Well I get my first Mac on Tuesday, a C2D MBP. I'll be selling my IBM thinkpad as I convert from Windows to Mac. Yet there are some Windows programs I'll use for quite some time so I know I want to run Windows XP also. I had originally planned on running BootCamp but I play few games (except for maybe Flight Simulator X which I can install on my Windows Desktop) but really everything else is stuff like health software, coin database software, Garmin GPS software, and niche small programs like that. I heard in the past that Parallels was incompatible with some hardware such as some programs won't work with USB ports, etc. but I have heard most of this will be solved by the end of the year.
Either way I came to the conclusion since I don't have to reboot and can run Windows side by side with Mac it's the way to go and seems most Mac users make this choice. What I want to do is ask how should I best handle data? At home I mostly access data on my main desktop where I have a lot of hard drive space whether it's videos, music, movies, office files, etc. This isn't a problem at all and I think with Parallels I know how to access it both from Windows and Mac. On my current laptop I have a 2nd partition on the hard drive where I store data and I sync this fairly often so that when I'm on the go on vacation, meetings, etc. I have my data with me.
How is the best way to handle that with Parallels? I know that with Parallels it essentially creates something like a virtual hard drive as the Windows part of the Mac. Should I store my data files in that virtual hard drive or simply in a folder on the Mac side. Obviously what's important is that I can access the data as well as write to and modify it from both Windows and Mac. Is it even simpler to simply place that data in a complete separate partition on the hard drive to access from both Windows and Mac and if so what format would I use to format the hard drive? Thanks in advance for help.
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