how big a Bootcamp partition in Leopard ?

I use a Bootcamped mac at work (I'm the systems admin), using XP just for our goldmine database, Outlook and a couple of other minor apps. I set it up with 30Gb, which has proven to be more than enough, i'd probably have gotten away with 20, but i prefer to leave a little extra space for growth 'just in case'.

 

Obviously its down to what you need but I personally would never want a windows partition less that 30Gb... This is to give it a little room for expansion.. Plus you should ALWAYS make sure theres over 1/3 free space on NTFS partitions to avoid performance loss.

As for installation tips...

Make sure you are using an SP2 Disk (Preferably not slipstreamed). Also, if you are installing an a new Alu iMac (or a mac using the new alu keyboards) its worth having a standard USB keyboard to hand as there have been problems with Alu Keyboards not being detected during setup.

 

What about letting it create the partition for you? Is it better to create one yourself? I've never used it, so I'm just going by the description.

 

I just got done installing XP via bootcamp on a 5GB partiition (5.6 capacit). After installing Office 2003 and all the updates, I was down to 200MB left. I'll delete the partition and do 10GB I think. That should be good for me.

 

Mine is 40 gbs.

 

i made a 2.6GB partition for vista this is the minimum space required to install. i then just shove all my stuff on an NTFS backup drive connected by firewire. ive got an 80 GB hard drive in my macbook pro and id like to make most of that reserved for Mac OS X. if i could install vista on an external i would.

 

2.6? How did you fit Vista on that? Good luck. I do recommend increasing it to at least 10, even if you are that strapped for room.

Mine is 35GB only because i have my media on it. Pictures and music, so I can read/write easily from both xp and mac with NTFS. Seems to be ok.

 

Running XP or Vista on such small partitions is very unwise. NTFS itself doesnt perform well when a partition of anysize is over 2/3 full. Your OS will run a lot slower than it should. Also, your leaving no room for updates to the OS, System Restore and programs you might want to install. You should use at LEAST 20Gb for you XP/Vista Partition if you dont want any hassle and really you need more.

If space is an issue and you dont need to run games, get parallels and use a virtual HD file. That way, it will autoexpand to accomodate whatever you need.

 

i said ive already done it! i used Vista HP and the installer stated that the minimum space required is 2.6 GB. so i made a custom Vista install without the media apps & files, unnecessary drivers and languages, stripped down some of the content and then made a 2.6 GB partition with boot camp assistant. did a minimum install, no updates, didnt even connect to to my my wireless and installed 3 games on my NTFS external drive. works fine. i plan on buying a PC tower in the future though so then ill have no windows on my MBP.

 

OK. Cool. Let's hope it holds out until you get your PC tower.

 

yeah tell me about it. im always getting the "C: drive is too full" and its a bit unstable. but i need all the space i can get on my 80GB hard drive. cant wait to get vista off this thing.

 

I know this will probably be a huge hassle, but can I suggest putting XP on instead. I had Vista on mine originally, but just for the novelty. As it was a dodgy copy it stopped working after a while, and asked if I wanted to purchase a copy.

I moved to XP instead, and am all the more happy. Runs quicker, and it should take up less room. But you would have to go through the trouble of a reinstall. That is if you have xp in the first place.

 

yeh ive got xp. but for some reason my EA games run choppy in XP and run fine in vista. why could this be? ive installed the latest ATI catalyst drivers for XP.

 

Oh ok. I guess vista does have its uses. XP SP3 may have fixes for it, but I don't know when that's coming out.

 

I'm still a bit new to the Windows on Mac world so just wanted to get clarification on something - all this conversation would be irrelevant if you were going to go go with doing your windows via parallels right?

I'm still in heavy debate on going with bootcamp or not for my needs. I really want to work w/ web development on Windows (ColdFusion with MS Access) so I'm trying to figure out if using Parallels would work fine for that. Otherwise, I may need to go with Bootcamp. I just don't want to give up 20GB of my hard drive.

 

You are partly right. If you were doing general development (not needing 3D acceleration) then parallels or VMware would be fine, as they both run from the mac os. However, bootcamp does have its advantages, which are: 3D acceleration, which isn't that good through the virtual machines as of yet; also bootcamp allows you to fully utilize the computers resources (GHz GB), whereas the virtual machine will have to share with the mac.

Just to complicate things further, and you may not need to know this, but bootcamp partitions are made available to the virtual machines. So if you have XP or vista on Bootcamp partition, parallels or VMware will be able to access that when run through Mac.

Don't know if that helps, but wanted to add.

 

i set mine at 21 GB. That's enough for a couple games and some xp software while still having about 1/3 free space

 

I'll be using Vista for small streaming apps to watch football games, that wont work in OSX, and maybe a couple other small apps. I wont be installing games or large software (Photoshop, MS Office ect..)

How much should i set the partition to? is 10GB enough? or should i go for around 20gig just in case?

 

That definitely helps. I think I'm going to go ahead and just go w/ Parallels for now on my comp w/ no Bootcamp and see how that feels. Again, I'm mainly planning on working w/ ColdFusion and MS Access. I'm going to be upgrading my 15" 2.2Gghz MBP SR to 4GB RAM from 2GB RAM. Hopefull that should make the Parallels usage smooth.

On my wife's 15" 2.16ghz MBP C2D w/ 3GB RAM, I went ahead and installed Bootcamp on an 11GB partition. I'm going to set up Parallels to access that partition. I'll compare and contrast the feel of her comp and my comp.

 

I made mine 15GB, and still have about 9GB left...should of made it smaller. I only use a stock trading platform that won't run on Mac.