File systems in Boot Camp

mpw_amherstmpw_amherst
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Well, I've just got a lovely new 17" Intel iMac and have now installed Boot Camp and Windows XP. It all works wonderfully - and the bits that don't are Microsoft!



However, having selected the NTFS file format I now wonder if I should have gone for FAT32. I only want the Windows partition to play some old, favourite games (such as Grand Prix World and Settler IV) both designed for Windows 98, I believe. Will they run on the NTFS format or should I reinstall and use the FAT32?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    kishankishan Posts: 732member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mpw_amherst

    Well, I've just got a lovely new 17" Intel iMac and have now installed Boot Camp and Windows XP. It all works wonderfully - and the bits that don't are Microsoft!



    However, having selected the NTFS file format I now wonder if I should have gone for FAT32. I only want the Windows partition to play some old, favourite games (such as Grand Prix World and Settler IV) both designed for Windows 98, I believe. Will they run on the NTFS format or should I reinstall and use the FAT32?



    Pretty sure that Win98 didn't use NTFS as an disk format option. I think FAT32 is the way to go if you want to run Win98. Additionally, if you wanted to write anything from the MacOS onto the Windows partition, it would have to be FAT32
  • Reply 2 of 2
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    Personally I'd go with 3 partitions, HFS+ for Mac OS, NTFS for XP, and FAT32 for other stuff and transferring files between the OSs. Only the Fat32 partition can be natively written to by both OSes.



    But if all you want to do is run a few games and security is not your to priority, going with Fat 32 is probably fine. Just remember there's a partition size limit.
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