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Installing windows on a second drive

rpaloalto

rpaloalto

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 19, 2005
733
2
Palo Alto CA.
I have been thinking of getting a mac pro, over the imac for a few reasons. One being the mac pro is more user serviceable. User expandability

I have one question. I would like to keep my main boot drive free of any windows apps. Can I have a second drive, that I boot into. One that contains my os x, boot camp partition, with windows xp and apps.
 
With an iMac its not available to add a second drive specifically for XP
the only way is to install a partition for XP on your OSX drive, however you can use an external second drive to actually install APPS under windows but not windows itself.
So for example you partition your drive with bootcamp OSX x% of space and XP x% of space, you format an external drive, that XP can read it may show up as drive D: or E: and then you can install Applications on that drive, but thats not a recommended solution. (if that made any sense lol).
Unfortunately windows is not able to boot from firewire/usb easily. there have been minimal amounts of people who havebooted XP from USB and itsnot particularly great

with a macpro this is possible
Drive Bay1 = OSX drive
Drive Bay2 = XP Drive


hope that helps!
 
On a Mac Pro, you can have Bootcamp/Windows on another drive. It's not a problem and quite easy to do. I have my 1st gen Mac Pro set up this way.
 
I have the following setup:

Mac Pro 8 x 2.8, 4 GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 8800 GT
4 internal HD's:
- bays 1 & 2: 2 x 500 GB in RAID 0 for Mac OS X
- bay 3: 320 GB HD for Windows Vista 32
- bay 4: 750 GB HD for "data"

The install proces:
Made a softRAID setup of drives 1 & 2, and installed Mac OS X Leopard.
Running Leopard, I partitioned drive 3 with MBR option selected, and erased FAT32 (DOS).
I didn't use Boot Camp assistant or anything, and simply inserted the Vista Ultimate 32 bits DVD, and installed it from there.
After that used the Leopard DVD for the Apple drivers, and voila.. everything works perfectly.
The 750 GB HD in drive 4 was already erased.
 
Which Mac OS X disk do you mean?

If you mean the Mac OS X install DVD, then maybe I wasn't clear.
When I said "running Leopard", I meant that I was running the installed Leopard on the striped (RAID0) hd's to format the drive in bay 3 to make it ready for a Windows install. (Works for XP SP2 too)

Then I simply inserted my Vista DVD, booted with the "C" key pressed (to force to boot from the optical drive), and installed Vista like I would on a "normal" PC>
 
I have two questions about that:

(1)
If a Windows installation without Boot Camp is possible....what's the benefit when using Boot Camp?

(2)
Is it possible to install _all_ Windows parts (Windows itself _and_ Boot Camp) at one separate disk. For instance Mac Pro:

Disk 1: Mac OS, Mac OS programs and Mac data
Disk 2: Boot Camp, Windows and Windows programs

Idea behind: I want to be able to remove the Windows disk and have still a running and "clean" Mac OS disk left. Without Boot Camp and any Windows stuff....
 
Qjuu said:
I have two questions about that:

(1)
If a Windows installation without Boot Camp is possible....what's the benefit when using Boot Camp?
Click to expand...

Yes...the BootCamp drivers are essential for any internal Apple hardware (optical disk eject, bluetooth, wireless/ethernet ports, Apple keyboard, video/graphic drivers, audio drivers)

Essentially just look at the bootcamp drivers similar to if you're building your own PC, you buy a motherboard, it comes with Motherboard drivers so all the ports, hardware (wifi/sound/ethernet ports etc) work essentially.

Thats all bootcamp drivers and I recommend having them over Not having them.


(2)
Is it possible to install _all_ Windows parts (Windows itself _and_ Boot Camp) at one separate disk. For instance Mac Pro:

Disk 1: Mac OS, Mac OS programs and Mac data
Disk 2: Boot Camp, Windows and Windows programs

Idea behind: I want to be able to remove the Windows disk and have still a running and "clean" Mac OS disk left. Without Boot Camp and any Windows stuff....
Click to expand...

Thats the ideal configuration actually. and most do that. I do.

Drive Bay 1: OSX
Drive Bay 2: XP (i can take this out set it aside and pop it back in if i needed too)

they run completely separate of each other.
 
how do you install windows on a SECOND partition on a SECOND hard-drive?
i only have 320gigs of boot drive and i want to keep it OS X,
but when i make a partition with bootcamp, windows installer wants to install to Disk one no matter WHAT.
its kinda stupid...
 
Ploki said:
how do you install windows on a SECOND partition on a SECOND hard-drive?
i only have 320gigs of boot drive and i want to keep it OS X,
but when i make a partition with bootcamp, windows installer wants to install to Disk one no matter WHAT.
its kinda stupid...
Click to expand...

So you want to take a drive that lets say is in "Bay 2" and Partition it twice? So you have 3 drives in one? Or are you just taking the drive and splitting it into 2? and NOT 3? Just trying to clarify that. Cause I took my "Bay 2" drive and split it once and installed XP successfully on that partition.
 
sorry for confusion, i have 2 drives and each has one partition.
id like to split the 2nd (Bay2) drive and install windows there.
i succesfully partitioned (via bootcamp) the second drive,
but when i get into windows setup it refuses to install, it demands to install something on the "C:" drive (my main drive)

i dont want any windows on my bay1 drive
 
nevermind, it worked the second time i tried..
i dont know why it didnt work the first time (the BootCamp partition was not recognized as C: in win setup, works fine now)
 
OSX & Windows on Macpro

with a macpro this is possible
Drive Bay1 = OSX drive
Drive Bay2 = XP Drive


Hi,

I'm a newbie here so please bare with me. I'm considering the purchase of a Macpro for my home studio. I'm an artist and work in the gaming industry which is all about PC. My experiences with the PCs at work have been less than stellar and I cant conceive of buying into one for my personal work. I have an old G3 at home that I used when I did illustration and graphic work back in the day. I never had any problems that I couldnt fix myself. I'm definatley not a technical person, so when I have problems with my PC at work, I have a Tech Ops department to go to. However, their final solutions tend to be things like re-imaging or buying new hardware or a new machine. I just got a brand new XPS at the beginning of the year and already Tech Ops has had to install a brand new power supply.

That said, I'd like to go Mac for home but I will probably have to run Windows for certain applications that I use. Like some of the posts here, it was suggested to me that I buy a Macpro with two hard drives, one for OSX and the other for Windows. I do like the idea of keeping them separate. I dont think I have use for actually crossing operating systems due to work flow issues. If the OS are on separate drives will I be able to boot up in Windows without the use of software like BootCamp or Parrallels etc? Will I still need either of those? Any recommend ways to set this up? Any information and/or links regarding this would be great!

Also, if anyone has information or personal experience with running Maya on a Mac or other 3D apps, please share. System specs would be great too.

Sorry for the long post. I'm just trying to do my homework before I make the investment $$$. Thanks for your time :)
 
Also, if anyone has information or personal experience with running Maya on a Mac or other 3D apps, please share. System specs would be great too.
Click to expand...

Im just starting to use maya on mac, from using max on windows (im still running max on a windows drive).

The problem with maya on mac is that it's currently 32-bit meaning it can only use 3gigs of ram. Im running 64-bit max and it's really fast. Im guessing autodesk will release maya as 64-bit for mac, as it seems to of had a fast uptake within the mac community (especially with architects-there was an article in 3dworld on macs in 3d, might be worth checking their site). If you havent used maya before, i suggest getting a book. Online tutorials are great for individual things, but to get to know the program, you gotta just sit down and go through a book.

zbrush is soon to be released on mac too, which works great with maya for organic modelling. Modo is always being improved and is a relatively inexpensive program, though it's rendering and animation leave much to be desired.

Maya seems to be a pretty lazy port to mac though- many of the shortcut keys are still ctrl+key rather than cmd+key, which can get confusing, plus you have to have a 3 button (scrollwheel) mouse. The mighty mouse is basically unusable for maya. It just doesnt feel like a mac program to me...

To be honest, i think windows is still a better platform for 3d, though mac is quickly catching up. There's more 3d programs and more graphics cards etc. But the mac is so much more stable and the little things like expose and spaces make working with 10s of windows easy.

Im also using 3d connexion spacenavigator which works great too. Regarding my setup, you can seee the specs in my sig. For windows, ive used the 320gb drive that came with the mac pro as a storage disk and an old 200gb disk as an OS disk.

Hope that helps!
 
Thank you ThirdMan. Your input is much appreciated!

This has been a bit of a dilemma really. I know working in Maya on a PC is preferred, but so is stability. Apparently having both performance AND stability is too much to ask, lol.

I'm a character artist and I've been working in games and with Maya for eight years. You'd think I'd know the ins and outs a lot better, but my brain is full on the creative side not the technical. All of my work is done with polygonal modelling. I'd like to start going higher end with my personal work and to get up to speed on some of the newer techniques/processes out there. Sooner or later I'll have to anyway. Zbrush and Silo are apps I'd like to try. Mudbox too but I think its just for Windows....at least for now.

Anyway, thanks again. I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and find out for myself. Wish me luck :)
 
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