Dual Boot Data Drive

[DFizzle88]

Hello all. So my parts are on the way so I'm doing a ton of research now to make the Hackintosh process go as smoothly as possible. My setup will be GA-Z87X-HD3, i7 4770 (not k variant) GTX 770, and for storage I'm going to be using two drives but both to be partitioned. My boot drive is going to be a 250gb Samsung 840 and my data drive is just going to be a 2TB HDD. My goal is to split both drives in half, 120/120 and 1tb/1tb.

As far as setting up the dual boot, I'd read tons of tutorials and I'm comfortable with that...or at least attempting it when the time comes. My confusion is on the data drive. Do I simply format/partition that in the exact same fashion as the boot drive (OSX Journaled and Fat32)? Or is there a better process? On the boot drive I just want the OS and my large programs. (Windows, couple games. OSX Photoshop, Logic) Thanks so much for your help, and I must say this is an amazing community and I look forward to being part of it after the build is complete.

 

[Going Bald]

Hello all. So my parts are on the way so I'm doing a ton of research now to make the Hackintosh process go as smoothly as possible. My setup will be GA-Z87X-HD3, i7 4770 (not k variant) GTX 770, and for storage I'm going to be using two drives but both to be partitioned. My boot drive is going to be a 250gb Samsung 840 and my data drive is just going to be a 2TB HDD. My goal is to split both drives in half, 120/120 and 1tb/1tb.

As far as setting up the dual boot, I'd read tons of tutorials and I'm comfortable with that...or at least attempting it when the time comes. My confusion is on the data drive. Do I simply format/partition that in the exact same fashion as the boot drive (OSX Journaled and Fat32)? Or is there a better process? On the boot drive I just want the OS and my large programs. (Windows, couple games. OSX Photoshop, Logic) Thanks so much for your help, and I must say this is an amazing community and I look forward to being part of it after the build is complete.

So far as installation on same drive goes, see http://www.tonymacx86.com/multi-booting/96000-guide-dual-booting-mountain-lion-windows-8-a.html

For your data drives: Do you want to share any portion between OS X and Windows? What is the maximum size of the files you will be storing on the Windows size? If you want to share a partition, format the HDD in OS X disk utility 1tb/1tb, half for OS X extended (journaled) GUID same as for OS X, then partition the other half for Windows with MSDOS FAT (FAT32). You can continue with FAT if none of your files are larger than 4Gb and you want to share.
If you don't care to share or if files are larger than 4Gb, once in Windows open the disk management utility and format the FAT32 partition to NTFS.

You will not be able to write from one OS storage partition from the other OS, but OS X will read NTFS (but can't write to it) and if you install the bootcamp drivers in Windows, Windows can read the GPT+ partition (but can't write to it).

Otherwise, for sharing, get a NAS with server software or Paragon - either for Mac or for Windows.

 

[DFizzle88]

Thank you for your answer. I may want to share files but at this moment I'm not completely sure if I'll have files over 4gb. If I set up as FAT to start and run into an issue, can I change the file structure without reformatting and losing all my data?

 

[Going Bald]

Thank you for your answer. I may want to share files but at this moment I'm not completely sure if I'll have files over 4gb. If I set up as FAT to start and run into an issue, can I change the file structure without reformatting and losing all my data?

Changing file structure from FAT to NTFS requires reformatting. As for losing data - that is what back ups are for.