I just got a Macbook and want to install Bootcamp to have access to some Windows only VST plugins. I want to use both platforms to continue making music. As I have tons of GB of audio project files I thought that I could setup Windows via Bootcamp but also create a separate partition for those files. That way I would avoid having the audio files duplicated and redundant.
Now my questions are:
1) Is it possible to make this happen? One exFat for shared files, one regular mac parition and one NTFS for windows (its been a while when I was dealing with partitioning, and that was back on pure windows times)
2) If 1) is possible, how should I proceed. First bootcamp? First the exFat partition? And how do I do a pure data exfat partition on mac
Best Answer
Here, I assume you will be using the Boot Camp Assistant to install an UEFI booting Windows 10. The computer I am using to test this answer is an iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011) with macOS 11.13.6 (High Sierra) and macOS 10.15.3 (Catalina) installed. The output from
diskutil list
, after installing Windows 10 Pro Version 1909, is shown below. Here the Mac is running Catalina.Adding an ExFAT Formatted Partition after the APFS Container Partition
The command
diskutil apfs resizecontainer disk0s2 800G ExFAT Fish1 0
was entered to create a ~100 GB ExFAT volume. The output is shown below. The value of800G
was chosen, because this is approximately 100 GB smaller that current partition size of 898 GB.The output from
diskutil list
is shown below. The newExFAT
formatted partition has the identifier ofdisk0s5
.Adding an ExFAT Formatted Partition after the NTFS Formatted Partition
There are other exceptions to the Golden Rule. In this case, the Golden Rule rule does not apply due to the following reasons.
Mac OS Extended
volumes on thedisk0
.The steps to create an
ExFAT
volume are given below. The images are from the 2013 iMac.Open Disk Management, as shown below.
Shrink the main Windows partition. Select
Shrink Volume...
, as shown below.When the window below appears, enter the desired size for the new partition. When finished, click on the
Shrink
button.The result is shown below.
Create new partition. Select
New Simple Volume
, as shown below.Click on the
Next
button, when the window below appears.Click on the
Next
button, when the window below appears.Choose a drive letter, when the window below appears. Here, the default letter of
E
was used. When finished, click on theNext
button.When the window below appears, enter a volume label. Here, the name
Fish2
was used. Since theExFAT
format is not available, let the format default toNTFS
for now. This will be corrected later. When finished, click on theNext
button.Click on the
Next
button, when the window below appears.The result is a new
NTFS
volume, as shown below.Format as ExFAT. Open a Command Prompt window as an administrator and enter the command
format e: /fs:exfat /v:Fish2 /q
, as shown below. You may need to substitute a different drive letter and volume label.The result is a new ExFAT volume, as shown below.
After booting back to Catalina, the output from
diskutil
list is shown below.