Guest Post :: Getting the Most Out of Boot Camp

After reading last week's Guest Post by Todd Juneau, Paul Meyerson submitted a comment suggesting some additional ways to get the most out of Boot Camp.  I asked him to expand his thoughts into a Guest Post, which I am now pleased to share with you:

As a Mac consultant in New York City for Templeton & Associates, I have a number of clients around the city that occasionally require Mac-PC interactivity.  If at all possible, we try to keep our users on the Mac side, but occasionally there is an application or two that just need Windows.  For those clients, I had been recommending Parallels, as Todd mentioned, although VM Ware's newest offering, Fusion v. 2.0, has me seriously leaning towards that application.  I've found in personal use that VM Ware is MUCH faster to boot, takes less of the Mac's resources (Parallels can slow the Mac to a crawl while it's trying to load up), and is just more compatible than is Parallels on a wide range of Windows applications.  However, ultimately, both are emulation software, and as a result are much slower than even an entry level PC -- even if that PC was running the languid Vista!  

So, if you're a Mac user and need to run a PC on occasion like a true, fast, serious work PC, your solution should be Boot Camp.   To their credit, Macs are able to read and write PC disks generally "out-of-the-box".  Small devices like flash drives, CDs, and even hard drives less than 32 GB that are formatted for windows are readable -- and writable -- on the Mac natively.  Larger volumes, however, such as any modern hard drive will show up on the Mac desktop as read-only.  This is because on the PC side there are two basic ways to format a hard drive -- FAT32 and NTFS.  FAT32 is an old format, and maxes out at a 32 GB partition.  This was not a big deal when we were talking about Windows 95 and a few much smaller application.  However, when you start installing Windows XP, Service Packs, Office 2007, and all of the typical additions that you need for a viable, and useful, PC partition, 32 GB is downright puny.  

Enter NTFS, a much more modern hard drive format, and one that supports today's massive sized hard drives.  However, NTFS, as mentioned, is natively a read-only format when you're booted from the Mac side, and it's often really useful to be able to copy things between your Mac partition and your PC/Boot Camp partition.  For this, there is a highly useful application by Paragon Software called NTFS for OS X that installs as a simple system preference on the Mac side, and after a simple reboot, all of your previously read-only PC volumes are now read/write.  

What about when you're on the PC side and want to interact with your Mac files?  As Todd mentioned regarding sharing iTunes, there are ways around it, but they're sloppy and inefficient -- at worst copying all the same files to both volumes, and at best using some online substitute like Pandora or streaming radio.  However, with a lovely little application by Mediafour called MacDrive, your Mac volumes become completely read/write on the PC, and you can simply access your iTunes by setting up iTunes on the PC to just add your songs to the library, and not copy them to the PC drive.  One copy of your music and one copy of your data files -- multiple platforms on the same machine.

Stick with Mac if you can, but in a Windows world, these two pieces of software can make your forays onto "The Dark Side" almost seamless.

Paul Meyerson is a Senior Engineer at Templeton & Associates, a New York-based consulting firm that specializes in Macintosh solutions, including building networks, setting up servers, developing custom Filemaker solutions, integrating Macs into PC offices, and many other aspects of the Macintosh world. He has spent more than 10 years consulting to a major NY-based bankruptcy law firm, among many other clients, and helping keep them all ahead of the curve in the technology field by sticking with Macs.

Comments

[Eric Rhodes]

Nice post, I'm going to test out MacDrive with a free trial. I've been doing all of the "sloppy and inefficient" methods to copy audio files back and forth to this point.

[William Jackson]

The most best suggestion I have seen was to install windows in boot camp. Then use that as the image for parallels. That way you only have one windows install and can choose parallels for quick access, or boot camp for full performance when needed. I do not know if VM ware can do the the same thing. I currently use VM ware when I need windows.

[kaylee]

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kaylee