Fat32 and Windows 7?

[w2dmb]

Im new to mac, just got a 13" macbook pro unibody, and man its awesome.

I do however have a copy of windows 7 and of office for windows, so instead of forking out for office for mac, I am planning on dual booting the systems for the rare occasions when I need office.

I was wondering if it is possible to install windows 7 on a fat32 partition, I ask simply because the bootcamp instructions say that a. that would allow me to access the files while using OSX, and b. it says that this isn't possible with vista.

Thanks!

 

[balamw]

Stick with NTFS.

With Boot Camp 3.0 you can read files from the Mac side while booted to Windows and on the NTFS drive while booted to Mac OS X. You just can't write files to the "other" OS's partition.

If you really need R/W access you're better off getting MacDrive and NTFS-3G (or the like).

B

 

[w2dmb]

Ahh

Thanks, will do!

 

[Consultant]

Recent windows doesn't work well with fat, stick with NTFS.

 

[Stridder44]

Recent windows doesn't work well with fat, stick with NTFS.

They don't work at all. Starting with Vista, NTFS is required. You can't install Windows Vista or 7 on FAT32 even if you wanted to. But you wouldn't want to anyway because FAT32 is a piece of @#%*.

 

[LtRammstein]

Last little tidbit is that with FAT32, the largest files size you can have is 4GB. So if you like having 1080p movies on your machine, FAT32 isn't the file system you want.