Installing Bootcamp - Which partition to choose

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Level 1

100 points

Installing Bootcamp - Which partition to choose

I'm trying to install Windows XP SP2 via Bootcamp on my new MacBook Pro (Feb 2008 model). I've created the partition okay, but when the machine restarts into the installer I can't determine which partition to install it on.

I've printed out the manual, and on page 9 there is a picture of the install set-up, clearly indicated is a partition marked "C: Partition 3 (BOOTCAMP) etc." however I'm not seeing the word "BOOTCAMP" in Setup and the lines I can see, are confusing with no clear indication which is the BOOTCAMP volume making it hard to determine which partition on which to install.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

MacBook 2.4GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Mar 19, 2008 9:27 PM

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Answer 1

voigtstr

Level 1

29 points

Mar 20, 2008 4:45 AM in response to iSilver

One suggestion I can make coming from a windows and unix background is to make the partitions different sizes, hopefully that way if you've created a 50 gig windows partition, you'll be able to see that partition size in the setup screens. I'm making the wacky assumption here that the bootcamp setup process displays partitions size.

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Answer 2

iSilver Author

Level 1

100 points

Mar 20, 2008 4:49 AM in response to voigtstr

it does show partition sizes, but what seems to me to be the most obvious partition for the windows volume (11GB) is actually shown as being bigger than the OS X partition which is 165GB!!

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Answer 3

voigtstr

Level 1

29 points

Mar 20, 2008 5:26 PM in response to iSilver

I read elsewhere that their is small partition for the boot loader (or whatever apple calls it), then the OS X partition, and the partition for windows is generally last. I'm assuming that Apple displays them in the order they appear on the disk.

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