Initial Build. Q&A (Full of info!)

[TGreg104]

Installing windows as we speak. I'm still confused on the method of putting the shell files on a different drive for windows. I feel bad even asking questions since this is a Mac(ish) forum, but does anyone have any idea?

Im following this right now: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 56aebb296e and following the first answer/response. What confuses me is he states that you can just copy his answer file into notepad and save it as a xml on a flash drive and use it, but I read through it and it says "cpuarchitecture=amd64", isn't intel x86? So i figured I could just change the amd64 to x86. But I was reading on and it says in the answer file that its going to move the "d:\ProgramData" which wouldn't that put any software I install onto my HDD instead of my SSD?

Is there any easier way to do this? The way on OSX is easy.

 

[Gordo74]

Yeah, you can do it an easier way.

Once in windows, just go into your user folder (it would be named your username) and right click and go to properties of each folder (such as My Documents) and click the location tab and where it says "C:\Users\(username)\My Documents" just change the C: to whatever the hard drive is (I'd assume D and click okay. Repeat for each one.

Be sure to disable hibernation and system restore, and make your page file like 1GB. That will gain you a lot of space back.

Be sure to partition your drives BEFORE you do all of those. Make two partitions for each drive, one for OSX, one for Windows.

Windows is stupid to get working with an SSD nicely.

I'd say a 30GB partition for OSX should do it. On my 64GB drive, I have OSX, iLife, Adobe CS5 and Microsoft office as well as other little stuff like Chrome and the like and I only have 20GB used.

 

[TGreg104]

Once I move everything, can I delete the original files from my C:\ drive? Will any word doc's/save games/downloads/misc files automatically go to the Storage HDD now or will I still have to manually make sure it set the path to it?

 

[TGreg104]

Hardware wise, everything is in and working. Typing this on my new PC, just gotta get the OSx side set up.

Had a weird problem, when I was trying to first install OSX it wouldn't work, it would just look for Operating system. So i gave up, installed windows, and all the drivers for the MOBO. So just messing around i tried to boot the Unibeast drive again, and it worked. But I had my wrong SSD plugged in so I couldn't install it. I shut off the computer and switched the connections and tried again and it didnt work. I'm guessing this is because the drivers for the usb are installed on the Windows SSD.

Can I only have the windows SSD plugged in, boot from Unibeast, and when I go to select where to install the OS, plug in my OSx SSD?

 

[TGreg104]

I'm typing this from my new Hack Pro As far as I know, as of right now, everything is working!

Thanks everyone and I <3 Tonymacx86

 

[gredhead]

I've built about a dozen PC's with windows, and am about to start on a dual boot hackintosh, with mostly same hardware as discussed here. This thread is great, with most all the problems I've ever experienced in new builds discussed. Great idea to start up new system and check before putting mobo and all into the case - wish I had on last build. Left second mobo pwr cable off mobo once too.

Have a bad taste for WD drives, as dozens went bad, including mine, at govt agency back in 1998. Used Maxtors for long time, but had one of those crap out too. I think I will go with caviar black though.

Need some clarification on hard drives. This will be a dual boot, win7 and osX, with a separate SSD for each, as discussed above.

WJF suggested using raid 1 for the mechanical drives, but how would that work with the dual boot, or can it even?

When Gordo74 talked of having separate partitions on each (mechanical?) drive, one for each op sys, that would be to be able to mirror all data on each manually, without raid?
That in turn would be much more reliable than say using one mechanical drive for each operating system without raid nor manual mirror - is that the gist of the idea?

thanks - first post here - gredhead

 

[wfj]

I've built about a dozen PC's with windows, and am about to start on a dual boot hackintosh, with mostly same hardware as discussed here. This thread is great, with most all the problems I've ever experienced in new builds discussed. Great idea to start up new system and check before putting mobo and all into the case - wish I had on last build. Left second mobo pwr cable off mobo once too.

Have a bad taste for WD drives, as dozens went bad, including mine, at govt agency back in 1998. Used Maxtors for long time, but had one of those crap out too. I think I will go with caviar black though.

Need some clarification on hard drives. This will be a dual boot, win7 and osX, with a separate SSD for each, as discussed above.

WJF suggested using raid 1 for the mechanical drives, but how would that work with the dual boot, or can it even?

When Gordo74 talked of having separate partitions on each (mechanical?) drive, one for each op sys, that would be to be able to mirror all data on each manually, without raid?
That in turn would be much more reliable than say using one mechanical drive for each operating system without raid nor manual mirror - is that the gist of the idea?

thanks - first post here - gredhead

I think any of us who've built systems long enough have gone through bad runs of drives with nearly every brand out there. I don't really want to get into that discussion again, but of the drive manufacturers left standing (seagate, WD, hitachi) I think WD has the best support. To each his own.

Regarding the RAID 1 setup. I'm pretty sure the only way to accomplish this is using 4 mechanical drives unless you get a RAID card that is supported by both osx and windows. The idea with the raid card would be formatting the drives with a partitioning scheme that allows read and write in both osx and windows. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that would be exFAT. This could possibly work...not something I've ever tried.

The 2 mechanical drive scheme cannot work because windows uses the RAID on the motherboard whereas osx is software RAID.

Just random thoughts. Maybe there is someone out there who has actually tried out this type of setup.

 

[gredhead]

Thanks, please be gentle and patient - I have no Mac experience yet, that is the goal of the hackintosh.

I take it from response before, it is possible for me to partition a mechanical drive for a partition used by windows and a second partition used by osX, on the same drive?

That would mean I could use two mechanical drives with the same partition structure and size, and set up what I called above "manual mirroring" to periodically copy everything from both the win and mac partitions on drive 1 to my backup drive 2? Does anyone do this?

Or would it just be better to have a whole separate mechanical drive for each operating system?

 

[wfj]

Thanks, please be gentle and patient - I have no Mac experience yet, that is the goal of the hackintosh.

I take it from response before, it is possible for me to partition a mechanical drive for a partition used by windows and a second partition used by osX, on the same drive?

That would mean I could use two mechanical drives with the same partition structure and size, and set up what I called above "manual mirroring" to periodically copy everything from both the win and mac partitions on drive 1 to my backup drive 2? Does anyone do this?

Or would it just be better to have a whole separate mechanical drive for each operating system?

It is probably simplest to have two separate drives for each OS but the partitioning scheme described above will work. In OS X you can read but not write to NTFS, and in WIN7 you won't be able to see a mac partition. There are some ways around this via software:

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

The other option is the exFAT idea I mentioned before.

Just out of curiosity, is there a specific program or reason you still need windows? Once I made the switch I find myself almost never booting into Win7 anymore.

FYI, once you get used to installing OS X, you become pretty fast and proficient at it. It would be perfectly reasonable to just experiment with some of these options before settling on a specific configuration. The worst case scenario is that you simply use a separate drive for each OS.

I think using software RAID 1 while in OS X is a compelling idea if you had a mac partition and an exFAT partition. While in OS X RAID would be functional. The magic question is when you're in Win7, write some data to the exFAT partition, and then boot back into os x. Will that cause a problem with the RAID since the first disk is now different from the mirrored? Don't have an answer for that...

 

[gredhead]

Thanks NFJ for your patient assistance. I'm not sure I'll really need the win7, just the fact that I can have both on one hackintosh and am leery of making the jump, I do want both on the machine. The main windows application not available on mac is Ecco Pro, and I have many megabytes of outlines in that.

I said in other thread "My priorities on my hackintosh are (1) most bang for the buck and (2) stability / reliability." But I add (3) keep it simple (KISS). For that reason, I will probably do a separate mechanical drive for each OS, maybe a second mechanical for back up for mac or both.

Not to get too far off thread, my goal, in addition to jumping to osX, is to implement EverNote on all machines and get all my blog work, decades of email, megabytes of Ecco Pro outlines, and megabytes of firefox scrapbook data into one EverNote database, easily searched, and available from all my computers - both Win and OsX.