I have two internal drives in my iMac. I'd like to use Boot Camp to make both drives visible (in various sizes and separate partitions of course) to both Mac OS X and Windows 7. Does Boot Camp Assistant support this?
iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
No, not fully or really.
During the install of Windows you have to have do extra work.
Do you want to split an SSD for Mac and Windows? If so, then format the other drive as Windows also and FAT after backing up.
Can you go and unplug the drive you won't be putting Windows on?
Windows will not install if there is a 2nd drive that has GUID partition format.
If you format the second disk with the exFAT filesystem both operating systems can read and write to it. However after looking around, not many people have had success with it contiuning to work for long periods of time; the exFAT format just wasn't made for that use. Here's one forum that talked about this exact issue.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1134183
In my case, I think I'm going to end up simply making four partitions: 2 SSD partitions, one HFS+ and one NTFS, and 2 spinning disk partitions, one HFS+ and one NTFS.
One workround is installing a third party product within your Win7 bootcamp OS that will allow you to read and write on HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) formatted file systems. Then you could simply format your larger second drive as HFS+ and be done. I'm also considering that myself, but will only do so if I run into space issues cause I'm cheap.
I will post back up with my results when I get it finished.
Cheers all
Hi elgwhoppo,
if you want to install the winOS on the 'big' HD then the easy way 'll be to install the MacOS there 1st, then start from that HD in MacOS & use Bootcamp there (since Bootcamp will work only on the same HD you're using it from...)
That would be the easiest way to get it there.
You would have to remember to ALWAYS use the Bootcamp windows when you're running the MacOS on that HD.
(You can start your Mac from the SSD &/or the other HD).
Thanks for the reply Star1. What I said I would do ended up working just fine. I now have 2 disks with 2 partitions each. However, the setup was not exactly as easy as I had hoped.
You might have to add the macbook model into the boot camp wizard config file so that the build bootable USB drive is an option if it’s grey or not appearing. I tried this, and it still wouldn't work.
http://superuser.com/questions/247682/how-can-i-install-a-windows-7-into-bootcam p-via-usb
In the odd case you want to bootcamp with your air AND have 2 drives…this post really helped. VMfusion breathed life into my superdriveless install of win7 x64. It took me a few tries, follow this step to the letter and you should be OK. VMware fusion to the rescue.
http://www.andrewsavory.com/blog/2011/2156
Here's what my drives look like when booted into Windows after all the bootcamp drivers are installed. Hope this helps you.
Boot Camp with multiple drives
