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vistadude

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 3, 2010
1,423
1
Subject: Bootcamp and second hdd

So I finally ordered a SSD for my unibody plastic macbook 2009 and am hoping to keep the old hdd as a large FAT32 partition in the superdrive location. I searched but couldn’t find out anyone with the same setup as me so I’m not sure if my setup will work. Does anyone know if my install will be successful?

Thanks in advance.

Current setup: 3 partitions, Snow Leopard, Windows 7 32 bit, FAT32 data partition on a 256 GB hdd.

Desired procedure:

1. Replace hdd with ssd and keep superdrive for installing software.
2. Clean install snow leopard and update so I can access Mac app store.
3. Purchase mountain lion and download, but cancel install.
4. Transfer mountain lion to usb flash drive and clean install mountain lion over snow leopard.
5. Bootcamp and install windows 7 64 bit on SSD.
6. Install software on both windows and mac using superdrive.
7. Plug in old hdd via sata to usb cable and transfer old documents and files via USB to the SDD.
8. Format the old hdd a single FAT32 partition using disk utility in mountain lion (Is disk utility capable of combining 3 partitions as 1?).
9. Put old hdd in Optibay and remove superdrive. Will mountain lion, windows, or boot camp allow for a second hard drive?
10. Hope that mountain lion is better than snow leopard (I want it for icloud).
11. Decide whether to use TRIM enabler?


Thanks.
 
Am I the first to put both OS's on the same drive, and then add another hdd?
 
No, you already have all the steps correct and you can re-partition using Disk Utility. One minor change, I would suggest using exFAT instead of FAT32.

As for TRIM, it's perfectly safe but in mind that after most OS X updates (not App updates) you will have to re-run the TRIM patch.
 
Thanks,

Just one question, why use exFAT over FAT32? It seems to have issues with a standard XP SP3 machine and the only advantage I see is holding disc image files (over 3 GB). I can keep this on the mac or windows partition, I have no day to day files greater than 0.5 GB.
 
The main advantage is files larger than 4GB, if you don't need that than you can stick with FAT32. The second advantage is exFAT also offers quicker file creation/file deletion (due to the free space bitmap). Defragmenting a exFAT volume is probably a bit quicker as well because the OS knows where all the blocks of free space are to move files around.

WinXP supports exFAT with a update - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19364
 
Subject: Bootcamp and second hdd

So I finally ordered a SSD for my unibody plastic macbook 2009 and am hoping to keep the old hdd as a large FAT32 partition in the superdrive location. I searched but couldn’t find out anyone with the same setup as me so I’m not sure if my setup will work. Does anyone know if my install will be successful?

Thanks in advance.

Current setup: 3 partitions, Snow Leopard, Windows 7 32 bit, FAT32 data partition on a 256 GB hdd.

Desired procedure:

1. Replace hdd with ssd and keep superdrive for installing software.
2. Clean install snow leopard and update so I can access Mac app store.
3. Purchase mountain lion and download, but cancel install.
4. Transfer mountain lion to usb flash drive and clean install mountain lion over snow leopard.
5. Bootcamp and install windows 7 64 bit on SSD.
6. Install software on both windows and mac using superdrive.
7. Plug in old hdd via sata to usb cable and transfer old documents and files via USB to the SDD.
8. Format the old hdd a single FAT32 partition using disk utility in mountain lion (Is disk utility capable of combining 3 partitions as 1?).
9. Put old hdd in Optibay and remove superdrive. Will mountain lion, windows, or boot camp allow for a second hard drive?
10. Hope that mountain lion is better than snow leopard (I want it for icloud).
11. Decide whether to use TRIM enabler?


Thanks.

http://allmactweaks.blogspot.com.au Check out the post on Feb 14, 2013, for SSD+HDD Windows 7 Installation guide (without SuperDrive).
 
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