Boot camp and 3 partition

[wwchris]

Not sure if you guys are aware, but the newest bootcamp updates allow you to copy files directly from a windows partition right onto the mac drive and vice versa. So I boot in windows natively and my mac drive shows up now and I can cope files to it.

I'm wondering if anyone here has had any luck creating three bootable partitions, OSX, win Xp and Win 7, that is what I am looking to do. Any advice? Wanna be able to hold down option at boot and load any one of the three.

 

[Snoopy94]

I wanted a three partition Boot Camp setup: one OS X partition, one NTFS data partition, and one Windows 7 partition. After trying some of the other comments, I found a very easy way to accomplish this:
1. Run Boot Camp assistant and install Windows 7 as per the installation and setup guide. You don't have to do anything special, just follow the directions...
2. Purchase Coriolis System's iPartition software (about $36). Upon downloading it, you are directed to create a bootable CD. Boot with this CD, and use iPartition to resize the Macintosh HD and Bootcamp partitions to whatever size you want, and create a new partition for Data with whatever format you want (NTFS in my case). As others have warned about Windows being picky about where it is, I put my extra partitions "at the end of the disk" (an iPartition option when you create partitions).
3. Reboot and run Verify Disk Permissions and Verify Disk, just to make sure everything is OK.

The Bootcamp and Data partitions show up as disks and can be read by OS X. For read/write access, you can purchase and install Paragon Software's NTFS for Mac on the Macintosh HD, and HPS+ for Windows in Windows. Then all disks are fully accessible to both operating systems.

I also suggest immediately making sure Time Machine has a fresh backup, and getting WinClone to make an image of the Windows partition, as a further backup. If there is any problem, you can delete the Windows partition, recreate it, and restore it from WinClone. [In my experiments before finding this solution, Restoring Windows from WinClone was so much easier than doing a re-installation of Windows!] You could even use a WinClone image during the initial Boot Camp installation, if you have one, instead of using the DVD.

The best way I found for 2 Mac partitions + Bootcamp is:
1) Start with the 1 Mac partition with Leo or Snow Leo.
2) Run Boot Camp assistant, to create a Windows partition, but don't install Windows.
3) Run Disk utility to split the Mac partition.
4) Insert Windows CD and restart on it.
5) Perform the installation (don't forget to format the C: partition from Windows installer)

 

[Jychan28]

My problem is I can create 3 partitions: one for mac, one for pc, another one which pc can read can write, but mac can read and write the the third drive but both mac and pc cannot see each other's file on this third drive and they can read and write and see each other. In other words, I waste a lot of time and effort to create the third NTFS drive that expect both can share.

Recap: Mac and PC can read and write the third drive but they don't see each other's files on the third drive, very strange. Anyone can shred some light?

 

[danmcg]

I would have to put in a vote for iPartition. By far the easiest and most complete way to make this happen. However many partitions you want and in whatever order.

I started with a 750 Scorpio Black.
Fresh copy of OS X
Time machine restore
Bootcamp 53 GB
Install Windows 7
Booted into iPartition to shrink OS X partition, grow Bootcamp partition (cause I wanted a slightly different size, move it to make the free space be at the end of the drive, format the end of the drive to be about 200 gb, check it off to be visible to windows...

When it finished it booted right up into windows with no issues at all. Well, it ran chkdsk the first time, but after that I have no issues. I adjusted the drive lettering scheme in Windows to better match what I wanted also and it's been great.