A had an epiphany (solves transfer of files btwn windows and osx (for some of us))

Ok, so I dual boot with boot camp. I don't have macdrive and I was wanting to transfer something from osx to windows. I thought well, I will just grab my usb pendrive- copy, reboot and paste. It occurred to me why this is possible.

-The penddrive is formatted using FAT32, a filesystem both os's can read, now installing XP to a FAT32 is a joke, but has anyone thought of making a third partition.

We make a third partition the size of a gig, give or take to personal preference. The filesystem of that 3rd partition will be FAT32, that way both os's can read and write to it. So if you want to transfer things, you just copy or move the file to that FAT32 drive, reboot and do what you want with it.

Brilliant right!?

 

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good option actually, to just have a shared partition using a filesystem both OS's can read and write to.

 

You would have to do it in Windows and take the space from the Windows partition. After that it should be good to go. Great idea!

 

did I mention it is free, it doesn't cost anything but space, which in this case is a very worthwhile expenditure.

 

Did you make it? IIRC EFI might have some problems with partitions made that way.

 

I saw a page that had detailed instructions on how to properly get everything partitioned and setup so that the EFI didn't get bungles or nothing else bad would happen.
If I can find the link, I'll post it for you. But yeah, no way am i running XP in fat 32... so I'll be making the fat 32 share folder as well.

Why can't you use samba to connect to the ntfs drive? Does it not support NTFS unlike it's Linux counterparts?

 

I think OS X can read NTFS without any problems, but it can't write to it.

EDIT: Sorry, I just meant directly, not with Samba.

 

how could he use samba to read/write to the XP partition if it is not mounted (while he is running OS X)?

 

Considering it's a few years since I've used Samba, I've forgotten if you need to mount the drives (guess you do). But if you do, theres no way a mac can mount an NTFS drive at all?

 

With Samba the issue is that on the Mac side, you would only be able to connect to a Samba share if Windows was also running (not really possible with a Boot Camp setup). I'm not sure how that would work if you used Parallels though....... i.e. if you could share a drive using Samba inside Parallels and have the Mac access it.

OS X can mount an NTFS drive, and read from it, it just can't write to it. I think even with Linux writing to an NTFS drive can be sort of tricky, although I think someone did manage to reverse engineer NTFS and get it working to some degree.

 

Yep, you can use samba while running XP in Parallels, while I think the shared folders feature (I think it is actually samba based anyways) is easier to setup. Only recently the NTFS driver (a kernel module actually) provided reliable writing support for NTFS - as zadillo implied the specs are closed and everything had to be reverse engineered.

 

Oh yeah... stupid me

Wans't thinking of the fact that XP won't be running while I'm in OS X.

 

Ok, i found this step by step guide to setup your mac with osx, windows and the extra fat32 partition.

http://twoyearstwodays.blogspot.com/2006/05/bootcamp-sharing-data-between-osx-and.html

 

Ok, I've done it, I have three partitions, OS X: 55gb, Windows: 60gb, Fat32 which I call Limbo: 33.7gb

Windows and OS X can both read and write to Limbo, it's awesome. I followed the guide posted above and it worked without any other legwork.

 

Awesome. I'll probably do the same with my MBP when i get it. Either that or I'll just use parallelis...

 

Limbo, nice...

 

lol, Limbo is an awesome name. Might have to steal it

 

You could also do a Divine Comedy theme...... name your Mac drive Paradiso, the FAT32 storage drive Purgatorio and the Windows drive as Inferno...

 

LMAO!

Or Id, Ego, Superego...