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3 small SSDs OR 1 large SSD for triple Boot, NTFS for shared drive?

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bt993

bt993

Joined
Oct 12, 2014
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25
Motherboard
Gigabyte - GA-B150M-D3H
CPU
Intel 6700K
Graphics
Gigabyte Gforce GTX960
Hi,
I would like to build a hackintosh and run Mac OS X, Win 8.1 and CentOS on the machine. Regarding Storage, I have 2 Options:

3 separate 128GB SSDs, one for each OS and an HDD for Storage
1 large 512GB SSD for the OSs and one HDD for Storage.

I heard 3 separate drives make it easier to triple-boot, but I would rather choose the single drive (better size/$). What do you think is better?

Also, I want to access (rw) the HDD from all OSs. Linux and Windows have NTFS support and there is a free NTFS driver for Mac, so I guess NTFS is the way to go, although I don't like it. Any other solution?

Thank you!
 
bt993 said:
Hi,
I would like to build a hackintosh and run Mac OS X, Win 8.1 and CentOS on the machine. Regarding Storage, I have 2 Options:

3 separate 128GB SSDs, one for each OS and an HDD for Storage
1 large 512GB SSD for the OSs and one HDD for Storage.

I heard 3 separate drives make it easier to triple-boot, but I would rather choose the single drive (better size/$). What do you think is better?

Also, I want to access (rw) the HDD from all OSs. Linux and Windows have NTFS support and there is a free NTFS driver for Mac, so I guess NTFS is the way to go, although I don't like it. Any other solution?

Thank you!
Click to expand...

It's *easier* to set up triple booting with separate drives, but it isn't that bad with a single drive, as long as you take your time and pay attention to what you're doing. There are quite a few guides on how to do so on this forum. So I'd go for the single SSD because, as you said, better cost per $ (also usually better performance).

If you're going to use NTFS for the shared drive, and you're going to be using it under Mac OS X often, I suggest investing in Tuxera NTFS or Paragon NTFS instead of using the free version. Performance is much better with the commercial versions. Another alternative, especially if you'll be using Windows and Mac OS X more often than Linux, is ExFAT. It's natively supported in Mac OS X and there's a FUSE driver for it available for Linux and other open source OS's. I don't know what ExFAT's performance is compared to NTFS, but it's worth looking into. Here's a link to an article about it:
http://lifehacker.com/5927185/use-the-exfat-file-system-and-never-format-your-external-drive-again
 
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thanks for your answer.
Since I want to buy the Cooler Master Silencio 650 whitch has a Drive Selector (2 Drives are attached and theres a switch to select which one is used) I am probably going not with 1 or 3 but with 2 SSDs. One with OS X (I'm gonna spend most of the time there so it will be usefull having a larger disk) with GUID and one for Win 8.1 and CentOS with MBR.
ExFAT seems to be a really good idea. I will use CentOS a lot, but only for Coding and Hardware Simulation, so not for large data transfers, so I guess it is best to go with ExFat, supported in Win and Mac.
 
bt993 said:
thanks for your answer.
Since I want to buy the Cooler Master Silencio 650 whitch has a Drive Selector (2 Drives are attached and theres a switch to select which one is used) I am probably going not with 1 or 3 but with 2 SSDs. One with OS X (I'm gonna spend most of the time there so it will be usefull having a larger disk) with GUID and one for Win 8.1 and CentOS with MBR.
ExFAT seems to be a really good idea. I will use CentOS a lot, but only for Coding and Hardware Simulation, so not for large data transfers, so I guess it is best to go with ExFat, supported in Win and Mac.
Click to expand...
ExFAT is a very poor format to use.It is unforgiving and very easily corrupted.
If your files are less than 4GB in size, really recommend you format the storage MSDOS FAT (FAT32) with OS X disk utility.
 
GPT+? Never heard of that and can't even find a lot of information via google. Also, my mac does not offer me the choice to format a disk to GPT+.
I only know GPT, and thats a partition table format and not a FS. Can you give me any more information about GPT+?
 
If you are using CentOS then it may be worth simply using a virtual machine rather than a dedicated partition.

I develop heavily using Linux and at this moment have precisely zero dedicated Linux boxes. I have dedicated VMs for

1. DHCP and remote boot management for Mythtv etc
2. Firewall
3. Mail server
4. Openstreet Map server
5. External facing web server
6. Development server
7. Test server
8. Test server
9. Database server
10. Windows 7 machine just for administering ESXI and for the very few apps that I need on Windows.
11. Some other VM's which I've forgotten about.

Most of these run on ESXI but some are currently running on VMWare sessions on my Macbook and my Hackintosh.

The overhead of running on ESXI is very low, all my VM's run on an eight year old box with 8GB. The Map server is a little special as it requires a lot of memory and the Windows 7 VM is copied onto two OS X desktops "just-in-case".

VMWare or VirtualBox on a Mac is a perfectly acceptable way of working and allows you to move your entire environment simply by copying the VM files around.

Worth thinking about if it simplifies your setup.
 
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GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK |  i7 4790K |  Radeon R9 280x
bt993 said:
GPT+? Never heard of that and can't even find a lot of information via google. Also, my mac does not offer me the choice to format a disk to GPT+.
I only know GPT, and thats a partition table format and not a FS. Can you give me any more information about GPT+?
Click to expand...
GPT+ = GUID Partition Tables + Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
 
so your saying to use HFS+ on a GUID partition table? Or is it a special FS? Because I still can't find any information about GPT+.
Doesn't the Bootcamp software only allow read access?
 
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