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Kendo

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 4, 2011
2,363
922
Forgive me if this has been asked many times before however I couldn't find the answer in the Mac Guides above.

If I split my hard drive into OSX and Windows partitions, are they treated as two separate hard drives? In other words, if I have 5 movies in OSX and want to view them after I boot into Windows, can I access them? Or do I need to load the movies onto the Windows partition as well?

Does this apply to games as well? If I install Half-Life 2 on Steam for OSX and I boot into Windows, will Half-Life 2 also be installed in Windows?
 
Simple

If you merely have Boot Camp and OSX in two partitions then add a third formatted as Fat 32. Place any thing you want both OS to see in the Fat 32 partition. If you are using Parallels 6 when using Boot Camp in a Virtual Window under OSX you can see files in both OS with the proper settings checked, no need for Fat 32.

That said I made a 60GB FAt 32 on a 750 HD in a 2011 MacBook Pro to make life less complicated when solely in Windows. The Win partition doesn't need to be so large this way.

Does that answer your question?
 
OS X can Only Read from the Windows partition, it cant write or make changes.
Windows can Only Read from the OS X partition (provided you installed the BootCamp drivers), it cant write or make changes.

So uh yea if you have 5 Movies in OS X you want to view in Windows, you can happily do that. =P


If you do want write support, there are 3rd party drivers you can install to give each OS the ability to Write as well. (Or you can do as 4phun suggested and make a third FAT32 or exFAT partition that both OS's can write to.)

http://www.google.com/search?q=OS+X+NTFS+Driver
http://www.google.com/search?q=Windows+HFS++Driver
 
So just to be clear...

I only need to put one set of movies and MP3's on my hard drive. But for games, I have to install twice if I want to play through OS X and Windows?
 
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