Windows 7(Bootcamp) setup on new iMac (SSD + 2TB HHD) question?

[dfine1966]

Before I purchase my new iMac (i7 3.4, 8GB Ram, 2GB Video Card) either with SSD and 2 TB HDD or just 2 TB HDD), I need to know if what I want to do with the combo of SSD and 2 TB drive will work on the iMac.

I was planing on getting the 256 GB SSD with the 2 TB HDD, and splitting MacOS Snow Leopard and Windows 7 Pro(bootcamp only) at 128 GB a piece on the SSD. I am pretty sure that will work fine. My question is can I split the 2 TB hdd at 1 GB a piece formatted with half to windows NTFS and half to mac's HFS+? I want to be able to start up Windows 7 have operating system on the SSD and put everything else on the second hard drive, which would of been split up already. It should should show the 1 TB in NTFS. Then, when I startup MacOS the operating system would be on SSD and 1TB leftover, would show up as HFS+, and that can be used for everything else for the Mac. Will this work the way I am proposing. Can I split the 2TB drive the way I want to? Will both operating systems install on the SSD? Is this the smart way to do this? If this won't work, I will probably go with just 2TB HDD and split it with bootcamp, half and half.
Tell me what you think?

Thanks.

 

[phlydude]

which of the 2 internals are you planning on backing up? the 256 or the 2TB?

Regardless, you can partition the external however you would like...one partition can be HFS+ and another can be NTFS (and you can add more as well if you'd like).

 

[Voondebah]

There's no great solution for the internal drive to support both OSes. FAT32 has file size limitations. HFS+ or NTFS will require 3rd party software to be able to read/write between both OSes. You could use exFAT, which is supported natively in windows 7 and OS X (10.6.5 or later). This would be a fine choice if you're storing things like media on the internal drive. Make sure you create the exFAT partition in Windows though! I've read that exFAT partitions made in OS X don't always work in Windows 7 (I heard this was resolved, but you can be guaranteed if you format the partition in 7).

For the backup drive, you should be fine to use a single drive with a partition of each type for each OS backup. The key is to make sure that you partition the drive using the GUID Partition Table and not APM.

 

[Quad5Ny]

Splitting a external drive into 2 partitions will work just fine.

Time machine uses whichever partition you choose to backup on, it doesn't take over the whole drive.


Also for Blu-Rays I suggest ArcSoft Total Media Theater 5.

 

[ZMacintosh]

for the 2TB you should be able to read/write to it just fine with the included BootCamp Drivers in Windows without the need of MacDrive or formatting/partitioning it to NTFS. atleast when I had BootCamp on my Mac it was like this.

 

[zerox]

I'm looking to do the exact same thing; can anyone confirm this is possible?

Thx,
Z

 

[KwanMan]

It would work but I would propose a better solution. Split the SSD in half; one for OSX, one for W7. Then for the 2TB HDD, either format it in HFS+ and get Macdrive for windows or format it NTFS and get MacFuse for OSX. This way you can have full read/write capabilities for all your data on both OSs