What hard drives are compatible with OSX Snow Leopard Boot Camp?

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What hard drives are compatible with OSX Snow Leopard Boot Camp?

Recently when the video card in my desktop Mac died, I decided to make some upgrades, one of them being the hard drive. After doing some research, I fixed on the Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green 3.5-Inch and had it installed at the same time as the new video card. I installed OS 10.6.8, opened up Boot Camp Assistant, set the partition sizes: 2.5 TB for my Mac side and 500 GB for the Windows. XP wouldn't install so I ordered Windows 7 and began trying to set up the Windows partition. Each time I tried, I got the same error -- Windows 7 couldn't install on the 500 GB partition since it was formatted GPT which was strange since when I looked at the partition inside of Disk Utility, it said NTFS. While troubleshooting, I came across the following:

・Mac users should know that WD's new drives do not support Boot Camp, therefore they cannot be used as a dual-boot hard drive.

・The MBR part of the hybrid partition table cannot work with 3TB hard drives. MBR is limited to 2TB.

・In a 32-bit MBR world, a disk larger than 2TB is probably invalid, and different OS's and tools react wildly differently when this is forced beyond 2TB.

I called Western Digital to confirm which of their drives were in fact compatible with Boot Camp and they replied since Boot Camp was a third-party application, they have no information on compatibility. They told me to call Apple to get the information. Before purchasing a new drive and sending back the 3TB WD, I want to be sure I know which specs to look for in a hard drive in deciding whether it is compatible with my machine. Any helpful advice or a point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Here are the specs for my Mac:

2006 24" iMac 6,1 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

OS 10.6.8

Boot Camp Assistant 3.0.4

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2006 24" 6,1 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2

Posted on Jan 16, 2013 2:04 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 16, 2013 4:42 PM in response to AR-Black

Boot Camp does not require MBR. GPT is the default for OS X on which you would install Boot Camp, and I believe is a requirement for Boot Camp in the first place. The only other option is APM (Apple Partition Map), which was the older partitioning scheme for hard drives in PowerPC Macs, and this is not supported for Boot Camp. The only way to get OS X running on an MBR partition is to hack it.

You cannot have a drive both partitioned with both GPT and MBR. The partition table for the drive is one type, and then any partitions created with it can have various supported filesystems such as NTFS, HFS+, or FAT32. GPT does have a protective MBR partition that Apple exploits for use with Boot Camp (though it is not a true MBR partition), which is likely why Boot Camp is not supported on these drives, but overall the system's SATA controllers should be able to address all blocks of the drive just fine, and you should be able to install Windows directly to the system (bypassing Boot Camp). My guess is this is the reason why Boot Camp will not work.

Message was edited by: Topher Kessler

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Answer 2

Jan 16, 2013 4:43 PM in response to AR-Black

In answer to your question, most hard drives should be perfectly fine to use with your Mac. The latest super-large drives may have some small issue or two with details like Boot Camp, but even with this they should still boot OS X and otherwise work just fine.

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Answer 3

AR-Black Author

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Jan 17, 2013 2:24 PM in response to Topher Kessler

Thanks for responding to my question. I guess I'm not sure I understand your reply though. I had no problem installing OS X on the 3TB WD Caviar Green and WD assured me that if I wanted to install only Windows 7 on it, there would be no compatibility issues. The problem lies with wanting the drive to be dual-bootable I guess via using Boot Camp (I know of no other way to go about it). The tech at OWC (where I bought the drive) said he had never heard of any problems with being able to install both Mac and Windows OS on the drive. In fact, he gave the same reply as yours: most hard drives should be able to work perfectly fine with your Mac. It's just that I can't get XP or Windows 7 (32 bit or 64 bit) to install on the 2nd partition, making the drive I have now not dual-bootable. The tech said 2TB hard drives were different and should solve the problem but when I asked him for any discernible spec I could look for in shopping for a replacement drive, he couldn't give me one, i.e. most drives should be okay. I have paid to have the 3TB installed and will have to pay to get the drive taken out and a replacement put back in -- I want to make sure whatever drive I put in this time allows me to have 2 partitions: one for my Mac OSX system and the other for my Windows enviroment (either XP or Windows 7).

If there is a work-around not involving Boot Camp, please let me know. I thought the reason for using Boot Camp as opposed to Disk Utility to create the dual-bootable drive was the benefit of using Mac drivers on the Windows side.

If there is another way, I don't understand why PC world made this blanket statement:

"Mac users should know that WD's new drives do not support Boot Camp, therefore they cannot be used as a dual-boot hard drive."

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Answer 4

splinke

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Jan 30, 2013 9:44 PM in response to AR-Black

As I understand it, Mac OS X uses a newer hard drive partitioning method called GUID Partition Table (GPT), while Windows has used an older partitioning method that relies on a "Master Boot Record" (MBR) table. Although some very recent versions of Windows support the GPT method, not all do, and Boot Camp on the Mac still only supports MBR. Unfortunately, MBR is limited to a maximum of four partitions and 2.2 TB, which creates havoc with Boot Camp on a Mac with a hard drive larger than that.

There is a post on a site called TwoCanoes.com entitled "Installing Windows via Boot Camp on a large (2.2 TB or larger ) Drive in Lion (10.7) and later". It contains instructions that allegedly work around these limitations by creating an MBR-based Windows partition as the fourth partition that ends within the first 2.2 TB of the hard drive. However, it only describes the process for Mac OS 10.7+, and it is unclear what versions of Windows are compatible. It does not appear that it will work with Mac OS 10.6.

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Answer 5

AR-Black Author

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Jan 31, 2013 10:18 AM in response to splinke

Thanks for the clear explanation. I gave up on the 3TB drive and went with a 2TB after a friend directed me to the following two articles:

http://www.desktopreview.com/default.asp?newsID=1254

http://www.pcworld.com/article/208181/Western_Digital_Announces_2_5_3_Terabyte_H ard_Drives.html

I checked out rEFIt as an alternative to BootCamp but it seemed too difficult a workaround for my purposes.

About which specs to look for, I was informed any drive larger than 2.2 TB is referred to as a hybrid drive which is incompatible with the architecture of my machine and that essentially any drive below that threshold would be fine.

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Answer 6

splinke

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30 points

Jan 31, 2013 10:40 AM in response to AR-Black

The hard drive in my mid-2007 iMac died about a year ago, and I decided to replace it with the biggest drive I could find (a 3-TB HItachi/IBM DeskStar that I was able to pick up for less than $100). Only after I installed it did I discover the Boot Camp limitation. Unfortunately, replacing a hard drive on an iMac is not exactly a straight-forward procedure (the front glass and LCD panel must be removed...and kept dust-free), so I decided to relegate all Windows activity to my Windows laptop rather than digging back into the iMac to swap the drive again.

The TwoCanoes tutorial suggests that I could now make this work. However, it appears the process requires OS X 10.7 or 10.8, and I am sticking with 10.6 due to some important older software that only works with the Rosetta PowerPC translator that was dropped for 10.7. Also, the version of Windows I have for Boot Camp is 32-bit Vista (rather than 64-bit Windows 7), which probably adds another layer of complexity. I suppose this is all planned obsolesence to some extent--forcing me to keep paying for more "upgrades."

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