You should probably read the FAQ for answers to this and more, but basically it goes like this:
OSX can mount and read NTFS (v10.3-something and higher)
OSX can mount, read, and write to FAT-32
You can use either when you install XP with BootCamp
BootCamp will only work when you have not partitioned your boot drive on your Mac (ie you have one single partition with your OSX installation on it, not multiple partitions on one drive)
You can boot OSX and run Disk Utility to reformat a NTFS volume to FAT-32, but must choose NTFS when you install Windows if you want to use that format with Windows; Disk Utility cannot create a NTFS volume (ie go the other way)
FAT-32 cannot create volumes larger than 32MB if you use BootCamp/XP to format the drive (this is a limitation of Windows XP's formatter)
BootCamp will not format an XP partition smaller than 5GB and will not allow you to create a partition that leaves the OSX partition with less than 5GB of free space.
BootCamp dynamically creates partition for XP (ie it doesn't erase your existing OSX partition, it shrinks it to make room for the XP partition)
Although they don't say so specifically, you should be able to create a NTFS partition larger than 32 MB during your BootCamp/XP installation, then boot OSX, reformat that partition to FAT-32 (OSX will happily create a FAT-32 partition greater than 32MB and Windows XP will happily use it if it exists) and re-install Windows XP. That would give you a large partition with read-write capability in OSX and Windows.
" ... I don't think M$ outright refused they're just weighing their options at the moment. ..."
"Refused" is reading between the lines, Microsoft has never actually said "never". (Then again, who does?). What they did say, publicly and officially, specifically when asked about VPC on MacTel, is they have no plans to introduce it, and they are committed to supporting and updating VPC for PPC Macintosh hardware only.
Last edited by gordguide; Apr 5th, 2006 at 02:14 PM.
NTFS may be an Microsoft intellectual property. but it's Windows Installer that formats or converts the parititon to NTFS, not Mac OS X or boot camp.
either way since the neutral file system between Mac OS X and Windows is FAT, a drive for sharing files between the boot environments for reading and writing purposes would have to be FAT, neither terribly secure or efficient, whether it be the Mac OS X partition, the Windows partition or a third drive, though people don't seem to have a problem doing that for sharing external drives between systems now anyways.
__________________
MacBook Revision D : 2.0 GHz Intel Merom Core 2 Duo : 4 GB RAM 80 GB SMS HDD : Combo Drive
PowerBook G4 12" Revision E : 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4 : 768 MB RAM : 80 GB SMS HDD : 8x SuperDrive
Mac mini Revision B : 1.33 GHz PowerPC G4 : 512 MB RAM : 5400 RPM 40 GB HDD : Combo Drive
Mac OS X Tiger 10.5.2 : iLife : iWork : Apple Remote Desktop : .mac : Wireless Mighty Mouse
Remember that FAT32 is limited to 32 megs. NTFS does not have that limitation. If you want a swap drive so you can transfer files back and forth, consider creating a seperate FAT partition.
__________________
My gear: White MacBook 1.83, 2 Gigs of Ram, Combo Drive, OS 10.5, iPod Video 30 Gig, Canon Digital Rebel XT. iPhone 3G 8 Gig.
Remember that FAT32 is limited to 32 megs. NTFS does not have that limitation. If you want a swap drive so you can transfer files back and forth, consider creating a seperate FAT partition.
wuh? i have created many fat32 partitions much larger than 32Megs. This sounds like a mistake.
FAT32 is restricted to 125GiB at the moment, with filesizes no larger than 4GiB. I would recommend going with FAT32 if you decide to install XP on your intel mac, because you can then read+write the xp disk while in OS X. (This is what I did this morning, with a 15 GiB partition)
Edit: Apple states the limit is 32GiB. Not sure why, as FAT32 should support more. I still recommend using FAT32 if you can, due to the ability to read+write that partition in OS X.
__________________
Mac Mini 1.25, iPod Nano 4Gig Black, MacBook Pro 1.67GHz/1GB
I first installed XP (under boot camp) using fat32, and sadly realized the 4GB file limit. So after my install got screwed by spyware anyway, i reformatted -- this time with NTFS, and sadly realized that NTFS isn't fully supported by Leopard (read only, not write).....ugh....so then i found & installed FUSE & NTFS-3G and now it works, though dead slow @ like 2MB/sec between drives, not to mention is increases your shutdown/reboot times by 10-15 seconds at least. A spinning cursor you'll notice during this operation. and this is on a penryn MBP
from wiki:
"Since then, full support for NTFS has become available in Linux and many other operating systems, by installing the FUSE library (on Linux) together with the NTFS-3G application."
*looks at above post*
Linear Mode
