Gaming Mac/Windows Dualboot

[Raki]

heya,

I recently found out in the OS X 86 wiki, that my PC is perfect suited to be a wannabe Mac, so I decided to switch to Mac, but I don't want to lose my XP Installation because of games and some programs.
All guides I found wanted me to to a complete format of my HDD, but it would be a pain in the a** to backup all my data now, so I'm searching for a way to add a dualboot without doing a complete reformat
Any help is appreciated

 

[Scorpei]

I'm working on the same thing myself, but I'm still waiting for my motherboard to arrive. Also I AM doing a clean install of both OSs (was needed

). Anyway I know there are a few dual boot guides out there, so check around a bit. If they install XP/Windows before Mac OSX then there shouldn't be a problem to use your current XP install. Do bear in mind then though that you will need to resize partitions or add a disc to make enough room for Mac OSX.

Also, why don't you make a better partitioning (using windows denotions now, sorry

)?
'C:' windows
'D:' data
'E:' Mac OSX

If you catch my drift.

 

[Scorpei]

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=39253

There you go, an XP install ready before a MAC install thus should work for you

. Even states what to do if you already have an XP install on your disc

.

 

[Raki]

I'm working on the same thing myself, but I'm still waiting for my motherboard to arrive. Also I AM doing a clean install of both OSs (was needed

). Anyway I know there are a few dual boot guides out there, so check around a bit. If they install XP/Windows before Mac OSX then there shouldn't be a problem to use your current XP install. Do bear in mind then though that you will need to resize partitions or add a disc to make enough room for Mac OSX.

Also, why don't you make a better partitioning (using windows denotions now, sorry

)?
'C:' windows
'D:' data
'E:' Mac OSX

If you catch my drift.

yeah I know I need to do a partition for Mac itself, but your "Data" partition is in Fat 32 and shares data between OS X and Windows? that is quite a good idea, I've not thought about

and thanks for the link, scorpei!

 

[Scorpei]

Welcome

. FAT32 might not be the best way to go though (limit on files not being larger then 4 gigs). You could just as wel use NTFS (old XP version I think is the only supported) with NTFS-3G. Slower speeds but added advantage of being able to store things bigger then 4 gigs

.

The idea of keeping your data separate from your OS is (in my case anyway) mainly to avoid annoyances with reinstalls. You don't have to back up all your data just stuff you had flying around C/OS_partition when doing a reinstall.

 

[Raki]

Welcome

. FAT32 might not be the best way to go though (limit on files not being larger then 4 gigs). You could just as wel use NTFS (old XP version I think is the only supported) with NTFS-3G. Slower speeds but added advantage of being able to store things bigger then 4 gigs

.

The idea of keeping your data separate from your OS is (in my case anyway) mainly to avoid annoyances with reinstalls. You don't have to back up all your data just stuff you had flying around C/OS_partition when doing a reinstall.

Can Mac OS X use NTFS? My idea would be to use this partition as data storage (media files mainly) for both OSs

 

[Scorpei]

Welcome

. FAT32 might not be the best way to go though (limit on files not being larger then 4 gigs). You could just as wel use NTFS (old XP version I think is the only supported) with NTFS-3G. Slower speeds but added advantage of being able to store things bigger then 4 gigs

.

The idea of keeping your data separate from your OS is (in my case anyway) mainly to avoid annoyances with reinstalls. You don't have to back up all your data just stuff you had flying around C/OS_partition when doing a reinstall.

Can Mac OS X use NTFS? My idea would be to use this partition as data storage (media files mainly) for both OSs

http://www.ntfs-3g.org/

[edit]
Also formatting isn't needed if you have a proper XP install, I mean why would you? Do bear in mind though that if you DO want to reinstall XP anytime soon it might be a good idea to do so now as it would be annoying to only reinstall XP and try and leave your OSX install (and Darwin mainly) alone once it's on there.

 

[delta123]

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

is a better ntfs strucure thingy for the mac.

you can install leopard and use bootcamp to install vista or xp. its much easier that way.

 

[upbumpo190]

Hey Raki,

I tried ntfs-3g, and I ended up with some annoying hidden mac files, that "don't exist" while on my xp install, but I guess I shouldn't have messing around with hidden files in the first place. If you have any hiccups during install or anything like that, I can help... I've been playing with mac since Tiger 10.4.3, and currently have a quad-boot setup. The only thing that keeps me mainly on windows, is not bloatware, but shareware... not much open source stuff available.
Another thing to look into, is in your bios SATA settings, some people had to change theirs to ACHI mode for it to work, (I didn't have those settings, and had to rip out my dvd drive to avoid conflict).

Hope you will be soon happy on Mac!

(Sorry for the tad bit of off-topicness)

 

[Raki]

hm, both my optical drives are IDE so I don't think they'll make problems.
I'm about to install Mac OS X, but is a 20 GB partition enough for Leopard and future updates (snow leopard )? Ok snow leopard is supposed to be smaller because of he ripped PPC code

 

[rockbmi]

As snow leopard isn't out, there is no guarantee it will work on hackintosh computers. The minimum required is 20GB i would go for 30.

 

[Raki]

As snow leopard isn't out, there is no guarantee it will work on hackintosh computers. The minimum required is 20GB i would go for 30.

hm I guess so, because after all Intel Macs are like normal PCs + everything will get hacked

 

[El Blacksheep]

your options:
1) backup all your data and reformat/repartition your drive. best option, because its always a good idea to have a backup of your data in case something goes terribly wrong later on.
2) shrink your xp partition and create your osx partition in the unpartitioned space. not the best move, as you can damage your master boot record beyond repair this way.
3) drop another hdd into your machine and set it up for osx. gets the job done and you don't have to back up anything.

oh, almost forgot:
4) forget about osx and dualboot to linux. if you really want to, you can even completely skin / theme it to look like osx.

 

[Raki]

OS X is working fine so far after using the linked guide
just my wlan cards (RT2500 integrated, WG311 v2 Netgear PCI) aren't working :/ but it's great! I can even sync my phone with iSync....for windows I would need to buy a 30 € Software for this...

 

[rhyguy]

OS X is working fine so far after using the linked guide
just my wlan cards (RT2500 integrated, WG311 v2 Netgear PCI) aren't working :/ but it's great! I can even sync my phone with iSync....for windows I would need to buy a 30 € Software for this...

Yeah, the rt61 has sucky linux drivers, and no Windows x64 so dont expect a fix soon

 

[Raki]

OS X is working fine so far after using the linked guide
just my wlan cards (RT2500 integrated, WG311 v2 Netgear PCI) aren't working :/ but it's great! I can even sync my phone with iSync....for windows I would need to buy a 30 € Software for this...

Yeah, the rt61 has sucky linux drivers, and no Windows x64 so dont expect a fix soon

both of them are crap anyway...I may buy a card with proper range, which will be detected as airport.
But I got a serious problem. My screen is flashing (desktop there - next seconds the blue screen like startup - desktop there - blue screen etc.) o_0 I get this if I use iSync (just iCal+iSync is open)

 

[Raki]

Ok I got my wlan fixed with using my Netgear WG311 v3 (although the box says v2..lol)...it has a realtek chipset which is supported =)
Now I can finally ditch XP as working machine...=)