Boot camp with multiple hard drives?

C

chrislo2401

Bit poster
Hiya,

I currently don't have a Boot Camp partition but I'm thinking about creating one so that I can use it when I need the extra speed.

At the moment I have 2 hard drives, both virtual - one for the OS and one for data.

If I change & use a Boot Camp partition as my OS drive, can I still use the additional virtual drive as my data drive? Just want to make sure before I start changing over.

Thanks,
Chris
 
chrislo2401 said:
Hiya,

I currently don't have a Boot Camp partition but I'm thinking about creating one so that I can use it when I need the extra speed.

At the moment I have 2 hard drives, both virtual - one for the OS and one for data.

If I change & use a Boot Camp partition as my OS drive, can I still use the additional virtual drive as my data drive? Just want to make sure before I start changing over.

Thanks,
Chris
Click to expand...
The virtual data drive won't be accessible when you boot up under Boot Camp, since Windows has no way of seeing or understanding an .hdd file residing on the Mac partition. It should work OK under Parallels, though. The VM would boot from the Boot Camp partition and you'd add the data .hdd as an additional drive.

This scenario might be OK if you only intend to use Boot Camp for a few things, like games. You'd have to install them on the Boot Camp partition. I realize that this somewhat negates the benefit of having a seperate data drive/partition. Also, Windows doesn't always like having what it considers nonremovable drives go missing. Your data drive fits this criterion from Windows' perspective, virtual or not. If any system files and/or any system dependencies (3rd party services, etc.) reside on the data drive, Windows may whine when you boot up under Boot Camp.
 
Ah yeah, good point. I was only really thinking about it from the Parallels perspective, hadn't considered accessibility under Boot Camp.

Hmmm, hard to know what to do. I would like the extra speed for those times when I need it, but I'd also like to keep my data seperate.

Thanks for the response, some good points.
 
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