Windows 7, OS X, filesystems and compatibility

[slowpoke]

I have on my Macbook's hard drive a 120GB OS X 10.5.7 partition in HFS+ and a 32GB XP SP3 partition in FAT32. I'm planning on wiping my XP partition and installing the Windows 7 RC sometime in the next week.

I've got a few questions:

- I'm aware that I can't officially write to NTFS drives from OS X. However, one of my requirements is being able to easily move files between Leopard and Windows. Are there any solutions for writing to NTFS-formatted volumes from within OS X?

- On my current FAT32-formatted XP partition, I'm unable to even view my HFS+ OS X partition, let alone write to it. Are there any solutions that'd let me view and write to my HFS+ volume from FAT32? How about NTFS? If these workarounds exist, are they compatible with Windows 7?

- Would it be possible for me to non-destructively repartition my HDD after installing Windows 7 on the NTFS partition? (This query is far more hypothetical in nature; it's unlikely I'd be displeased with the distribution of space.)


tl;dr version: I want to be able write to an NTFS Windows 7 partition from OS X. I also want to be able to write to my HFS+ OS X partition from Windows. How feasible is this?

Thanks for reading.

 

[spriter]

You can use NTFS-3G (free, I use this) to allow writing to NTFS partitions from OSX or Paragon NTFS (not used).

MacDrive used to work in XP and Vista but I think Windows 7 broke it, for now.

iPartition may be able to resize your BootCamp partition. I have used iPartition but not for this purpose.

FYI: My setup is as follows (on a Rev A MBA, 80GB HDD):

30GB OSX
20GB NTFS Windows 7 RC
24GB FAT32 Data (Pics, documents etc)

Using a neutral partition that is natively seen by both OS's allows me to access my data in either OS without any extra programs needed.

NTFS-3G in OSX allows read/write access to NTFS partitions but it is slow - much slower than accessing FAT32 which is why I went with that for my Data partition, although I'm aware of the 4GB file limit. Maybe the Paragon solution is better but I don't really need it that much so didn't explore that option.

I installed OSX, ran BootCamp setup to partition a 20GB for Windows then ran iPartition to resize the OSX down and create the Data partition. I didn't try resizing the BootCamp partition but have a closer look at iPartition - it is the most likely candidate.

 

[spriter]

I have on my Macbook's hard drive a 120GB OS X 10.5.7 partition in HFS+ and a 32GB XP SP3 partition in FAT32. I'm planning on wiping my XP partition and installing the Windows 7 RC sometime in the next week.

I've got a few questions:

- I'm aware that I can't officially write to NTFS drives from OS X. However, one of my requirements is being able to easily move files between Leopard and Windows. Are there any solutions for writing to NTFS-formatted volumes from within OS X?

- On my current FAT32-formatted XP partition, I'm unable to even view my HFS+ OS X partition, let alone write to it. Are there any solutions that'd let me view and write to my HFS+ volume from FAT32? How about NTFS? If these workarounds exist, are they compatible with Windows 7?

- Would it be possible for me to non-destructively repartition my HDD after installing Windows 7 on the NTFS partition? (This query is far more hypothetical in nature; it's unlikely I'd be displeased with the distribution of space.)


tl;dr version: I want to be able write to an NTFS Windows 7 partition from OS X. I also want to be able to write to my HFS+ OS X partition from Windows. How feasible is this?

Thanks for reading.

New MacDrive released that supports Windows 7

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive8/