Dual Boot Mac OS 10.5 / WinXP: increase Mac OS partition without OS disk?

[tuna]

I don't normally have a Mac, but I checked one out from my university library that is configured in a dual boot with Win XP. I did this because I wanted to install iOS 4 GM on my iPhone, which you can only do on a Mac using iTunes 9.2 beta.

I did everything and got it working perfectly, the only problem is that I would like to fill my 32GB iPhone with all my music but the Mac OS partition on the computer is only 30GB with realistically about 9GB of total storage to play with, maybe a few more GB if I started deleting some programs. The Win XP partition is 45GB with about 35GB available.

So:

1: Is there a way that I could get iTunes to recognize and use music from within the Win XP partition?

2: If not, is there a way that I could increase the size of the Mac OS partition without the OS disk?

To preempt any questioning, there are absolutely no restrictions from the University library on what you can do with these laptops (software wise at least). They just reformat them each time you return them. The standard desktop background on the computer gives you the administrator username and password.

 

[BlueRevolution]

1: Is there a way that I could get iTunes to recognize and use music from within the Win XP partition?

1. iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced -> (deselect) Keep iTunes Media folder organized.
2. Click and drag songs from the Windows XP partition onto the iTunes icon in your Dock.

 

[tuna]

1. iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced -> (deselect) Keep iTunes Media folder organized.
2. Click and drag songs from the Windows XP partition onto the iTunes icon in your Dock.

Thanks I'm going to start testing this solution out right now. I'm transferring a small batch of music from my MobileMe account into Mac OS, and I'm going to try to copy it to within the WinXP partition, and then see if Mac OS will recognize it. I hope it will work because Mac OS wouldn't even recognize my Windows-formatted external hdd, but I guess if Mac OS recognizes the WinXP partition on the MacBook, maybe its using a different file system that the Mac can interpret.

If this works then it should be very easy: boot into WinXP, transfer over all the music from my external, boot into Mac OS, add the folder to iTunes, and transfer to iPhone.

 

[tuna]

UPDATE:

When I try to transfer some music from my Mac OS desktop into the boot camp WinXP partition, I get the message that 'it can't be modified". Is there really some folder switch that might turn the folder from "read only" to "read and write" as there sometimes is in Win XP? Is there any way for me to do this?

 

[tuna]

UPDATE 2:

After failing at being able to copy music into the Windows partition, I looked around and found a couple sample music files in the My Music folder in the Win XP partition. I tried to add that to iTunes and iTunes does nothing. It does not recognize that I am trying to add the music.

Looks like there is not an easy way to do this. Even if I install some of that cludgey software that is supposed to allow Mac OS to work with NTFS, who knows if iTunes will even work with that.

Any suggestions?

At this point it seems like the only solution may be to email my school's tech department and explain to them that I'm trying to do some video editing and that the free space in the Mac partition is nowhere near enough... could they please format me a MacBook with just Mac OS.

 

[BlueRevolution]

Looks like there is not an easy way to do this. Even if I install some of that cludgey software that is supposed to allow Mac OS to work with NTFS, who knows if iTunes will even work with that.

It will. Just install MacFUSE and NTFS-3G.