Newbie questions (Drivers / Partitions / Rights)

[SMabille]

Hi,

I'm ordering my first iMac soon and have a few questions:
I plan to use MacDrive and NTFS-3G to be able to read/write HFS and NTFS partition both under OS X and Win 7. I have several Windows applications that I'll carry over, probably running most of them in Parallels 6, Bootcamp for games. Have a big iTunes library. The Mac (as my PC for the moment) will be shared between several users.

My questions:
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- If I open my BootCamp partition with Parallels 6 and install Parallels tools, what's the impact on the drivers, in particular graphic card? (what happen when I boot via Boot Camp, will I be using the ATI driver or a Parallel one and what's the impact on speed).
- From my understanding the permissions on files/directories in OS X are limited to owner and a single group. How that translate/integrate with Windows where you can specify the permission for each users and groups when accessing NTFS/HFS partitions and under Parallels.
- Same question with users account, how does that work under Parallels. Do I have two set of accounts (1 Windows, 1 OSX)?
- In regards to partition size, should I put my data on HFS or Windows partitions? I suspect on the one most used for speed reason but again permissions might affect this.

THANKS!

 

[balamw]

- If I open my BootCamp partition with Parallels 6 and install Parallels tools, what's the impact on the drivers, in particular graphic card? (what happen when I boot via Boot Camp, will I be using the ATI driver or a Parallel one and what's the impact on speed).

It's treated like a docked notebook. Separate hardware configurations, one machine. You get full speed in Boot Camp, and as fast as it can go in your VM.

- In regards to partition size, should I put my data on HFS or Windows partitions? I suspect on the one most used for speed reason but again permissions might affect this.

You're on the right path. Where will the data be used.

- Same question with users account, how does that work under Parallels. Do I have two set of accounts (1 Windows, 1 OSX)?

Yes, you have two sets of accounts. One in OS X and one in Parallels. Only way to avoid that is to be running Active Directory or some other Direcotry service both OSes support.

- From my understanding the permissions on files/directories in OS X are limited to owner and a single group. How that translate/integrate with Windows where you can specify the permission for each users and groups when accessing NTFS/HFS partitions and under Parallels.

What you are describing is the Unix/POSIX permissions level. OS X layers ACLs on top of this so you can do pretty much everything you have done in Windows. e.g. http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2005050120073947

I don't know how these permissions are treated by MacDrive, etc...

My $0.02: If you really want multi-user, multi-platrform file-level access control you may want to seriously consider abstracting things with a server. Even if it's just a NAS.

B

 

[SMabille]

Thanks for your reply...

Beside iTunes (a bit chunk of data) that will probably be moved from day one, the rest is likely to slide from PC to Mac as I replace my software (when I find a better software on Mac). So I suspect I'll keep about 250Gb for my NTFS partition and the 1.75Gb left as HFS.