Parallels & Bootcamp/reFit on the same Machine?

K

Kugelblitz

Bit poster
Hello,

I got a new SSD Drive for my MacBook Pro. His is about half the size than my old Diskdrive.
windows%20auf%20dem%20Macbook.JPG

As a mainly Windows user I wanna switch to Mac OS. Still I got some Programms and Games that run only in Windows.

On my Old Harddisk I had three Partitions. I was using reFit to have Mac OS X Lion, Windows 7 and a third Partition for my Data to share with the two operating-systems. To switch between Windows and Mac OS X with reFit I had to reboot, which I hardly ever did.

Now I am thinking about getting Parallels to work more in Mac OS X Lion. Most of the Windows Programms that I still want to use dont need a lot of Systempower. But some do.
Still I wanna be able to Boot to Windows without having Mac OS X running in the Background to use Software with big Hardware demand such as 3D Animation Programms (3DS Max) Video Editing Software and some Windows Games.

So here is the Question:
Is it possible to install Windows on a separate Partition useing Parallels and still be able to use the same Windows as a virtual machine in MacOSX Lion or boot it with Bootcamp or reFit ?

Wish you all a great new Year
Thanks for reading
 
Yes, Parallels can use your Bootcamp partition, refit doesn't make any difference whatsoever for Parallels.

About that third partition for sharing data, I don't think you need it, first of all it's formatted in NTFS so that means OS X can't write to it, or you have to use something like Paragon NTFS on OS X to write to it, but in that case why not write directly to the Windows partition?
s
I've managed a lot of Windows machines over the years and one major problem I found is that having 2 partitions on Windows is more of a problem than it is a solution, you'll end up with one partition filled with data and fragmented and another almost empty (because of 'Documents and Settings' folder), unless you change docs and sets to be on the second folder which is a non standard config that might cause some problems. Besides the fact that people usually over evaluate the space needed for the second partition.


Some information you might find useful:
* Bootcamp drivers install a driver that permits read only access to OS X partitions.
* OS X has a read only driver for NTFS
* If you happen to use a third party NTFS driver it might interfere with Parallels own NTFS driver

This means that natively each OS can have read only access to the other, and parallels can share folders between the OSs.
 
exFat?

Hello Specimen,
Thanks a lot for your reply.
I know what you mean with the three Partitions.
Usually I keep the "User" Folders of Windows on the C Drive but store my documents on D.
How about using exFat for it?
Think Windows and Mac OS X can read and write on it.
 
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