Questions About Hard Drives and Windows Virtualization

[AdiosVista]

Hello all,

Just bought my new MP this weekend, LOVE IT! One thing I don't understand right now though is I just put in a 500GB WD sata drive in bay 2 and it doesn't seem quite right. I can see the files on it (this drive was just pulled out of my recently built Windows machine that I won't be using, thanks to Vista) but I cannot rename the HD icon from "Untitled" to anything else. I was also surprised to see the new HD icon appear on the desktop, right below the "Machintosh HD" icon. Is this normal when adding new drives? Does this mean if I add two more drives, I'll have four of these HD icons on my desktop? I'm wondering if because this drive was formatted for Windows, that is why I cannot rename it. Should I use Disk Utility to erase?

My other question is about installing Parallels or Fusion (haven't decided yet) in order to run Windows for testing purposes. I happen to have a third hard drive, a smaller 250Gb Seagate that I was thinking of using only for Windows. I had heard somewhere that installing Parallels/Fusion/Bootcamp on a drive other than the OSX boot disk will help with performance because then the two operating systems won't be reading/writing to the same drive at the same time. Does that sound correct? So just to recap: the original 320GB I will keep in the machine with OSX, the 500GB I took from my Windows PC is going to be for my work files, and the 250GB will be for virtualization. Is this a good game plan?

As one last conversation starter, I'm open to opinions on Parallels versus Fusion. I've used Parallels in the past and it did what I needed but I've heard good things about Fusion and there is a rebate on Newegg right now. Thanks!!!

 

[richard.mac]

if your hard drive has been pulled from a Windows PC and you cannot write to it in OS X, its formatted as NTFS. OS X has only read support for NTFS by default so you will have to format it as Mac's format or if you dont want to format there is software that allows write support for NTFS.

yes every hard drive your have and partitions you have made will appear on the Desktop. think of the Desktop as "My Computer in Windows". you can hide your hard drives on the Desktop by unchecking "Hard Drives" under the General tab in Finder's preferences and then access your hard drives from the Finder sidebar or "Computer" (also your Mac's name) in Finder which can be compared to My Computer as well.

to format the hard drive to Mac's format fire up Disk Utility in the Utilities folder, click on the hard drive in the sidebar, click the "Erase" tab and select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and then click "Erase…".

for NTFS write support install MacFUSE and NTFS3g for Mac OS X (both download links) which are open source and work very well.

as for Windows on your Mac it depends on whether you want a native install (Boot Camp) which is best for speed and graphics but requires a reboot or virtualisation (Parallels, VMware etc.) which has a massive pro of working alongside OS X. for more info look here.

you can install Windows on a single hard drive using Boot Camp Assistant if and then even access that install using virtualisation in OS X if youd like which uses next to no extra disk space.

or you can just install a Windows virtual machine and put that virtual hard disk file anywhere, even on your third hard drive if you wish. this is where i find VMware better as when you start up the virtual machine after moving the virtual hard disk file is just asks you if you moved it, while Parallels would choke and youd have to set where the file is in its preferences.

 

[AppleNewton]

you can click and hold for a moment on the text below the disk icon and then rename the drive on the OSX side of things, so OSX will see the drive as "New Name" instead of Untitled


its recommended, atleast in my opinion to have a separate drive for windows.
incase you want to format or you use more space then necessary or vice versa with the OSX drive.
or if the drive goes bad you dont loose two OS'

Id sayinstall windows on your bootcamp drive, and then using parallels access that.

im not sure if VMFusion does that or if its parallels. havent used them in awhile. at home.

 

[AdiosVista]

if your hard drive has been pulled from a Windows PC and you cannot write to it in OS X, its formatted as NTFS. OS X has only read support for NTFS by default so you will have to format it as Mac's format or if you dont want to format there is software that allows write support for NTFS.

to format the hard drive to Mac's format fire up Disk Utility in the Utilities folder, click on the hard drive in the sidebar, click the "Erase" tab and select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and then click "Erase…".

for NTFS write support install MacFUSE and NTFS3g for Mac OS X (both download links) which are open source and work very well.

as for Windows on your Mac it depends on whether you want a native install (Boot Camp) which is best for speed and graphics but requires a reboot or virtualisation (Parallels, VMware etc.) which has a massive pro of working alongside OS X. for more info look here.

you can install Windows on a single hard drive using Boot Camp Assistant if and then even access that install using virtualisation in OS X if youd like which uses next to no extra disk space.

or you can just install a Windows virtual machine and put that virtual hard disk file anywhere, even on your third hard drive if you wish. this is where i find VMware better as when you start up the virtual machine after moving the virtual hard disk file is just asks you if you moved it, while Parallels would choke and youd have to set where the file is in its preferences.

Great, thank you for the prompt and thorough response. A couple follow-up comments:

- I think I read somewhere that you should format a drive to be journaled if you're going to use it as a boot disk and to use Mac OS Extended if you're just using it for data/storage. Does this sound accurate and, if so, which would I want to do for the third hard drive which will only be for my Windows installs.

- If I'm understanding you correctly, are you saying I could use just one Windows install for both bootcamp and the virtualization software I use? That would be fantastic if I only had to maintain one version of Windows as far as updates, software installs, etc. I do plan on using both bootcamp and virtualization. Bootcamp will be for gaming only, and either Parallels or Fusion will be for quick testing (I'm a web designer).

Thanks again.

 

[richard.mac]

Hi i added the second paragraph in my post after you had posted and quoted me .

Journaled is the newest version of Mac OS Extended and "helps protect the file system against power outages or hardware component failures, reducing the need for repairs." from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2355. so it doesnt only need to be used on a boot disk and can be used for data disks as well.

yes, you can use the same install for Boot Camp and virtualisation in both Vmware Fusion and Parallels. great feature .

 

[AppleNewton]

Great, thank you for the prompt and thorough response. A couple follow-up comments:

- If I'm understanding you correctly, are you saying I could use just one Windows install for both bootcamp and the virtualization software I use? That would be fantastic if I only had to maintain one version of Windows as far as updates, software installs, etc. I do plan on using both bootcamp and virtualization. Bootcamp will be for gaming only, and either Parallels or Fusion will be for quick testing (I'm a web designer).

Thanks again.

correct you can install Windows on a separate drive and also have parallels access that drive via OSX.

to format a drive for windows installation; just goto the Utilities Folder, and select the Bootcamp App and select which drive you want to install windows on and it will desginate that drive upon reboot so your not mistakenly installing windows over your other drive partitions.


Also true...select Mac OS Extended Journal for an OS install of MacOSX
and select Mac OS Extended for media drives.
HOWEVER you can use OS Extended Journal for both (I do). it was taught to have media drives for (ProTools, Logic, FinalCut) to be formatted to OS Extended instead. not sure how true it is anymore since all drives are formatted the same on my system.




=)