Best Practices for Bootcamp Install with SSD iMac

[MendotaMike]

I just got a new 27" iMac with the 3.4 GHz i7, a 1TB hard disk, and the 256 GB SSD, and I bumped it up to 16 GB RAM. What's the best strategy for installing Bootcamp on a machine with an SSD in addition to the regulard hard drive? Do I install Windows on the SSD, or the hard drive? How much space? Etc.?

Sorry for the noob questions, I tried searching, but couldn't find much on this subject.

 

[johnhurley]

I just got a new 27" iMac with the 3.4 GHz i7, a 1TB hard disk, and the 256 GB SSD, and I bumped it up to 16 GB RAM. What's the best strategy for installing Bootcamp on a machine with an SSD in addition to the regulard hard drive? Do I install Windows on the SSD, or the hard drive? How much space? Etc.?

Sorry for the noob questions, I tried searching, but couldn't find much on this subject.

Well in general you want your operating system and important libraries and application executables on the SSD plus swap space etc all on the SSD. That applies equally to both mac os x and also to windows.

Bootcamp setup works best or at least easiest for windows when you get the initial sizing right and then you don't have to screw around changing the size of the windows partition because that is when most people seem to start shooting toes off etc.

How much stuff and applications etc are you going to want in your windows environment?

I also have a 256 gb SSD in my 2011 macbook air. I setup 80 gb for the win 7 partition ... not currently using even 1/2 of it ... but reserved for future stuff in there "just in case".

That gives me about 170 gb for mac os x and 80 gb for lion ... ( you never get the whole 256 gb ). Seems like a smart setup for me ... what factors do you want to consider specifically for your setup?

To summarize though you want both mac os x and windows running from the SSD and then figure out how you want to use the 1 TB of additional space. If you format the 1 TB in multiple partitions ... versus 1 partition in a format that both mac os x and windows can read/write from ... do you want to do that?

 

[MendotaMike]

It makes a lot of sense to me what you said about having both operating systems installed on the ssd. I need Windows primarily for Quicken, managing my very large (i.e. 19TB) Windows Home Server and it's various media management apps (My Movies, AnyDVD, etc.) and to occasionally use Windows Media Center (which I have connected to an HDHomerun Prime network cable card tuner). None of these things require a huge amount of local storage.

So what's the better call as to the 1 TB hard drive? Separate partitions or just one?

 

[johnhurley]

It makes a lot of sense to me what you said about having both operating systems installed on the ssd. I need Windows primarily for Quicken, managing my very large (i.e. 19TB) Windows Home Server and it's various media management apps (My Movies, AnyDVD, etc.) and to occasionally use Windows Media Center (which I have connected to an HDHomerun Prime network cable card tuner). None of these things require a huge amount of local storage.

So what's the better call as to the 1 TB hard drive? Separate partitions or just one?

Are you going to actually use the 1 TB drive for any windows related storage ( sounds to me like not ... all that is probably over on your windows home server aka network storage )?

You could use 1 big exFAT partition on the 1 TB that both operating systems can read/write ... but do you need to do that?

How are you planning to use the 1 TB drive?

If you really are not going to use it at all for windows related storage ( long term ) I would probably not go with exFAT.

Maybe you should put down on paper a couple of alternative layouts and formatting schemes and then start thinking about pros/cons of the different alternatives?

 

[MendotaMike]

I can't say I'm entirely sure how I'm going to use the 1TB on the Mac. As I said, my primary Windows uses shouldn't be too storage intensive, so I might be OK having the bulk of my Windows storage either on my server or on one of my existing Windows machines. My intentions for the iMac are to have it be our "family" PC, but also to serve as the photo and video editing workhorse for our family pictures and movies. To that end, I've contemplated moving my photo library (currently about 50GB) on to the Mac, and possibly our home movie library as well, just to avoid network lag when browsing photos, editing photos, etc. The Mac also serves as our central music manager, but I think the current iTunes storage on the WHS will work fine for that, since lag really isn't an issue.