Why won't OS X see my Vista partitions?

Question

I got a new Macbook Pro and installed Vista using Boot Camp. Typically when I install Windows I use 2 partitions: 1 for the OS and applications, the 2nd for data. I like this setup because it allows me to restore or reinstall a corrupted OS without losing data.
Bootcamp assistant didn't give me a way to create 2 new partitions, but after it created 1 BOOTCAMP partition and I rebooted into the Vista install DVD I erased the BOOTCAMP partition and replaced it with 2 new partitions that were NTFS formatted. I then installed Vista on the first and it's working fine. I have no problem going back and forth using the option key while booting to select the boot OS I need.
However, when I'm in the OS X OS I can't see the 2 Vista/NTFS partitions. They don't show up under the startup disk control panel. Under Disk Utility, the space allocated to the 2 NTFS partitions are shown as a single, unmounted partition called "disk0s3" and under info it is erroneously identified as MS-DOS (FAT32).
When I caled Apple's support the tech told me OS X can't see NTFS partitions and this is the reason. However, having done some more reading I find this is wrong. From everything I've read it seems OS X can natively read NTFS partitions (but can't write to them). Since I primarily need to be able to move files from Windows into OS X this would be fine. I'd rather not have to use an external drive to do this.
I've also tried installing macFUSE/NTFS-3g which should add read/write capabilty to NTFS but it's still not seeing the those partitions.
Can anyone tell me what the issue here is and if possible, how to fix it?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Ric, I've also been struggling to get OS X to see my second Vista NTFS partition. Wish I'd read your post a few days ago before I did the process (since I don't want to start again from scratch), grrr!
AFAIK, the EFI firmware that Mactel uses (which replaces the BIOS) dictates a GPT disk partitioning scheme instead of MBR, but that it's also capable of emulating the MBR interface for operating systems that don't support GPT...
Anyways in my case I'd let BCA create the (single) Boot Camp partition, then let the Vista setup DVD reformat it as NTFS (just reformat though, not delete/re-create the partition). After everything's set up I then booted into Vista and used the Disk Management GUI to shrink the OS partition and create a second NTFS partition for data (this winds up being the 4th and final Primary partition possible on a HDD, as you noted).
{quote:title=_*FIRST SIDEBAR:*_}{quote}
Unfortunately, Vista's Disk Management often can only shrink an NTFS system partition to about half its original size, because there are usually unmovable systems files placed around the middle of the partition. I wanted to reduce my Vista OS partition even smaller than that, but I was scared to force-move these system files because I seem to recall other users having said that moving the MFT and such files caused their OS X to no longer be able to find the Windows partition. But I decided to try anyways...
I don't have a 3rd-party partition manager, so I used the PerfectDisk defrag program I already have to move these system files towards the beginning of the partition (note that this can only be done offline during boot-up defrag). In the end I was left with a single contiguous free space block at the rear of the partition, which allowed Vista Disk Management to shrink my OS partition down even further. FYI other defraggers I'd tried in the past couldn't seem to do this.
The good news is that afterwards OS X Startup Disk can still see my Vista OS partition, and I can read the files there just fine. But the second NTFS partition that I created is not shown! OS X Disk Utility displays my Vista OS partition usage correctly, but shows it as having the total size originally created by BCA.
For example, say BCA originally made a 180GB partition that I later split into 60GB OS (10GB filled) and 120GB Data NTFS partitions. Disk Utility sees only the Vista OS partition, with a 180GB total capacity, but correctly displays the volume as having 10GB usage and only 50GB available space. It's almost like OS X thinks that I shrunk the NTFS file system volume without shrinking the partition itself, and the rest of the space in the partition is unformatted...
{quote:title=_*SECOND SIDEBAR:*_}{quote}
I also noticed that Vista Disk Management actually created my second NTFS partition as an Extended partition with a Logical volume inside it, instead of as a Primary partition. This seems the default behavior, presumably so that you can still create additional Logical volumes/partitions inside the Extended partition and bypass the 4-Primary-partition limit.
So I re-created my 4th partition (the NTFS Data partition) as a Primary type, because I thought that perhaps OS X can't see Extended partitions (which are implemented as a linked-list with the MBR only storing a pointer to the first Logical partition table located elsewhere). Since I don't have a partition manager, I used the Vista diskpart.exe command-line tool to do this:
*DISKPART> CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY OFFSET=<offset in KB> ID=07*
I manually calculated the offset (to be right after the end of the first NTFS partition) so that diskpart.exe doesn't try to create the new partition in the 128MB EFI gap that Vista sees as free space (which is located before the first NTFS partition).
But no go, OS X still doesn't see the second NTFS partition!
Now I'm wondering if there's a way to manually create this 128MB EFI gap to put in between the two NTFS partitions, so that OS X will recognize the second partition?
Vista's diskpart.exe utility does have a *CREATE PARTITION EFI* command which:
"+Creates an Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) system partition on a GUID partition table (GPT) disk.+"
The problem is that in the Boot Camp scheme, Vista sees the disk as being an (emulated) MBR disk and not GPT, so I don't think this command would work. I'm afraid to even try, as I don't want to mess up the Boot Camp multi-boot loader.