Creating an HFS+ volume on a Windows HD - possible?

[parish]

This may sound like an odd thing to want to do, but there is a reason.

I have a new 250GB HDD. I want to put it in a PC, create a 100GB NTFS partition and install XP. Then, I want to take the HDD out of the PC, connect it to my MBP using a USB adaptor and create an HFS+ volume in the remaining 150GB. Is it possible to do this and will OS X re-write the MBR/Partition Table such that the disk will still function as a Windows boot disk?

When formatting it initially would I be better to leave the 150GB as free space, or create a partition but not format it?

Alternatively, I could use Win7-RC rather than XP as, I believe, Win7 can use GPT. Would this be a better choice as GPT is the system used by OS X?

 

[maflynn]

Seems like a lot of work and since Macs use a difference partition type (GUID), it will probably over write the MBR.

Why not create the HFS+ in OSX (and install OSX if need be), and also leave some space open for the NTFS partition you wish to create.

 

[parish]

Seems like a lot of work and since Macs use a difference partition type (GUID), it will probably over write the MBR.

Yeah, that's what i'm worried about - although OS X knows about MBR as it can read Windows formatted disks attached via USB.

Why not create the HFS+ in OSX (and install OSX if need be), and also leave some space open for the NTFS partition you wish to create.

Except that I need the NTFS partition to be a bootable Windows disk.

Perhaps I should explain why I need to do this.

I have about 4 hours of family video on an old analogue camcorder that I want to transfer to DVD using iMovie/iDVD. I bought the PC version of Roxio's Easy VHS to DVD as, here in the UK, it is half the price of the Mac version Since buying it I've found that it can only produce MPEG-4 files in iPhone resolution (320x240??) and iMovie can only use MPEG-2 if I purchase Apple's MPEG-2 decoder so the only format that can be produced by Easy VHS and read by iMovie is DV (AVI) but these are ~15GB per hour and I don't have 50-60GB on either a PC or my MBP.

So, the idea is to use this spare disk to install XP, rip the video to the NTFS partition, attache the HDD to my Mac, create an HFS+ volume and copy the DV files to it. Yes, I know OS X can read NTFS, but iMovie copies or moves the files it uses so I need a writable FS. FAT32 would be no good as there is a filesize limit of 2GB (or is is 4GB? either way, not large enough).

That's what I need to do so if you can suggest any other (preferably easier) way to do it I'd be grateful.