Boot Camp basics - drive formatting and organization

Hello. I have always used PCs and just bought a new Macbook Pro.
I would like to use Boot Camp to run Windows 8.1 for some things. Ive been trying to read up on it. I have a few questions regarding hard drive formatting and sharing/using files between the two. I saw some statements on drive formatting type and being able to read or write on files depending on the formatting.
1. I have external hard drives formatted NTFS that I want to use for Windows on Boot Camp. Can I use these drives via USB with the Boot Camp Windows partition without having to reformat them? Also, while I plan on transferring my Office files to the Mac side of things (using Office for Mac), can I also still use them on the Boot Camp side and if I can use them for both, where should they live? On the Windows side of things or the Mac side of things?
2. When I am using the Boot Camp partition w Windows or the Mac side, can I see the files from the other partition regardless of what one Im booted on?
3. How much space should I partition for Windows 8.1? Do ALL files I will use in Windows need to be on that partition (or an external drive) or just Windows itself)I have a 512GB SSD on the MBPro and plan to keep all music and most photos and other large media files off of the laptop entirely. But may still have some files to work on within the Boot Camp - but am still unclear if they NEED to live on the Boot Camp partition part of the drive or if its just WINDOWS that needs to be on that partition.
Lets just try those questions to start.
Thanks!!

Sorry if my question was confusing.
I DO plan to install Windows on the Boot Camp partition, not an external - but I have a lot of files for Windows use on an external. Want to make sure I dont have to reformat those for this purpose.
I plan to switch all my office use to the Mac side - I bought office for mac - but wondered if I happen to install Office on the Windows side - if I could just access the files from ONE location for both Offices - and if it mattered which side.
Is there an app for the Mac to write to an NTFS disk?
Thank you for your help - very much!

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Boot camp won't format drive correctly

Hi
Im running a Mac Book Pro 2.5Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with Snow Leopard v 10.6.7 with all updates installed, i want to install Windows 7 64 bit using boot camp
Firstly, it asks me if I want to download the drivers needed for windows or if I have the install disc. I select download driver and it says Windows support software is not available, so I select that I have the installation CD. However, the installation CD I have is for Leopard v10.5, I upgraded to Snow Leopard using a snow leopard installation CD that I bought separately, will this suffice or do I have to have an original install disc that came with the mac?
But thats not the main problem, the main problem is that once it partitions my bootcamp drive, it makes it a MSDOS FAT32 format instead of NTFC and therefore when I run the Windows 7 install CD it says it can't install to the drive as its not NTFC
Why is it doing this?

It is there, in black and white, in the PDF guide mid-way thru the 28 pages.
It even tells you to format BOOTCAMP MSDOS/FAT32 to NTFS
Because you are presented with "where to install" target partition when you are doing the install of Windows. DVD.
It isn't that Boot Camp Assistant doesn't, and it is "NTFS" but that Apple doesn't own NTFS and prefers to let Windows create a proper partitions.
The PDF and relevent articles are found:
http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp

IMac Drive Failures and Boot Camp - large install experience and question

We have a large 24" iMac install, purchased in August of '08, 49 machines spread across 6 offices. All run Windows Vista in Boot Camp as their primary (and mostly sole) operating mode - I will be happy to explain why after we get this cleared up, but that is not the point of this question.
We have had 11 hard drive failures, a rate of over 22% in one year. No machine has failed twice. The equipment was purchased in different groups so a bad lot is unlikely. I am aware that there is an HD failure issue with the iMac's but this seems to be extreme. Personally I've been building apples and pc's since my first apple kit, have a mac plus in a box somewhere, and am fond of these machines (as is the staff) but I've never seen a failure rate like this.
It has been suggested that it is the use of Boot Camp that is causing these failures. While I have seen viruses over the years that can lead to hardware failure I've never seen validated (or even simply non-malignant) software have the same effect.
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no one has any thoughts on this?

Boot Camp Installation: Definition of, and insights into "External Drives"?

I'm recovering from a logic board failure. One casualty was that I lost my prior Boot Camp installation of Windows on my main internal hard drive. :-( Wondering if I can install Windows anywhere other than the main internal hard drive so I can maximize space on my OSX main internal drive?
From what I've gathered, installing Windows 7 Boot Camp is very difficult (and perhaps impossible?) on an external hard drive. However, what's not entirely clear is what constitutes an "external drive".
Questions:
1. Can I install a bootable installation of Windows 7 using Boot Camp (obviously not running OSX in this scenario) on either the:
A) Data Doubler 7,200 drive
or
B) Express Card 34 SSD drive
2. Can I also install Parallels (on the main internal OSX drive), then while in OSX launch (a much slower) Windows from location A or B?
Context:
1. On a late 2011 MBP 17' (version 8,3), I've replaced the stock hard drive (7,200 rpm) with a much faster OWC SSD Drive. (Awesome upgrade, btw!)
2. The internal apple dvd device was removed and the stock hard drive was inserted in this location using OWC Data Doubler. (Also, very nice.) An extra challenge here is that the dvd drive is now an external device. I have a Windows 7 install disc, but I'm not sure if it will be recognized during the installation process?
3. This model MBP has an ExpressCard 34 slot, for which I can buy an SSD drive. Never used this slot and have read mixed reports on boot ability.
Any and all insights greatly appreciated!

Yoüf wrote:
Many thanks for the helpful response, Loner T. I think I've got it. To install Windows through BCA on the Optibay drive, I temporarily move it to the main SATA bay. I can then temporarily put the DVD drive back in the Optibay. So here's a question: In doing this, I would no longer have an OSX boot drive (since I'm temporarily removing my OSX boot SSD). It's been a while since I used BCA, so my memory is fuzzy (sorry), but does the BCA process need a working OSX install on the drive in the SATA bay?
The SSD with OSX boot is normally (for your specific scenario) kept in an external enclosure (USB/FW/TB) to boot from and run BC and partition the disk in the main SATA bay.
You mention that modifying the BC info.plist causes issues. I lost you a little here. Using the method you describe (move the Optibay drive to the SATA location, run BCA to install Windows, then move the drive back to the Optibay location), does the BC info.plist need to be modified or not? If yes, a few more details would be welcomed. If not, what prompted this thought?
If you have a functional Optical drive and the designated Windows-to-be in the proper bays, the BC info.plist modifications are unnecessary, and can cause other grief, and are best avoided.
Thanks also for the bleeptobleep post. It says to use a USB3/Thunderbolt external drive (which I do have); however, my MBP (version 8,3) only has USB2 ports. I realize that a USB2 port will read a USB3 external drive, but was wondering if this limitation is a deal breaker for a bootable Windows system, or if it just means that things will be really, really, tragically slow due to low transfer rates. Any idea on this aspect?
USB3 can cause problems for Windows 7 installer, bot not as many issues for Windows 8+. It is better to stick to USB2, but you are correct it will be slow. OSX can boot and will use RAM much more aggressively, unless it has to go back to the USB (2/3) when things may give you a beach ball. Windows 7/8 are less friendly for caching the whole OS and applications in RAM, and may be slower. A TB connection is much faster (TB2 even better).
BTW: Bummer that the ExpressCard slot can't work for booting into Windows. That would be pretty slick. I've seen some older posts by folks who were once able to do this, but seemingly only with early versions of OSX. Apparently newer OSX versions either did away with this feature, or seriously complicated the process. Would love to find a workaround if one exists.
You can test it, but may have some issues finding storage for ECards.
(Dumb question: on this forum, how are you threading comments into a quoted block of text? Are you using HTML or is there some easier way?)(((
Under the "Reply" bar at the top, there is an icon with a "quote" and a "speech" bubble, which is used to quote posts. You can either quote from a previous post, or select a line (or more) of text and click on that icon.

Windows 7 will only install on an NTFS Formatted disk: boot camp partition not formatted right?

I recently tried to install windows 7 on my Macbook (early 2008 white). Boot camp made the partition and I even got to the Windows install screen, but the partition made by boot camp could not be used to install windows on, because it was in the wrong format, evidently (Error: windows can only be installed on a NTFS disk, or something like that). I tried to find someway to reformat the partition in disk utility, but I don't see anything that could change the format. Please help! (If there isn't a way to fix this, is there at least a way to delete the partition? It's rather annoying having 100 gbs of your harddrive just siting there, unable to be used)
And just a side question, does it matter whether you install Windows 64 bit or 32 bit? The printed-out boot camp guide said only the 32-bit version, but it didn't include anything about Windows 7)
Thank you!
Computer: Early 2008 White Macbook
OS X (10.6.7)
500 GB hard drive
4 GB DDR2 RAM

Hi,
Windows 7 needs its system to be installed on a NTFS formatted partition.
There 's no way to use FAT32 as file system for this.
Pages 8 - 10 of the BootCamp Install Guide http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/ describe how-to reformat the partition to NTFS during the Windows installation.
Officially 64-bit Windows 7 is not supported on a 2008 MacBook.
However, there are instructions to be found on how-to do it nonetheless.
Regards
Stefan

Erased boot camps hard drive with time machine?

so, i completely erased windows by erasing what was on boot camps hard drive. Boot camp cannot read my "start up" harddrive now. and the harddrive will not turn into a jornaled macintosh hard drive. i checked it with disk utility and it claims to be ok. is there a way i canget back the hard drive and my windows 7 to start up all over again?

I am having a similar problem. I use a Lacie external hard drive connected to an Airport Time Capsule via USB to store my itunes library. Yesterday I disconnected the external drive from the ATC and connected it to my macbook pro via fire wire to transfer 40 gigabytes of media files from my laptop to the external drive directly rather than over wifi. When I reattached the external drive to the ATC the Lacie drive didn't show up even after rebooting everything. I then disconnected from the ATC and reconnected to the laptop and now I get an error message saying the Lacie disk is unrecognizable and needs to be reformated. The Lacie drive was being included in the time machine backups so the files should be available through time machine but I don't see anyway to access them because the Lacie disk icon doesn't appear in the time machine backups. Is there another way to browse the files?
I have had issues with Lacie disks not showing up on the desktop before, particularly when transferring files from one computer to another. The transfer usually goes fine but then when I reattach the drive to the first computer it isn't recognized anymore until I reboot and it sometimes requires a couple of reboots. I initially tried to connect the external drive to both the ATC and the laptop but that didn't work, although now I'm wondering if that was because the connection to the laptop was firewire rather than USB like the ATC. In any case I currently have over a terabyte of data on my lacie that I can't access which includes my entire itunes library and backup files from multiple computers which were "cleaned" but not restored.
Disk utility sees the drive but can't verify or repair and tells me to backup as many files as possible and then reformat. Unfortunately I can't see ANY files to backup because the disk won't mount anywhere. If anyone has a recommendation for utilities to recover the files I'd be most grateful to get them.

Boot camp hard drive

I tried to install boot camp a couple months ago and shortly through the installation process(after setting up the hard drive) I realized the Windows disks I had weren't the correct ones, so I had to exit the installation... everything was fine. I just recently restarted my computer and noticed the "Boot camp" Hard drive was still on my desktop. How can I get rid of the boot camp hard drive?
thanks

Have you tried running Boot Camp again while in Leopard? This should allow you to delete the windows partition and restore both paritions to one as it once was.
Axel F.

Does Boot Camp provide video drivers and all ???

Does Boot Camp provide video drivers and all ???

But I thought that video drivers was not avaible yet ???
otherwise I would be playing BF2 instead of surfing thsi forum '

Boot camp WINDOWS 7 hard drive formatting and back up

Hi
I have many questions with boot camp.
I want to back up my windows 7 side of my computer and my apple mac side.I have 6 black caviah 1tb drives.(3 for each side,3 formatted with windows and 3 formatted with mac).I have noticed I can use the hard drives on each side of the computer no matter which side they were formatted on.Surely this is not the case and there are restrictions in what each drive will do depending on which side they were formatted on.
Another question . Do I need to change sides to back up windows then go to mac side to back up mac.It seems both side are accessible from either windows 7 side or mac side.
wow thanks in advance to anybody can read all that and help.
Regards
John

I think I have the same problem; When I click Shut Down in Windows 7 (via Bootcamp), the shut down process proceeds as it should, except it does not properly signal the computer to physically shut down. What typically happens is the spinning circle beneath "Shutting down" freezes, and my fans spin up to max. speed (although there is no processor load).
My "solution" is just to hold the power button down to shut it off... it's not really a big deal since the shut down process has already been completed, and also not something that bothers me since I rarely shut down Windows (I either put my computer to sleep or restart in OS X, both of which don't require the hard shut down).

Boot Camp, Mac Drive and Gaming

I recently got a mac book pro, I am looking at installing boot camp for gaming. I want to keep the windows partition as small as possible i.e. have only the OS on there to allow for maximum flexibility. So i was thinking that i could simply install Windows XP on a 5Gb partition, then use MacDrive to allow installation of windows games on the main (MacOS hfs+j) partition. My question is, is this possible? i.e. does MacDrive allow for the installation of programs on a mac formatted drive? Particularly Steam?
I have searched all the web and have not been able to find an answer, if anyone has had such a setup working/not working your input would be greatly appreciated.

Installing MacDrive, launching the Installer for your Game(in Windows obviously) and selecting your hfs partition and a path will solve your problems.
MacDrive tells Windows everything it has to know.
I strongly recommend using NTFS rather than FAT32, you can bypass the only (bigger) disadvantage (osx can't write on it) by installing paragon ntfs4mac or ntfs-3g/macfuse.
I played Call of Duty 4 and Unreal Tournament 3 without any problems or performance weaknesses on my hfs+ partition and even Warcraft 3 TFT (Mac Edition) ,installed on my NTFS Partition (just to test Paragon's Driver ^^ )

INSTALLING 10.5 Plus Boot Camp BASIC Questions

I just partitioned a 500GB drive 300/200 with hopes of installing Vista Basic onto the 200GB partition.
All my other hard drives are removed.
I got 10.5 installed and Software Updated on the 300GB volume.
THE PROBLEM IS Boot Camp Assistant is giving the following: "The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.
QUESTIONS:
This sounds like my boot drive cannot be partitioned and this is why I have no options in BCA -- true?
I won't be able to install Vista on a second boot-drive partition -- true?

Okay, Erasing my 200GB partition to MS-DOS (fat) let me move another step with Boot Camp Assistant.
Now it appears to take the next step in BCA, I am required to Erase my entire hard drive into one volume/partition, and with that goes my new 10.5 install -- true?
It looks like my options are:
1) Erase my drive into one volume, and reinstall 10.5, then create a 32MB Vista partition on the boot drive (meaning I have two Operating Systems on the same boot volume (so if one goes bad, I have to Erase both installs from start from scratch)?
2) Create a 32MB Vista partition on a second internal HD (and mix a boot system with data on the same volume)? This is not good, either.
From here, it looks like either choice is goofy, but I will likely go with putting both OSes on the same boot volume (and eat any time experimenting with this new stuff when one or the other turns bad).

Boot Camp Windows install format to NTFS not working.

As a preface I am new to Apple and more complex computer issues in general. With that said I have spent several hours trying to get Windows 8.1 installed from the DVD media to a partition created using Boot Camp Assistant. I have tried several suggestions and looked through many threads, blogs and articles and none seem to have the correct answer. Below are the steps that I have followed and the issue that I run into every time.
Open Boot Camp Assistant
     Select Download the latest Windows support software from Apple
     Select Install Windows 7 or later version
     Download support software to USB Drive (leave connected)
     Create a Partition (200GB)
Hold Option on Reboot and Select Windows
Begin the Windows install process
Select Custom: Install Windows only (advanced)
Installation asks: Where do you want to install Windows?
Select Drive 0 partition 4: BOOTCAMP
     Error Message Details:
          Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style.
          Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. Windows must be installed to a partition formatted as NTFS.
Solution I found from many threads is that I need to "Format" the partition. To do so I:
     Select Drive 0 Partition 4: BOOTCAMP
     Select Format
     Select Drive 0 Partition 4 (No longer titled as BOOTCAMP after the reformat)
          Error Message Details:
               Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style.
I cant seem to find a solution to this. Any help would be appreciated. I have tried removing all other connected drives and devices, and recreating the partition several times with no luck.
Machine Info:
OS X Yosemite 10.10.2
Mac (27-inch, Late 2013)
Processor: 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
I also have VMware Fusion installed on the machine and already used the Windows installation media to create a virtual machine. Is it possible to transfer my virtual machine to a Boot Camp partition? I did a little research and it looks as though thats not possible (at least not easily) but I figured I'd ask anyway.

Sorry for the delayed response. I'm still working to get a solution so any help is much appreciated. Thanks.
The installation media I purchased is for windows 8.1. Is that the issue? Do I need to install 8 not 8.1?
Output for sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0:
gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168
gpt show: /dev/disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167
       start        size index contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640 1560546816      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1560956456     1269536      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1562225992         696
1562226688   391297024      4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
1953523712        1423
1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
1953525167           1         Sec GPT header
Output for sudo fdisk /dev/disk0:
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [         1 - 1953525167] <Unknown ID>
2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

Boot camp does not format the partition for Windows 7

I recently purchased a copy of windows 7. This is the full version. I downloaded the drivers to a usb drive then placed the windows 7 disk in my apple optical drive to partition to disk. After portioning the iMac restarts and gives the a blank screen with _ blinking. It seems as though the windows partition has not been formatted. I cannot enter a dos command such as format or anything else. If I start up the mac again with the windows 7 disk in the optical drive I will be prompted to insert a bootable disk. I understand that after the partitioning takes place that bootcamp should start the installation process. By the way after working on this for quite a long time I decided it might be the copy of windows so I returned it and got another. Same resuts. I hope someone can help.
Thanks

Read the instructions and it is pretty clear that you format to NTFS where you see the BOOTCAMP partition.
All the articles and how to are here:
http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp
Boot Camp 101

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Hi,
I have some issue when installing windows 7 pro 64 bit using boot camp. after done partitioning the windows drive and when boot to windows installation process, i've got stuck in the first screen when choosing the language. it seems that the keyboard and mouse are not detected.
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I have finally successfully installed Windows 7 x64 on MacBook Air 13.3" (2013) thru Bootcamp.
Problem: After Windows 7 install thru BootCamp, I got to the first login screen and not input devices (Mouse, keyboard, USB) worked. I tried to boot into Windows Safemode, but I received the error "Windows can not complete installation in Safe Mode".
Cause: WIndows 7 does not have native USB 3.0 drivers, included on the install images.
Resolution: I downloaded the latest device drivers with thru BootCamp and copied them to the USB Flash Drive that had my bootable Windows 7 x64 install on it. The second option in BootCamp is "Download Support Media". This does more than just download drivers. It creates a file called "autoattended.xml". This is key as it tells Windows during the install process to use the device drivers that you download. Otherwise, you need to do it manually, which you can't because you have no mouse or keyboard.
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Windows 7 rc1 boot camp flash drive

I posted this same post in other section. Someone suggested I post the question here.
How can I, on my mac, install windows 7 on a flash drive then boot from that flash drive for the boot camp install? My boot camp install stalls when expanding the files for the windows 7 setup. I think it might be my superdrive because the drive ejects media I put in it and the drive spins and stops, spins and stops when expanding the files on the install.
Ideas
Thanks

Flash drives - and external USB or FW - drives are not supported for Windows.
A few may have managed, and then on PC. And in most cases I think you need to install Windows normal manner first and then clone it.
You can boot OS X from external drives.
Using SD card slot in 2009 model
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3553

Boot Camp basics - drive formatting and organization

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