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Simple question about BootCamp

mxelre

mxelre

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 28, 2008
97
0
Quebec
I'm just starting on macs(bought MBP 2 days ago) and I transfered all my music and pictures on my mac + I installed Office Mac and iWork. I want to install windows XP Pro using bootcamp. My question is will partionning my hardrive(using bootcamp) destroy/corrupt my files? Would it have been better if I installed windows first? Btw, how much space did you use for your partitions? I need to install AutoCAD, maybe 1-2 games and some other programs for school ProE, MathLab 2008, Mathtype, Maple 11 so I was thinking about 40GB...Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thx
 
Hi,
I dont have a Mac but I'm quite sure that installing Windows in the Bootcamp will not destroy tour current partitions.

Is it Windows XP or Vista ? I think that 40GB might not be enough if you plan to install all the software listed in your post.

Maple ? It reminds me on my college. I used it once there :)

cheers
 
Well, better safe than sorry. You should at least back up your data before partitioning.

At work, I have 100GB of storage dedicated to Boot Camp. It's my full-time Vista Business machine. :D

At home, I assigned 60GB on my iMac as Boot Camp partition. Flight Simulator X requires tons of hard drive space and yes I have Vista Home Premium on it.

They both work great and I'm happy with the end result.
 
No you will not destroy any data when making the partition via bootcamp, OS X does a very good job at this. I think 40GB is more than enough... but it is up to you. One thing to note, when you go to install XP, make SURE you format the bootcamp partition to NTFS and you have to DELETE the 200MB partition that bootcamp creates. I mean, you could format it to FAT32 but it sucks. If you don't delete the 200MB partition your install of Windows will repeatedly fail.
 
nikhsub1 said:
One thing to note, when you go to install XP, make SURE you format the bootcamp partition to NTFS and you have to DELETE the 200MB partition that bootcamp creates. I mean, you could format it to FAT32 but it sucks. If you don't delete the 200MB partition your install of Windows will repeatedly fail.
Click to expand...

What's the difference between formatting in NTFS or FAT32? Also, where's that 200MB partition(so I can delete it, will I see it in bootcamp?) and any clue as why it's there?
 
mxelre said:
What's the difference between formatting in NTFS or FAT32? Also, where's that 200MB partition(so I can delete it, will I see it in bootcamp?) and any clue as why it's there?
Click to expand...
I don't know why the 200mb partitions is created by bootcamp, but after almost pulling all my hair out over failed XP/Vista installs this was the researched solution. You will never see this 200mb partition in OS X or Windows... NTFS is a MUCH better file system than FAT32, in FAT32 you can not have any single file size larger than 4GB, so if you happen to want to make a DVD image or something, you would have to split is as FAT won't support anything bigger than 4GB.
 
mxelre said:
What's the difference between formatting in NTFS or FAT32? Also, where's that 200MB partition(so I can delete it, will I see it in bootcamp?) and any clue as why it's there?
Click to expand...

I'm also curious about that 200MB partition, I've installed Windows using Boot Camp numerous times and have never seen that partition.

But note this mxelre, when you load the Windows install disk and you're selecting the partition, don't use 'Convert FAT32 to NTFS' or use 'Format using NTFS (Quick)' use 'Format using NTFS', the longer way.

If you don't, chances are your Windows will fail to install completely and then that partition you made for Windows could possibly disappear from OS X and you'll have to use the Disk Utility on your Leopard DVD to get it back.

I speak from experience. And it's happened more than once :D.
 
I totally ignored the 200MB partition and Vista installed just fine, it could be only limited to Windows XP?
 
I installed XP fine without deleting any partitions. I advise you not to delete anything. You're only asking to break your computer.
 
Aight Thx everyone i won't delete the "200MB" partition and if anything happens i'll post back. I'm installing windows XP Pro (SP3) the one that has the same GUI as Vista so I shouldn't have any problems.
 
alphaod said:
Please don't delete the OS X swap partition!
Click to expand...

I would recommend leaving it alone as well.. what happened for me is that I deleted that partition, but while XP would finally go into the gui based installer afterwards.. it would also fail, and when I went back into Leopard, I tried to fix the partition table in Bootcamp, but it wouldn't let me, since I had deleted that partition, so it recommended me to fix it through Disk Utility, which I tried to do, but it said that it couldn't (I forget the specific reason why), I restarted and got the infamous blinking folder icon. I couldn't get back into OS X or anything afterwards. I had to do a clean install (thank goodness for Time Machine!)

I can't believe how much hassle it is to install XP.. it's definitely not worth the hassle
 
It's not a hassle. I just installed Vista (yea, Vista) and it took me an hour tops. add another hour to configure, install boot camp drivers, etc so thats 2 hours.
 
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