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OS X & Boot Camp - One SSD or Two?

ActionableMango

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Original poster
Sep 21, 2010
9,617
6,918
I am probably a day or two away from buying a MP. I plan on using both OS X and boot camp a lot. My current thinking is to reduce the bootup time with a 120GB SSD, partitioned in half for OS X and Win7. Is this the right way to go, or should I get two separate 60GB SSDs, one for each operating system?

This is the drive I am considering for the 120GB solution:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227590

I assume, being a 3.5" drive, it will slot right in to the HDD bays.
 
Two SSDs will take two HD bays while one SSD will take only one HD bay. If you're going to use Windows through Boot Camp, then I would just get one drive and partition it. There is better use for those HD bays.
 
Hellhammer said:
Two SSDs will take two HD bays while one SSD will take only one HD bay. If you're going to use Windows through Boot Camp, then I would just get one drive and partition it. There is better use for those HD bays.
Click to expand...

How small can a Win 7 partition be? I have only one Windoz program that I need to run (Chief Architect) and it's less than a GB.

Edit: Did a search and the prevailing comments are that a bare bones win 7 install is around 5 GB. So, does a 10GB partition sound OK?
http://www.compdigitec.com/labs/2009/03/17/windows-7-clean-install-size/

Here are the MS recommendations: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/system-requirements
Would be nice to NOT throw away 20GB on windows but maybe that's the reality of the beast.

Thanks
JohnG
 
johnnymg said:
How small can a Win 7 partition be? I have only one Windoz program that I need to run (Chief Architect) and it's less than a GB.

Thanks
JohnG
Click to expand...

Microsoft states that you need 16GB for 32-bit version and 20GB for 64-bit version. I have 64-bit Home Premium installed via Parallels and it takes 9.48GB and I don't have any big apps installed so you should be fine with 15-20GB. As long as it lets you install it (thus you may need 20GB partition for 64-bit)
 
Can I install bootcamp and Win 7 on one of my data HD's?

I REALLY want to keep my primary SSD OSX boot drive windozs free. :)

thanks
JohnG
 
That is no problem at all. In fact I recommend using different physical drives for multiple native OS installations.

Windows will not run as fast as OS X but you are much better protected against screw ups that invariably happen with multi boot systems.

Just don't try to have multiple windows installs on your Mac. It is no problem with OS X but Windows freaks out quickly if you have multiple native installs.
 
What is the advantage of having separate boot drives for two OSs? I can see several advantages to having one SSD partitioned and holding both.
 
ActionableMango said:
What is the advantage of having separate boot drives for two OSs? I can see several advantages to having one SSD partitioned and holding both.
Click to expand...

If one drive has a physical problem you still have a functioning operating system on your machine, which can be real nice.

If you consider changing to another Windows version and you want to keep the old one as backup you can just throw in a relatively cheap HDD and swap between the two versions.

The best feature of separate drives is added protection against formatting your OS X volume. It happens much more frequently than people would believe. If you have physically different drives you are a lot less likely to screw up badly.

Finally a separate windows drive can be done in MBR partitioning scheme and will run in another Bios machine with some adaptations. To have two operating systems on one drive you can only use GPT which creates certain restrictions.
 
If it were me I'd put OSX on the ssd and just put windows on a standard HD.
 
I'll be rebooting and using both pretty often, so I'd like both to be on an SSD.

I think I'm going to split the difference. Get a 120GB now, partition for both. When I can afford another in a few months, I'll have one SSD for each OS.
 
I put osx on a 60gb ssd and windows7 pro on a 120gb ssd. Times to boot between systems improved over having windows7 on a hhd.

Osx with lightroom3, illustrator, final cut, takes up about 15gb. I use the rest for scratch.

Windows7 pro eats up over 50gb and with the addition of 1 game jumps to 75gb (call of duty).

Best advice has already been given. Separate the camps...
 
I had ordered one 120GB SSD but then the next day I ordered one more. The camps will be separate, but my wallet hates me!
 
Hi,

I am just settling in with a two SSD setup for OSX & win7 pro x64 after an upgrade last week. OSX drive is a 90gig OCZ-VERTEX2 3.5, and win7 drive is a Intel 80gig. Win7, alone took up 14.6 gigs, although I didn't do any optimising to get the size down. Both OS have swap files on a dedicated scratch disk.
 
Badlydrawn...only 15gb for windows eh? Any idea why my install is so big? I did read that I would only need max 32gb for windows but it took 50gb plus according to "get info" on that particular drive
 
leanofpeak said:
Badlydrawn...only 15gb for windows eh? Any idea why my install is so big? I did read that I would only need max 32gb for windows but it took 50gb plus according to "get info" on that particular drive
Click to expand...

I am not sure mate. To be frank, the 14.6 gigs were a surprise to me, thought it would be smaller, but mind you this is without major apps/games installed. Only small apps (chrome, winrar, vlc, note++, etc), drivers have been installed (registry and such, am not counting app and user directories). So it would probably grow. In that sense, OSX was very lean, about 5-6 gigs (no extra printer drivers and only a few language support).

PS: this is just the windows dir 'get info', not the drive (which is 13gigs with min apps installed as explain above).
 
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