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Quad5Ny

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 13, 2009
984
22
New York, USA
First some background info. I recently purchased a 1TB hard drive for my 13" MBP, and I am about to do a clean install of OSX 10.6 and Win7 64bit on separate partitions.

And I want to setup the partitions before I install using Disk Utility. The reason for this is because I'm under the assumption that when creating a NTFS partition its better for the disk to be blank so it can put the MFT(Master file table) and MFT Mirror wherever it wants instead of some random spot on the disk (that way disk writes will be faster). The MFT thing was true when converting a FAT32 disk to NTFS. Nativity formatted NTFS disks were always faster then ones converted from FAT32, because the MFT was spread out instead of at the start of the disk.

I'm worried that installing OSX and then using the bootcamp utility will cause the MFT on my NTFS partition to end up in a un-optimal place and disk Reads/Writes will be slower.

Ok, so here's my questions.

1.) Should I be using a GUID Partition Table or Master Boot Record(Remember OSX 10.6 and Win7)?

2.) Should I use Disk Utility to Create a the OSX partition and then leave the second partition as Free Space? / Or should I use a third party utility and make the OSX partition and the NTFS partition at the same time?

3.) If I do create the partitions Manualy, will bootcamp still work correctly?

4.) Should I Use Journaled or Case-Sensitive Journaled on my OSX partition?


I know all of the questions were stupid, but there isn't any info on the web about it.
 
Ok, so here's my questions.

1) GPT. Win 7 64 is (or at least can be) free of BIOS/MBR finally.

2) Free space is fine. Even if you mark it as FAT32, as Boot Camp Assistant does, you can just delete it and create a new NTFS partition in its place in the Windows 7 installer. That way you are sure you get the partition set up exactly as Win 7 wants it.

3) Yes. As long as you stick with GPT.

4) That's a personal choice. Windows isn't case sensitive so maybe stick with insensitive for max compatibility.

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There's a 1TB drive that will fit a 13" MBP? I thought the 2.5" 1TB drives are 12.5mm thick. Can you show me a link to the one you bought?
 
FWIW, by default Boot Camp Assistant partitions your HDD as hybrid GPT/MBR. The MBR is a fake, but the disc is still partitioned GPT.

Mac OS uses the GPT, Windows uses the MBR.

Don't switch to MBR only just for Windows' sake. As I recall there were some Macs that would not boot Mac OS from MBR discs.

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