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General discussion

Successful setup: OS X Lion + Bootcamp Win7 + Data Partition

Aug 27, 2011 9:38PM PDT

Successful setup of OS X Lion + Bootcamp Windows 7 Ult + Data Partition

After many, many hours I think I've finally figured out how to successfully install Mac OS X Lion with Windows 7 on a Bootcamp partition AND an 3rd data partition.

Here is a screenshot of my setup on my 13" MacBook Pro: <Disk Utility screenshot><https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-bk-rxKMuO5s/Tloi1AyFemI/AAAAAAAAFAA/IJdrs7HAv3s/s800/disk_util_screenshot.png>

As you can see, I have my internal 500GB hard drive partitioned the following way:
120GB - OS X Lion (system and apps)
316GB - workspace partition (user files, projects)
64GB - Bootcamp Windows 7 Ultimate

To make this work, I started with the standard procedure of installing OS X Lion on a single Mac OS Ext partition and using Bootcamp Assistant to build the Bootcamp partition for Windows.

Then I did 2 key things:

1. Before installing Windows on the Bootcamp partition, I first went back to Disk Utility, shrunk the OS X Lion partition, and inserted a 3rd partition Workspace_HD for all my user files. Then I restarted and installed Windows 7.

2. After Win 7 Ultimate, the Bootcamp drivers and Office 2010 were installed and activated, I DID NOT make any changes to any partitions. I can put whatever I want on any partition, but I CAN NOT shrink, resize, delete, create, or modify any partition. Any change to the partition tables after Windows is installed will BREAK the Bootcamp partition.

I went thru 3 broken installs of Bootcamp/Win7 to figure this out.

Again, the key to this working is creating your extra partitions AFTER you make the Bootcamp partition but BEFORE you install Windows.

I will rebuild my system for a 5th time to fully document the process with screenshots, but this time with 5 partitions: OS X Lion startup, Workspace, custom 20GB OS X Lion recovery partition, 30GB FAT32 shared Mac/Win data partition, and a Bootcamp partition with Windows 7 Ultimate.

Until then, I hope this works for you!! Good Luck!! Wink

Discussion is locked

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Seems like an awful lot of sugar for a nickel,
Aug 27, 2011 11:41PM PDT

I've read this a couple of times but still do not see the advantage of what you accomplished on such a small drive.

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Reply
May 23, 2012 9:25PM PDT

To basically with what you have done, you made a dual bootable Mac with the original OS X with Windows 7 installed on BootCamp, and have the data partition (that is formatted to FAT32 right?) that is accessible to Both of the installed OSs? If thats the case then you have done exactly what I intended to do Grin