External drive GPT + NTFS ?

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Level 1

127 points

External drive GPT + NTFS ?

I'd like to use GUID partitioning table on usb/esata disk with first half formatted as HFS+ and the other half formatted as NTFS and readable to both Os X and x32 windows xp.
Is this possible?
How?

So far I have managed to partition first half to GPT and formatted that to HFS+.
Then I connected the drive to xp machine and it saw the first half as protected and the second half as free space.
Then I partitioned and formatted that second half to NTFS in xp.
Now Os X does not see the NTFS partition.

How can I tell Os X to check MBR to find this NTFS partition?

2.0MP, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on Jun 7, 2007 5:27 AM

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Answer 1

Toke Lahti Author

Level 1

127 points

Jun 7, 2007 6:26 AM in response to Toke Lahti

I believe that I need "Hybrid GPT/MBR partition table".
Is this done automatically when I partition disc to GPT or how?
I guess I can't use rEFIt with usb drive?
If I use diskutil resizeVolume, does it automatically add info about second partition to MBR?
After that can I just convert the second partition from FAT32 to NTFS in windows?

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Answer 2

Toke Lahti Author

Level 1

127 points

Jun 8, 2007 5:37 AM in response to Toke Lahti

Feels like I'm talking to myself; maybe this is wrong group or something, but if somebody else struggles with same problem in the future, I just leave the solution here:
1) Partition the whole disk with GUID partition table with single partition in JHFS+ format.
2) Use command line command "diskutil resizeVolume" to smaller the JHFS+ partition and to create second fat32 partition. This is probably the only way at this time to create "Hybrid GPT/MBR" disk with NTFS partition readable by Os X.
3) Connect the drive to windows and convert fat32 partition to NTFS with comman line command "convert". If you remove/resize/create partitions in xp, it will just update the MBR and Os X, which reads GPT, does not notice the changes. But with "convert" the partition stays the same, so Os X will see it.

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