New installation/dual boot advice sought

[Bunford]

New user looking for some specific installation/dual boot advice

I have a pretty clean and fluid system at the moment running Windows 10 Pro. I use it primarily for day-tio-day general use and for music production and sound design. However, I use to own a MacBook and bought Logic Pro X and miss it. Therefore, I'm hoping to be able to install OSX on a spare 600GB internal drive within my custom built PC.

However, I have a few concerns to address first and hoping I can get some answers here:

1. Is there a clean way to install OSX on an internal drive without risking/messing up my Windows 10 install (though I do accept there is inherently 'some' risk with these kind of things)?

2. I have a few other internal and external drives that have sample libraries sitting on them. These are in NTFS format, by default on Windows. Will these be usable in OSX environment without having to try and empty the drives, reformat as exFAT and then reinstall the sample libraries on them? That is, can OSX play nice with NTFS yet?

3. My system is compatible I am hoping and grateful if anyone could comment :

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K
RAM: 32GB DDR3 Crucial Ballistix
GPU: Gigabyte NVidia GTX 660 Ti OC
Mobo: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H
Case: Fractal Design R3
PCI: Internal PCI USB 5 port card

Cheers all!

 

[Bunford]

Anybody able to answer any of these as I am hoping to do the install today or in the next day or two if feasible.....thanks!

 

[trs96]

I have a pretty clean and fluid system at the moment running Windows 10 Pro. I use it primarily for day-tio-day general use and for music production and sound design. However, I use to own a MacBook and bought Logic Pro X and miss it. Therefore, I'm hoping to be able to install OSX on a spare 600GB internal drive within my custom built PC.

However, I have a few concerns to address first and hoping I can get some answers here:

1. Is there a clean way to install OSX on an internal drive without risking/messing up my Windows 10 install (though I do accept there is inherently 'some' risk with these kind of things)?

2. I have a few other internal and external drives that have sample libraries sitting on them. These are in NTFS format, by default on Windows. Will these be usable in OSX environment without having to try and empty the drives, reformat as exFAT and then reinstall the sample libraries on them? That is, can OSX play nice with NTFS yet?

3. My system is compatible I am hoping and grateful if anyone could comment :

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K
RAM: 32GB DDR3 Crucial Ballistix
GPU: Gigabyte NVidia GTX 660 Ti OC
Mobo: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H
Case: Fractal Design R3
PCI: Internal PCI USB 5 port card

Cheers all!

Nearly all of your hardware is perfectly compatible with OS X. I'm not sure which PCI USB card you've got but you can research that. As GB mentions you have mixed SB cpu with an Ivy Br. motherboard.

When you want to install OS X just unplug the sata cable to your Windows 10 drive, that way you
won't mistakenly overwrite anything. You can still see NTFS files on your other drives, just can't
write to them. To do that you'll need something like Paragon NTFS. https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

 

[Going Bald]

If you connect your new OS X-to-be drive and disconnect all of the other drives, you can install OS X without possibility of corrupting your other data/Windows OS.

You have a mis-match Sandy Bridge CPU/Ivy Bridge mainboard that may cause you problems with OS X.
Did you install Windows UEFI or Legacy mode? If Legacy mode, then you might not be able to use the Clover boot loader to boot it.

OS X can read NTFS, but can not write to it, so sharing NTFS drives without third party software like Paragon is not possible, but these 3rd party apps may corrupt your drive - this has happened.
ExFat is very unforgiving of disk read/write errors and IMHO is not a good storage format to use. If your files are smaller than 4Gb and your drive is smaller than 2TB, use MSDOS FAT (FAT32) format on the storage drives.

 

[Bunford]

Cheers. Some files are larger than 4GB and the drive is a 5TB drive so looks like the choice is exFAT or NTFS with Paragon. Which is the lesser of the two evils?

And Windows was installed UEFI I believe. How can I check? I did a clean install of Windows 8.1 Pro and then upgraded to Windows 10 Pro fairly recently.

 

[ammulder]

The big list of solutions has a bit about checking/changing your Windows install mode.