help Creating a Windows Partition

Hey there,
Are there two separate drive icons? If there are you can choose the second one and go with "Erase disk and create a single partition for Windows." This is assuming that there is no important data located on Bay 2. The Setup Assistant will allow you to partition drives, or to install Microsoft Windows on an entire drive if it does not contain Mac OS X according to the Apple document below.

In the end if you still aren't on which one to go with, just choose the partition option or backup all your data with Time Machine or SuperDuper and choose "Erase disk and create a single partition for Windows."
Hope this helps.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1656

B-rock

You might even pull your OS X drive while you install Vista.

If you format the drive in Disk Utility as Master Boot Record, you don't even really need to then do anything with Boot Camp Assistant - and when you get to the point of selecting the partition in Vista, you'll need to delete the FAT partition and create one (or more) NTFS.

Well, Boot Camp Assistant isn't very nice to us with Mac Pro.

And if you aren't good now, by the time you've learned to install and use Windows, you will get a good education!

Read the pdf guide and more in Boot Camp Assistant and support, and avail yourself of the Help menu in that and other programs.

http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/

Your support person you spoke with wasn't thinking multi drive, only the single internal hard drive configuration.

Boot Camp Assistant will actually ONLY use the entire drive. So some people put a small OS X partition on it to force it in two.

I would play around, practice. But if you get familiar - can't hurt and always only helps - Disk Utility => Partition tab => Options.... (bottom of screen) and change it from default "GUID" to Windows Boot Record. Create MSDOS (FAT32).

Vista will install just fine, and gives you the option to format / delete and create - but if it is on its own drive it usually complains about "GPT" due to the presence of OS X drive. That is easier to do than describe / explain. There is an Apple and MS tech note though.

I like the OS to be on the outer tracks, higher performance. The idea of putting an OS on the 'backend' where I/O is the slowest is just.... sluggishly slow and I'd never want or put OS X there for regular use.

Also, once you have Vista, it is a lot easier to install a 2nd system, like "7" on another drive or partition; rather than boot and run from DVD, copy DVD easily to disk and it is lightning fast. Down the road.

You should be able to just boot from Vista even without doing anything, just remove OS X, treat it like a PC, and install. Works best if the drive is raw and was never formatted in OS X even.

200MB - that is real tiny hidden "EFI" used by Mac OS
128MB - another tiny hidden and part of GPT (GUID)

You didn't pull OS X drive but you have two 640GB drives (they format to 599GB usable space).

Boot Camp Assistant "should" have left BOOTCAMP and FAT format on Disk 1, if you have Disk 0 in bay 0 with OS X.

2+ yrs ago, I felt lost, too, and my first venture into Windowsland, and felt lost (I got Vista RC for $5 because OS X and my DSL couldn't handle 4GB file and I had never used and I doubt it was on torrents).

Correct. Of course you made a backup of OS X with SuperDuper just in case, which is step #0 in all such things, right? 🙂

And "wrong" just means it was a dry run or "blew it" and failure is such a hard teacher, but good one too.

I would have partitioned the drive, leave some space for other things. You can shrink the partition to do so. Maybe setup data partition, scratch, a place for Windows 7. The trouble with Windows MBR partition table is it only allows for 4 primary partitions, so just keep that in mind. (I use four drives actually, data plus some storage volumes, backup drive, primary Windows 7, and one drive with test versions of Vista and Windows.)