Dual boot: Mavericks/Windows 7, 2 drives, 3 partitions. How?

[killjoy]

Hello.

I have a 120gb SSD on which I just installed Mavericks, but what I want now is to install Windows 7 on my 500gb HDD where I want to have 2 partitions; 1 for Windows, obviously, and a "media" partition to which I would be able to access (read and write) from both OSes. Is this even doable? Where do I begin?

I'd really appreciate any tip

 

[dirkmacx86]

the 3rd partition for storing media files should be easy. probably format fat32 or exfat.

I just moved osx and win7 to ssd.
I copied osx using ccc. I made osx as small as usable for me. a 240 gig ssd. I used 50 or 55 gig for osx. the rest for windows. Bootloader is chimera. I copied the windows partition using an old acronis cd I had lying around. I then restored windows to the windows partition on the ssd without mbr and track0.

I booted to the original windows. opened easy bcd, added an entry for windows on the ssd and told easy bcd to put its files on the ssd. ( probably didn't have to do this as there is somewhere an option to write a bootable easy bcd to a disk )

I the booted into windows on the ssd ( remove the original windows disk ), which was a bit messed up as it din't find the c drive. So I followed these instructions :
This is copied from a microsoft web site : ( I didn't do the backup , as I already had one )
( If you can't log in, start task manager, control alt delete ? and use new task under file )

This article was previously published under Q223188
Make a full system backup of the computer and system state.
Log on as an Administrator.
Start Regedt32.exe.
Go to the following registry key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices


Click MountedDevices.
On the Security menu, click Permissions.
Verify that Administrators have full control. Change this back when you are finished with these steps.
Quit Regedt32.exe, and then start Regedit.exe.
Locate the following registry key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices


Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename.

Note You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.
Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:".

This frees up drive letter C.
Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for "\DosDevices\D:".
Right-click \DosDevices\D:, and then click Rename.
Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".
Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:".
Quit Regedit, and then start Regedt32.
Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators (this should probably be Read Only).
Restart the computer.


Hope it works for you as well,
Dirk

I forgot to mention acronis has a 30 day free trial. Somehow I couldn't get it to install and used an old dvd. ( 2010 version ). I also didn't select the generic restore, as it was on the same machine.

 

[Going Bald]

Hello.

I have a 120gb SSD on which I just installed Mavericks, but what I want now is to install Windows 7 on my 500gb HDD where I want to have 2 partitions; 1 for Windows, obviously, and a "media" partition to which I would be able to access (read and write) from both OSes. Is this even doable? Where do I begin?

I'd really appreciate any tip

http://www.tonymacx86.com/multi-booting/96000-guide-dual-booting-mountain-lion-windows-8-a.html

Win7 / Win8 work same, 10.8 / 10.9 work same
As long as the files you want to share are smaller than 4Gb, format the shared partition FAT 32.

Suggest you format the 500Gb HDD in OS X disk utility - MBR partition tables, partitions sized how you want, named as desired (suggest Win7 and Shared) format MSDOS FAT.

Then select the Win7 partition in the Win7 installation process and format it NTFS, then install Win7.

 

[killjoy]

Thank you guys, I was successful

 

[marked]

There's a windows application called macdrive which allows windows to read mac formatted drives - can be useful if you need your media partition to hold files larger than 4gb.