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lucky_luc · 05:51 PM

I seem to have a penchant for making things complicated. Here's what i'm trying to do:

Use my external HD with 3 partitions. 1) storage space. 2) Windows XP to boot from. 3) a RAID mirror.

I'm rather determined, but it's really hard to collect all of the various pieces of information from all over the net, especially when those tips seem to conflict with each other.

I have a MacBook Pro 10.4.11 (intel, of course). 92GB HD.
I have an external HD (LACIE) that i use FW800 with, though it is FW400 and USB capable.
I have a windows laptop available to me if i need it for anything (it seems i'll need it to install XP on the external HD).

Do i need to do the partitions using the XP laptop in order to format the drive correctly?
Do i partition first, or set up RAID first?

If you have links to articles or anything that you know works, please give me those links including any of your own tips.

Thanks ahead to anyone who helps!

lucky_luc · 05:52 PM

I also have access to a friend's Leopard Mac (which has bootcamp, of course, which could be very helpful).

ghporter · Oct 21, 2008, 08:16 PM

Windows takes some rather involved, low level tweaking to boot from any external device. You can actually set it up to boot from a USB flash drive, for example, but it's a royal (and quite involved) pain. It's a much better idea to set up a minimal Windows partition just to boot the OS, and at the same time configure it to put EVERYTHING other than the OS on your external drive. You can use a tool like nLite to tweak the installer's configuration to do that sort of thing, and it's a LOT simpler than the hoops needed to boot from an external device, at least in my opinion.

lucky_luc · Oct 21, 2008, 08:43 PM

That seems like a pretty good idea, and thanks for the software suggestion.

I take my laptop with me during the day, so my external drive is only available when i'm home. Would configuring XP to save everything to the external drive mean that things would break if i booted to XP while not connected to the external?

Also, do you know what format the partition on the external drive for XP storage space would need to be? FAT32 or NTFS? And could i do that formatting from leopard's bootcamp?

lucky_luc · Oct 21, 2008, 08:45 PM

Almost forgot: Am i correct in my understanding that if i press ctrl+option upon my Mac's startup that i'll be provided with the option to boot to any local OS?

mduell · Oct 21, 2008, 09:45 PM

Is the external drive going to be always on and connected to the laptop? If not, why do you want to use RAID instead of a backup strategy?

lucky_luc · Oct 22, 2008, 06:57 AM

It is not going to always be connected. Isn't RAID, once it's set up, the easiest backup strategy to maintain? Since i don't have leopard, i don't have Time Machine, and i haven't seen any worthwhile freeware backup programs for Mac (i admit my research on that hasn't been very extensive, so if you have a suggestion i'd be happy to look).

lucky_luc · 02:50 PM

Here's the current status:

I have formatted my external drive into the 3 partitions i talked about. Disk Utility can do a DOS format, for which it uses FAT. You just have to change the "options" to "master boot record" to enable that. So i have a 20 GB FAT partition as well as my storage partition and RAID partition (which i have not yet set up in an array).

I've continued to do research and am currently planning on using a leopard macbook (just in case having bootcamp available becomes helpful) to just directly install XP to that external partition. I understand that if i boot the macbook with the XP disc in it while holding "C" i will be able to start the installation and select which drive i want (this stuff i've mostly found out from articles on installing XP to a USB drive). If that doesn't work i might either make a .iso of the leopard mac on the storage partition of my external drive, as it seems that bootcamp will only partition/install on local drives, so if i'm booting from an external with partitions, i hope that it'll recognize the other partitions. That, or i can try doing the installation simply with the internal HD of the macbook removed (which i understand is really easy with the new ones).

I know it's a lot, but are there any thoughts on any of this? Thanks!

Also, if i do need to do the XP install locally, what kind of configuration changes would i need to make to get it to store stuff externally? Link me to an article if you've found one that works.

mduell · Oct 25, 2008, 04:29 PM

Originally Posted by lucky_luc

It is not going to always be connected. Isn't RAID, once it's set up, the easiest backup strategy to maintain? Since i don't have leopard, i don't have Time Machine, and i haven't seen any worthwhile freeware backup programs for Mac (i admit my research on that hasn't been very extensive, so if you have a suggestion i'd be happy to look).

No; not only is it not a backup, constantly breaking and rebuilding a RAID array is crazy and insane and a very bad idea.