Dual boot partition question

sinecurea · August 14, 2006 5:51AM

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 · August 14, 2006 1:14PM

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 · August 14, 2006 2:48PM

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 · August 14, 2006 2:49PM

Thanks for clearing that up, Lundy.

Dual boot partition question

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