I am considering to buy a Mac Pro. Is it possible to put Leopard in one internal drive and Windows in a second internal drive? (Perhaps also linux in a 3rd internal drive?) In such case, can Leopard accesses the files in other OSs? What are the advantages/disadvantages of doing this compared with installing all the OSs in one big drive?
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Do you use an extra internal drive for Windows?
- Thread starter hajime
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im not sure as i dont own a Mac Pro but try not using Boot Camp Assistant at all, booting into the Windows installer and installing on the second hard drive. then install the Boot Camp drivers off your Leopard DVD.
did it work? you may need to use Boot Camp Assistant to allow booting into the Windows installer disc.
I've done this on a Power Mac with OSX and Linux. What happened at boot up was a text menu popped up looking something like this:
l linux
x osx
c cdrom
(hitting the appropriate letter)
Once into OSX, if I wanted to boot into Linux I had to go to System Preferences/Startup Disk and select it, then hit restart.
Once into Linux, I pretty much had to restart to the text menu above to get back to OSX.
The disks were not readable to each other's OS, but I moved files back and forth usually with web based apps.
I did this to avoid partitioning and to keep the separate HDs 'clean'. Drives are relatively cheap anyway.
Haven't done this with Windows though.
l linux
x osx
c cdrom
(hitting the appropriate letter)
Once into OSX, if I wanted to boot into Linux I had to go to System Preferences/Startup Disk and select it, then hit restart.
Once into Linux, I pretty much had to restart to the text menu above to get back to OSX.
The disks were not readable to each other's OS, but I moved files back and forth usually with web based apps.
I did this to avoid partitioning and to keep the separate HDs 'clean'. Drives are relatively cheap anyway.
Haven't done this with Windows though.
Absolutely. I have XP Pro on a disc in Bay 2 and Vista 64 in Bay 3.
One problem installing Vista on a second hard drive is that - it may give you a fit (it did me
). Some have not had any problems but a workaround (and it's no big deal) is to install the new disc, go to BC Assistant and select that disc and it will be formatted to FAT32. Do not click on "Install Windows Now". Make sure your Windows disc is in the optical drive and shut down the machine. Open the side case and pull the drive in Bay 1 (your OSX drive). Shut the case and start up holding down the C key and it will boot to the DVD. From there go through the motions. I had a problem where it would not proceed after I selected the drive to install. From the install window I deleted the partition and reformatted it, restarted the machine and it installed with no problems.OSX can read files on an NTFS partition but cannot write. There are third party apps that can do this though.
I know I probably gave you more information than you asked for but I hope this helps.
BTW You'll LOVE your MP