know the basics, i.e. how to partition my hard drive, how to install XP with Bootcamp etc, but there are some things I'm unsure of, and I can't seem to find the answers I'm looking for. (I probably just haven't looked hard enough).

Okay so, questions:

1) How do I keep from losing all of my files when I make the transition from Tiger to Snow Leopard?

2) I want to install a game on the Windows platform. I'm thinking of using a 30gb partition for the Windows installation. How will this affect computer performance when I've transferred all of my files back onto the OS X partition?

3) Can I boot the Windows OS from an external hard drive?

4) Would purchasing a large hard drive make this task easier, or would that be unnecessary?

If any of these questions are answered elsewhere, then I'm sorry for wasting your time, and would appreciate a nudge in the right direction. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
1. You cannot upgrade directly from Tiger to Snow Leopard. You will have to either backup your data to an external source, or if you don't have one, in a pinch you can create a partition at the end of the drive big enough to hold your data until after you install Snow Leopard.
Then you can move your data onto the boot partition and then remove the data partition and load up boot camp.

2. As long as you have about 20% free space on your boot partition you shouldn't notice much if any performance degradation.

3. Windows cannot be booted from an external drive. Even if you can install to it, once you try to boot into it you will get a blue screen of death once Windows takes over the boot process.

4. As long as you have enough space to perform the task, a bigger drive is unnecessary.
 
Note: While installing Windows to an external drive is technically possible using a modified installer, it is very picky and will not always work with every hard drive.
 
1) you didn't say what your original HD size is, but from Tiger to SL, I'd think about replacing the HD, putting the old HD in an external enclosure, doing a clean install of SL, then manually reinstalling/transferring what you need. You will have a bootable external and can "spring clean"

2) if you use 30 gigs of your current drive, you only have 27 gigs free. Slight decrease in HD performance as HD's fill up.

3) not technically, as Windows is not designed to be booted from external. However, look here: http://guides.macrumors.com/Boot_Camp_Windows_XP_On_External_Drive

4) yes, but yes (see above)
 
I have a 111.78GB hard drive. 53.73GB of that are currently in use. Is that enough space? Taking into account the partitioning of the hard drive to install Windows and re-transferring all of my files back onto it after installing Snow Leopard?

Thanks for the quick replies people. :)
 
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