Ok, this is written for a 500GB HDD.
4 partitions max, just like every other (bootable) hard-drive.
I tried this on 2 MacBook Pros and it works perfectly on both.
This tutorial also assumes you have OS X Lion installed.
What I want to achieve is to have OS X Lion & Windows 7 installed, with a shared space too.
- 120 (OSX)
- 260 (SHARED)
- 120 (Windows)
------------Part 1/2------------
Start off by resizing Mac OS X Partition so it's at least 1GB smaller than the full disk.
To do this; go into Utilities and then into Disk Utility. Select your HDD and go to the Partition tab.
1GB is not actually needed, but it's just to be on the safe side, it'll get resized later.
There needs to be 'Blank' unallocated space available.
What you originally have (factory settings):
diskutil list
500GB:
- disk0s1 EFI (Boot) ~200MB
- disk0s2 Mac OS X 10.7
- disk0s4 Mac OS X Recovery
disk0s4 needs to be deleted. Go into Utilities, and load up Terminal.
Type the following:
diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ Blank /dev/disk0s4
Then go into Disk Utility and delete the 'Blank' Partition.
You should only have your OS X Partition and blank space.
Then check your partitions with the command 'diskutil list', you should now have:
500GB:
- disk0s1 EFI (Boot) ~200MB
- disk0s2 Mac OS X 10.7
GOOD!
This part was referenced from: http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/30/deleting-the-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-recovery-hd-partition/
------------Part 2/2------------
Stretch OSX to the full available space using Disk Utility.
Load up Bootcamp Wizard, make Windows Partition 120GB whilst OSX has the remaining 380GB.
Bootcamp should be happy to start the install, but load up Disk Utility first
NOTE: On Lion 10.7.2, Bootcamp has changed a little. You need to insert the Windows 7 disk and then proceed with the installation before the Bootcamp partition will be created. When your computer restarts you need to hold down the option (alt) key and boot back into Lion, then follow the steps below:
Select the OSX Partition, and '+' another partition.
Reduce OSX to 120GB and make the new (middle) partition MS-DOS FAT, call it SHARED. That's what I'm using for now.
Whilst FAT doesn't allow for any single files over 4096MB; it's also writable natively with both OS's.
It should be 260GB. Now you have:
- 120 (OSX)
- 260 (SHARED)
- 120 (Windows)
According to Disk Utility, but...
In reality what we have is:
500GB:
- disk0s1 EFI (Boot) ~200MB
- disk0s2 Mac OS X 10.7
- disk0s3 SHARED
- disk0s4 Windows 7
Insert Windows 7 disk (if you haven't already) and then start the install sequence.
You'll notice that there's a 128MB unallocated space. Tragically you'll have to leave that unallocated.
Format the BOOTCAMP partition (only) and proceed to install Windows.
Don't mess about with deleting and merging partitions, otherwise the partition tables will be damaged.
------------DONE------------
It can be done. I have two Macbooks setup like this. Partition 1 is Mac, 2 is Google Drive, 3 is Windows. All can be seen, written and read from both OSX and Windows.
To do this, run bootcamp assistant and partition the drive so that the Mac OS partition is the size you want the OSX + Google Drive to be.
Do not install Windows yet. Reboot into OSX, then go to disk utility, and partition the OSX partition again, this time call the second partition as Google Drive. You will now have 2 OS partitions, and one NTFS.
Now reboot, and hold down alt to choose to boot from your windows installation media.
Choose advanced installation, and select the partition that you want to install Windows on to. You may need to choose to format the partition too.
Windows will install.
Now reboot into OSX, setup Google Drive and choose advanced. It will ask you to choose where Drive is located. Here's the tricky part..... if you choose the new partition, it will say it's not empty. So you need to show hidden files (there's many tutorials and methods on line to show how to do this). Now you need to delete these 4 files. Each time I've done this has been trial and error. Programs like BlueHarvest may help, but you will need to use Terminal and various delete commands to get them to go and do in the correct order. It took me about 45 minuets last time. I lost track of the correct order. When they all do delete, have the Google Drive setup assistant ready to choose the now empty partition. Select the drive and it will start to sync and you're done.
I use Paragon and Mac Drive 9 to allow full read / write from both OS.
Mac and Google partitions are Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and Windows is NTFS.
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