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I'll be getting my first MacBook Pro today. Late 2013 with 256GB of SSD space.

For my development activities, I'll be needing Windows 8.1 running alongside OSX. I've done some reading on both Bootcamp and Parallels regarding this. The plan is to use Bootcamp and to have ~150GB for the Windows installation and Windows programs. The rest would be for OSX plus my 50GB worth of media content that I'd preferably share between both OSs.

Question: Would it be possible for my media files residing in one partition to be accessed by the operating system on the other partition? It's clear that Parallels could do this, but I'd be needing a good enough reason to invest in a license. Also I do not mind booting in an out of OSs once in a while. What I'm not clear of, is the file system compatibility between the two operating systems.

Tru
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2 Answers2

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Just create a bigger partition for Windows (~200GB) then once windows is installed split the windows partition in two parts (150GB - 50GB) then format the little one in Exfat (which works with OsX > 10.6.8 and Wxp > SP2 and allow the use of big files).

Thomas Ayoub
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  • Nice approach. But I do have to make sure the shared space doesn't grow much in the future. – Tru Jun 20 '14 at 05:25
  • @Tru Yes unfortunately, once the split between mac os and windows partition is done, you can't change it. – Thomas Ayoub Jun 20 '14 at 05:28
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Either…

  • put the files in the Mac partition: Boot Camp has drivers for read/write to HFS+
  • put the files in the Windows partition: install software on OS X such as ntfs-3g
Community
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grg
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  • write to HFS+ ? Really ? that's nice :) – Thomas Ayoub Jun 19 '14 at 11:08
  • @Thomas Yep, I install the Boot Camp drivers on various Windows PCs just for this feature for external disks. – grg Jun 19 '14 at 11:14
  • Your first option sounds better to me than your second. I won't mind where the files reside :) – Tru Jun 20 '14 at 06:40
  • @Tru if you plan to use the files for work with windows, consider the second one, it'll be faster – Thomas Ayoub Jun 20 '14 at 08:00
  • Are you sure about the boot camp drivers having HFS+ write support? All other sources seem to indicate the HFS+ driver is read-only! – Brecht Machiels Sep 02 '14 at 11:14
  • @Brecht I can confirm that I can the drivers are read/write, at least on Windows 7 & 8. – grg Sep 02 '14 at 11:39
  • @GeorgeGarside In Windows 8.1 I'm getting a "Destination Folder Access Denied" dialog when I try to paste a file into a folder on a HFS+ partition. I can choose "Continue", after which Windows reports "You need permission to perform this action". Which version of BootCamp did you use? I should be using the latest version, since I just got this MacBook. Windows' "Programs and Features" reports "Boot Camp-services 5.1.5640". – Brecht Machiels Sep 02 '14 at 16:31
  • @Brecht Not sure 8.1 is supported; probably worth a separate question so others see it – grg Sep 02 '14 at 16:32
  • @GeorgeGarside Can you check which version of Boot Camp services is installed on Windows? While you're at it, can you make sure you do not have Paragon HFS+ for Windows installed? :) – Brecht Machiels Sep 02 '14 at 16:43
  • @Brecht Boot Camp Services 5.0.5033 on Windows 8.1, almost clean Windows install (a few games) :) – grg Sep 02 '14 at 16:48
  • @GeorgeGarside I replaced my AppleHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys with those from Boot Camp 5.0.5033... still read-only. Further googling doesn't even turn up a single report of the Apple HFS+ driver supporting write, so you understand I'm skeptic. – Brecht Machiels Sep 02 '14 at 20:23