Partitioning a Windows Drive

[DudeNamedDave]

Hello guys.
I kinda feel dump asking this but I simply can't figure that out.
So I have a 1.5 GB HDD of which I want to use 500 GB for ML. The other Terrabyte is for Windows files (not the OS!). Now in the installation menu I can only format the entire HD which will delete all my files.
Can't I make a 500 gb mac partition and leave the other terrabyte where it is? Or do I really have to format the whole HDD?

Thanks for your help

 

[SD456]

Same problem.

...Can't I make a 500 gb mac partition and leave the other terrabyte where it is? Or do I really have to format the whole HDD?...

I have this problem too!

I have a 250GB HDD with 3 partitions on it, and I don't want to format the entire HDD, just one partition for Mountain Lion. Can I do that ?

Thanks for the answers in advance!

 

[Khaibit]

The answer to both of your questions is yes, you will have to re-partition the entire drive, and using the Apple Disk Utility at that. The reason being, the drive you boot OS X from must be partitioned GUID; windows drives are not (they use MBR). So, what you need to do is:

1.) Using your favorite Windows imaging/backup utility (I don't really use Windows much so I don't know what the good ones are, but I'm sure there are some, Norton Ghost and the like?), make a full backup of your Windows data. Test it afterwards to make sure it worked, you don't want to lose data!

2.) Use your UniBeast-prepared OS X installation USB drive to boot the system, and once the installer loads and you select the language you want to use, go to the Utilities menu at the top of the screen and open Disk Utility. You can use this to re-partition your drive, make sure that "GUID" is the partition table type selected in Options (and that your Mac partition is the first one to reduce the risk of some odd errors happening), and that the partition for your Mac installation is "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".

3.) Install OS X to that partition

4.) Restore your Windows data to the other partition; you will probably need to use a Windows-based utility to properly format that partition as NTFS.

 

[SD456]

Thanks for the answer!

That's what I don't wanted to do, but if there is no other way to do this, I will do a backup, then format my drive.
Now I need some free space...