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Simon · May 22, 2006, 02:05 AM

Normally on my home Macs I have several partitions (at least two). Now on one of those Macs I'd like to install XP and I thought I'd try Boot Camp. Problem is, it wants just one Mac partition in order to set up a Windows partition. Is there any way around this?

Could I reformat to just one Mac partition, run Boot Camp to create the second (Windows) partition and then use Disk Utility to split the single Mac partition back into two again? Or could this be achieved from the Windows side with a tool like Partition Magic? Or the command line hfsutils? Does anybody here have the same problem? I'd really appreciate any feedback, suggestions, experiences since I'm not keen on having just one Mac partition.

Big Mac · May 22, 2006, 03:06 AM

I think the one partition requirement is a limitation of Boot Camp, although I am not entirely sure. I definitely would not use a Windows utility on your drive, though, because Windows utilities know nothing about HFS.

ghporter · May 22, 2006, 08:57 AM

Boot Camp seems to want to start with a Mac that's set up "as new" with only one partition, and it seems to ONLY make one new partition for Windows. After you get things going with Boot Camp, there's no reason you can't use a third party tool to repartition for multiple Mac and Windows partitions. The catch is that you'll probably need one tool for the Mac partitions and another to make Windows partitions. My particular experience is with PartitionMagic, which does not see Mac partitions (though it does see Linux partitions).

Macola · May 22, 2006, 09:03 AM

Same question here:

http://forums.macnn.com/104/alternative-operating-systems/294533/boot-camp-and-partitions/

I think ghporter's solution is the best option (i.e., using PartitionMagic), although I think I'm just going to use a flash drive for common files. My MacBook just arrived this morning, but I'm waiting on a larger HD...once that comes in, I'll be able to test this out.

Simon · May 22, 2006, 10:46 AM

Hmm, that sucks I'm afraid. Partition Magic under Windows does the trick, but I don't know of any free 'live' repartitioner on the Mac side. I once heard about a tool, but it carried some ridiculous price tag. Darn, I really don't want to just have one Mac partition.

Macola · May 27, 2006, 12:22 PM

I tried setting up a third partition (after installing XP on an NTFS partiton via Boot Camp) with GParted, which is a linux equivalent to Partition Magic. I was able to create the partiton by resizing the Windows one, and then format it as FAT32. However, after doing that, Windows refused to boot (OS X booted fine, though). I gave up and went back to the external drive idea.

ghporter · May 27, 2006, 03:09 PM

Macola, it sounds like GParted did something to the bootable partition record Boot Camp set up. As it's more geared to working with Linux, it could have done something unexpected by the Apple boot manager so the XP partition was no longer valid or accessible. All theory here, sorry.

I would very much like to hear from anyone who has managed to use PartitionMagic to partition their Mac's drive after setting up Boot Camp. I'd experiment myself, but lacking an Intel Mac, I can't.