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New to Macs, Couple of Questions

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phenixdragon

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 24, 2009
108
0
I just picked up a 17" MacBook Pro last night and I have a couple of questions. I am pretty new to Macs. I have actually done some ISP tech support when OS X first came out but it's been awhile and I never used it as an everyday OS.

So my first question is about drive partitions. I do have Boot Camp setup with Windows 7. I currently have 3 partitions. 40 gigs for OS X, 40 gigs for Windows 7, and the rest of the 500 gig drive partitioned off but not formatted. What I would like to do with that 3rd partition is use it as an a dad partition. I want to install applications on it, music, photos, etc...but can I partition it to install applications for both Mac OS and Windows? I rather have the OSes both on their on partition and everything else on this data drive. If possible, I would like that partition for both so I do not have to maintain another partition so each would have their own data partition.

And if I were to run Parallels, can it boot up the Windows 7 that I have already setup with Boot Camp?

I thought I had a few more questions but that's all I can think of for now.

Thanks!
 
You will need to give OS X Much more space than that and Im pretty sure all apps that are installed needs to installed on Mac HD and not another partition on the drive. If Im reading this right you want to install Mac and Windows Applications on one drive, well that wont be possible either as the drive will need to have the right file format for read write options for both and mac and i dont think Win7 will support this.

Parallels will be able to boot up from the Bootcamp partition as well.
 
Cool. Thanks for the quick reply. It answers my questions.

But now I am wondering, is it possible to dynamically change the sizes of the partitions without data loss? Will the OS X Disk Utility allow that?

Also I am assuming that OS X can read Windows Partitions fine so I am assuming putting data on there such as video, music, photos, etc...(not applications) would be read just fine in OS X.
 
phenixdragon said:
Cool. Thanks for the quick reply. It answers my questions.

But now I am wondering, is it possible to dynamically change the sizes of the partitions without data loss? Will the OS X Disk Utility allow that?

Also I am assuming that OS X can read Windows Partitions fine so I am assuming putting data on there such as video, music, photos, etc...(not applications) would be read just fine in OS X.
Click to expand...

Yes to both :)
 
Cool. well then I shouldn't have a problem. My main concern was not creating the partitions large enough for either and then needing more space later down the road but not being able to change them without having to reinstall everything, just like with Windows unless you use 3rd party utilities like Partition Magic.
 
Hm...so actually I tried looking in the OS X Disk Utility and I'm not seeing a way to change the partition sizes without going in and deleting the previous partitions. Are you sure it is possible to dynamically change them?
 
For me, currently 40 gigs is plenty. But that's not my question. My question is, is it possible to change partition drive space without having to delete the partitions or lose data?

My current partitions are 3, 1 40 gigs for OS X, 1 40 gigs for Windows 7, and the rest is a NTFS parition. If I want to change the 40 gigs for OS X, can I without losing any data on the other drives and without having to delete the paritions and create new ones?
 
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