Mac Formatted Partitions & Boot Camp

[Knuckleheadz]

Hi All,

Hopefully a simple answer to a simple question.

When my new rMBP arrives I will be configuring with 2 partitions (Macintosh HD & Music).

Can I then add a Boot Camp partition to this and install Windows 8?

Thanks
Jon

 

[GGJstudios]

Hi All,

Hopefully a simple answer to a simple question.

When my new rMBP arrives I will be configuring with 2 partitions (Macintosh HD & Music).

Can I then add a Boot Camp partition to this and install Windows 8?

Thanks
Jon

Yes, you can have 3 partitions on a drive. The question is, why do you need a separate partition for music?

 

[Knuckleheadz]

Yes, you can have 3 partitions on a drive. The question is, why do you need a separate partition for music?

Thanks GGJstudios

I am a DJ, I have about 800GB of music and I like to keep things separate so that if I want to re-install the OS for any reason I don't have to worry about copying all my music again.

 

[zipa]

Yes, you can have 3 partitions on a drive. The question is, why do you need a separate partition for music?

He wants to access his music from either OS? HFS support in Windows is iffy at best.

 

[Knuckleheadz]

In addition since it is a flash drive it shouldn't affect performance.

 

[costabunny]

Thanks GGJstudios

I am a DJ, I have about 800GB of music and I like to keep things separate so that if I want to re-install the OS for any reason I don't have to worry about copying all my music again.

That makes sense. I keep my itunes library on a separate partition for the same reason.

I just have a symlink in the ~/Music/ folder to the partition with my iTunes folder on it. Simple to maintain that way.

 

[Knuckleheadz]

He wants to access his music from either OS? HFS support in Windows is iffy at best.

No I'm not fussed about accessing HFS+ from Windowzzz...

My main job is a Network Engineer / Server Administrator so a Windowz partition is useful... I also use AceStream for watching live Premier League games (and AceStream doesn't run on a Mac)...

Initially I thought I would use VMware Fusion but I would be taking up the same amount of space and I can still access the BootCamp partition from VMware Fusion anyway so I might as well have the BootCamp partition.

 

[Quackers]

Hi All,

Hopefully a simple answer to a simple question.

When my new rMBP arrives I will be configuring with 2 partitions (Macintosh HD & Music).

Can I then add a Boot Camp partition to this and install Windows 8?

Thanks
Jon

No, you'll already have 4 partitions on your drive - EFI partition, OSX partition, Recovery partition and your Music partition.
A Bootcamp partition makes 5 and the hybrid MBR that Bootcamp creates can only handle 4 partitions. You'll be heading for problems in the future with 5 partitions, unless your machine mysteriously supports EFI installation of Windows (i.e. keeping the drive GPT only) as some seem to nowadays (though unofficially).

 

[Knuckleheadz]

No, you'll already have 4 partitions on your drive - EFI partition, OSX partition, Recovery partition and your Music partition.
A Bootcamp partition makes 5 and the hybrid MBR that Bootcamp creates can only handle 4 partitions. You'll be heading for problems in the future with 5 partitions, unless your machine mysteriously supports EFI installation of Windows (i.e. keeping the drive GPT only) as some seem to nowadays (though unofficially).

Thanks Quackers

I had done some reading before posting and thought that I might get in to problems since although users see 3 partitions there are the EFI & Recovery Partition tucked away under the hood.

Is there anyway round this at all? (other than to simply use VMware Fusion with a Windows 8 virtual machine)

Does rEFIt work with Mavericks to overcome this limitation?

 

[Quackers]

Thanks Quackers

I had done some reading before posting and thought that I might get in to problems since although users see 3 partitions there are the EFI & Recovery Partition tucked away under the hood.

Is there anyway round this at all? (other than to simply use VMware Fusion with a Windows 8 virtual machine)

Does rEFIt work with Mavericks to overcome this limitation?

Refit is just a boot manager so has no impact on this kind of thing.
The first problem you'll see is that Bootcamp Assistant will refuse to partition your disc as it can see that an unsupported number of partitions are already in use.
It is not impossible to have more than 4 partitions when one of those is a Bootcamp partition but it involves making a choice of which 3 partitions to include in the hybrid MBR (plus the EFI partition makes 4) and which to leave out. The partition left out will not be seen by non-GPT aware partition tools (like Windows Disk Management and others) so that partition will appear as free space and therefore fair game to be over-written.

The above method will also be somewhat problematic when upgrading OSX as the hybrid MBR is likely to be re-written (incorrectly) by the OSX upgrade installer.

The only other way is to have Windows installed via EFI, which is why I mentioned it earlier. It's unofficial but there are certain late model Macs that appear to support (or at least allow) EFI installation of Windows through Bootcamp.
This is very advantageous if you like to have more than 4 partitions (when one of those is Windows) as the drive is left in GPT-only format and can therefore have as many partitions as you like on it.

It seems likely that EFI installation of Windows will be supported by Apple at some time in the future, for various reasons. There are already immense problems with 3TB + drives and Bootcamp because a hybrid MBR can only "see" 2.2TB into a drive - a major headache for Bootcamp. It's even worse when trying to remove Bootcamp from a 3TB drive having managed to get one working.

We'll see what they come up with in due course.

 

[saturnotaku]

It seems likely that EFI installation of Windows will be supported by Apple at some time in the future, for various reasons.

We're already starting to see it with some of the 2013 MacBook Airs. I'm wondering if any of the 2013 Pros that don't have a discreet GPU can work the same way.

 

[Quackers]

We're already starting to see it with some of the 2013 MacBook Airs. I'm wondering if any of the 2013 Pros that don't have a discreet GPU can work the same way.

I've seen reports of some rMBP's installing EFI Windows through Bootcamp - not sure whether they have been Iris only or not.