Windows screws me again !

[EdRyan]

I have a bit of a tough choice here...

Out of need to run some Freescale DSP board programming software, I've installed Windows onto my macbook.

In true Windows style, it has managed to cock something up. It shouldn't have touched my external drive, but it has. Now OSX won't read the drive, but Disk Utilities does see it and appears to be able to make an image of it. It's a 250gig drive, so it will take awhile.

The dilemma is, what to do next. My macs HD is 120gig and pretty full. Ive just deleted a load of apples loops to make space for the compressed image of my external drive. I'm hoping that will be enough.

I'm very tempted to just wipe the f*ing lot and start again. For a couple of reasons.

1) It appears my OSX install isn't the full one. I had to manually find the bootcamp.pkg and install from the supplied disc. I cant help wonder, what else maybe missing. Therefore it might be worth reinstalling OSX from the disc, rather then keeping the image from the factory that missed bootcamp.

2) I didn't mean for the mac HD to get that full. It's mostly Logics fault. And lately Logic has been giving me jip. I'm possibly therefore considering waiting to see if the external can be pulled back, copying the bits of cwork I need onto it, formatting the mac, installing Logic etc again but shifting its sample packs onto the external during the reinstall.

I'm then left with the question of what to do with Windows. Should I delete that and reinstall as well. I will eventually get around to using it again for Music production. At the moment it has a 13gig partition to itself, but I tihnk it might be wise to give it more...

Computers. I hate them when they say NO

[sureno]

can you afford a cheap £100 PC? i wouldn't dream of putting windows on any of my macs, if you removed windows do you think your mac will see your external again, the only partition mac and PC can both view is FAT32 i believe?

[EdRyan]

Originally Posted by sureno

can you afford a cheap £100 PC? i wouldn't dream of putting windows on any of my macs, if you removed windows do you think your mac will see your external again, the only partition mac and PC can both view is FAT32 i believe?

You are slightly wrong there. In Osx 10.4, there ws a fiddlesome workaround involving a 3rd party software that allowed for reading and writing to NTFS volumes. From 10.5.1 onwards, support for NTFS drives was built into OSX. So Fat32 is no longer the only option.

It's looking like I can't make enough space in the OSX partition to save the external. Its used nearly 40 gig and is around 35% done. So I'm guessing the best way is to forget saving the externa and just format it, so that I can go from scratch on the OSX and XPs...

And macs are better at running windows then most PCs are. Infact, tests showed the fastest laptop for Windows...was a mac model !

[sureno]

yes you are right about NTFS however you can not delete anything while plugged into a mac and cant transfer stuff to the external from the mac but it is possible the other way round.

yes i also heard XP runs better on a mac but you know what they say, once bitten twice shy, i find it very odd that there is no software that meets your needs on mac, usually the option is always greater on PC but there always is a close to or equivalent on mac?

however unlucky on the drive

[EdRyan]

You can manage an NTFS drive like a mac journ'd drive. I could quite happily write to and read from, as well as delete files from my old NTFS maxtor drive. That bit the dust when the power cable got caught o na chair, thus sendinf the drive flying into hard-drive heaven.

Now, I'm actually tempted to store Windows on the external, however this gets me even mroe confused with the partitioning side of things. Disk Utility can only write one type of partition at once. Does that mean a drive cannot support more then one file and partition structure?

[ecc83]

Now I don't understand 20% of all this but I bet Martin Walker www.soundonsound.com could put you straight.

Dave.