Dual boot partition question

sinecurea

Hi Folks,

I currently have 10.4.7 on an Intel iMac but would like to Dual boot with my new Leopard Dev Preview.

This obvisouly means having to partition the hard drive, but when I try to partition the disk, Disk Utility won't let me - I'm presuming this has something to do with the fact that I"m trying to partition the sole disk partition, which contains the OS which is currently in use.

Is there a way for me to partition the disk without having to format and start from scratch?



I should also mention, that at the same time, I'm also going to create a third partition and install XP via boot camp. Are there any issues I should know about?

I'm not familiar with messing about with multiple OSs and partitions etc on a Mac (ok with PCs though), so any help/advice would be welcome.



Cheers,

S.

meelash

I believe when you run boot camp it contains a utility to partition your hard drive "on-the-fly," so you could run that and create all three partitions using that. Otherwise, in order to partition the startup disk, you have to boot from the OS X install CD and run disk utility from that startup disk. I'm not sure if partitioning then would erase the disk or not. Please note, I haven't done any of this, exactly, this is simply what seems reasonable to me based on past experience. There are probably others that have more actual relevant experience...



good luck!

lundy

Disk Utility requires a complete erase in order to change the partitioning. It tells you this when you try to partition. Boot Camp can make a partition without erasing (usually; some have reported accidently erasing, so back up first).



Check VersionTracker to see if there are any 3rd party partition-in-place utilities.

meelash

Thanks for clearing that up, Lundy.