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Macbook Pro: Multiple Partitions?
Meiteron
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm using the first model of the Unibody MacBook Pro, running Snow Leopard, for personal use at the moment. Currently, I have it split up into two partitions with Boot Camp: 150gigs for the Mac side and 100gigs for the Windows side, which was running XP until getting upgraded to 7 a few months ago.
Unfortunately 7 isn't playing nice with some important programs which are randomly doing horrible things to/with my video drivers (a different question, and probably too obscure to get help with here). Everything else I do on my Windows side works well enough to make 7 worth keeping, but I'd like to get XP back on in some fashion so that I can use the programs without dealing with crashes at random times.
In an ideal world I'd take my Mac partition, chop off 30 gigs, turn it into a third partition and install XP on it. A bit of time on Google has given me some contradictory information and most of it deals with making 3 partitions with either a fresh laptop or one that's been reformatted, something I'd prefer to avoid. So I guess the questions are:
-Is it possible to make a third partition with 2 partitions already in use? I'd consider reinstalling everything if I really have to but that's a lot of time sunk, and my track record getting windows installed isn't fantastic.
-How does one go about it? Can I do it from within Snow Leopard? Do I need something third-party to do it properly?
-Anyone have experience with computers running 1mac and 2windows partitions? Any obscure problems that arise?
Unfortunately 7 isn't playing nice with some important programs which are randomly doing horrible things to/with my video drivers (a different question, and probably too obscure to get help with here). Everything else I do on my Windows side works well enough to make 7 worth keeping, but I'd like to get XP back on in some fashion so that I can use the programs without dealing with crashes at random times.
In an ideal world I'd take my Mac partition, chop off 30 gigs, turn it into a third partition and install XP on it. A bit of time on Google has given me some contradictory information and most of it deals with making 3 partitions with either a fresh laptop or one that's been reformatted, something I'd prefer to avoid. So I guess the questions are:
-Is it possible to make a third partition with 2 partitions already in use? I'd consider reinstalling everything if I really have to but that's a lot of time sunk, and my track record getting windows installed isn't fantastic.
-How does one go about it? Can I do it from within Snow Leopard? Do I need something third-party to do it properly?
-Anyone have experience with computers running 1mac and 2windows partitions? Any obscure problems that arise?
Meiteron on
0
Posts
This should work.
I used the built in Disk Utility to resize the partitions. There are two pieces of advice that I have:
Basically:
1. Back everything up.
2. Pop in your OS X reinstall disk.
3. Use Disk Utility to create as many partitions as you need.
4. Install OS X.
5. Download and install rEFIt in OS X.
6. Install XP.
7. Install 7.
It's not that hard to do but it takes a lot of time since you're installing more than one OS.
Here's a tutorial on how to install more than two OSes on your Mac (link).