Forums | MacLife

babyfett · 2007-11-13 10:20 pm

Just switched to Mac about a week ago and I LOVE IT! But being a long time PC guy I still have some PC programs I want to hang onto for a while. I figured I'd do Boot Camp for some of the bigger programs and use Parallels with the Boot Camp partition for some of the quick and easy ones like Quicken. Anyway, I installed Boot Camp today, successfully, I think, as a FAT32 so I could read and write on the Windows Partition, but then I was wondering if the fact that I could read and write meant the Mac partition was susceptible to any PC viruses I might pick up either via Boot Camp or Parallels? Should I have done it NTFS or doesn't it matter?

Also, I noticed after the first Mac restart that my system was a tad slower. A second restart fixed that, but is this common, should and can Boot Camp slow me down? And if I use Parallels, once I exit the application will things revert back to full Mac OS?

Thanks and sorry if this has been asked a million times.

Chickenhawk · 2007-11-13 10:27 pm

a windows virus will not run in a UNIX environment.

babyfett · 2007-11-14 12:52 am

Any thoughts on my computer slowing down a bit. Could it be from doing the Boot Camp? Started right after. Actually, weirdly, it's seems only to be happening whenever I log into this forum.

Chickenhawk · 2007-11-14 8:46 am

Boot camp shouldn't be causing you to run slower. I have no idea why your computer is slower now.

btw, I would have used NTFS for the partition, and if I needed to write to the drive, used NTFS3g.

maleko · 2007-11-15 2:16 pm

Sometimes when restarting after using windows, my computer acts funny, clearing the pram always fixes it. To do that you could hold command+option+P+R on startup. See if that fixes the slowness problem.

R1RyGuy · 2007-11-15 2:25 pm

whats teh advantages of NTFS?

Ribtorus · 2007-11-15 4:06 pm

R1RyGuy wrote:
whats teh advantages of NTFS?

Supports larger file sizes than FAT.

Last edited by Ribtorus (2007-11-15 6:51 pm)

Soul_Survivor · 2007-11-15 5:37 pm

I'm a recent Mac convert, and have another idea for you. You could consider a totally different approach.

I bought an Apple Extreme Base Station (AEBS). It offers a USB connection so you can connect a USB drive to it. (Or a USB printer.)

I have an external Western Digital 500 GB hard drive connected to the AEBS.

The hard drive is formatted with Apple's HFS+ file system, but the AEBS handles the "translation."

That means both my new iMac and my PC Notebook can have total read-write access to the USB hard drive connected to the AEBS.

33specter · 2007-11-23 6:39 am

Is it slower when you ARE running Paralells or you are NOT running?

While viruses cannot damage you Mac OS partition they can peacefully reside there. You can get a virus to Mac OS partition and it will do you no harm, unless you somehow exchange data with Windows partition. Then you can lose very valuable data, so be more careful

33specter · 2007-11-23 6:41 am

I formatted my Wiundows partitions in Parallels into Ntfs. Fat-32 is considered to be less safe and doesn't support very big disks

33specter · 2007-11-30 7:25 am

I've got a problem. Tried to move a 6-Gig file to my USB hard disk and it says the drive is full, while there are 180 Gigs free... It is formatted FAT32. Can it be the reason of the problem. I tried to put smaller files there (4 Gigs) and all works perfect...

Chickenhawk · 2007-11-30 8:16 am

33specter wrote:
I've got a problem. Tried to move a 6-Gig file to my USB hard disk and it says the drive is full, while there are 180 Gigs free... It is formatted FAT32. Can it be the reason of the problem. I tried to put smaller files there (4 Gigs) and all works perfect...

I think the max file size for FAT32 is 4 gigs...

Alien · 2007-11-30 9:11 am

Yep.

,xtG
.tsooJ

DizFanatic · 2008-07-29 9:15 am

babyfett wrote:
... And if I use Parallels, once I exit the application will things revert back to full Mac OS?...

I basically have the same question. I recently converted my life to Mac and am still shell shocked from Windows madness. I still need windows for some Windows only apps that I use for work. I would like to use Parallels for the convenience of not rebooting, but will it affect the speed of the Mac while not using a Windows app? If it does, I would rather just stick to Boot Camp.
confused

D'Eyncourt · 2008-07-29 2:46 pm

Chickenhawk wrote:
33specter wrote:
I've got a problem. Tried to move a 6-Gig file to my USB hard disk and it says the drive is full, while there are 180 Gigs free... It is formatted FAT32. Can it be the reason of the problem. I tried to put smaller files there (4 Gigs) and all works perfect...
I think the max file size for FAT32 is 4 gigs...

That, and Windows' brain-dead error reporting which should have been able to say that the problem was the size of the file which 33specter was trying to copy, not that his hard drive was full.

sturner · 2008-07-29 3:50 pm

FAT32 is limited in size. NTFS can use the large HD capcities.

Bat · 2008-07-29 3:54 pm

Guys, that was answered 11/07. There's a new Q here in #14.

ephemeron · 2008-07-29 5:48 pm

DizFanatic wrote:
I basically have the same question. I recently converted my life to Mac and am still shell shocked from Windows madness. I still need windows for some Windows only apps that I use for work. I would like to use Parallels for the convenience of not rebooting, but will it affect the speed of the Mac while not using a Windows app? If it does, I would rather just stick to Boot Camp.

I use VMWare Fusion rather than Parallels, which may change things a bit, but in my experience, having XP running in a virtual machine doesn't have any noticeable effect on OS X performance.

The other caveat (besides the Fusion/Parallels thing) is that I haven't tried running CPU-intensive programs in both OS'es at once -- more things like using Sporttracks while iTunes and Mail are running in OS X, or having a Windows game installer running in the background while I work in Word or Firefox in OS X.

sturner · 2008-07-29 6:18 pm

If you have something like a quad duo, then you will be fine. It evens out even with the small performance hit of not firing on all cyclinders.

DizFanatic · 2008-07-29 6:30 pm

Thanks guys! I'll now clench my teeth and try to get by my Windowphobia and install Parallels. hmm

dvpierce · 2008-07-30 9:31 am

sturner wrote:
If you have something like a quad duo, then you will be fine. It evens out even with the small performance hit of not firing on all cyclinders.

Quad Duo? You need 8 cores to run two OSes?

(I think I dual core will be more than sufficient horsepower.)

Bat · 2008-07-30 9:43 am

"A 4-speed Duo Quad Positraction 409

Giddyup giddyup giddyup OSX

Giddyup OSX, giddyup OSX
Nothin' can catch her, nothin' can touch my 40- er, OSX"

It's the silly season, right?

ephemeron · 2008-07-30 11:43 am

I should have mentioned that my computer is a 2.16 GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro, from right before the switch to Core 2 Duo -- it was the high-end model two years ago and therefore has less horsepower than anything Apple currently sells except the MacBook Air.

dvpierce · 2008-07-30 11:59 am

It's still fine.

sturner · 2008-07-30 12:18 pm

Yeah it will work, the more processors you can assign to both OSes the better they run.

And certainly DV you don't think I'd consider running on less the 4 cylinders?

Varruuuum Varrruuuum!!!!

Forums | MacLife

#1 2007-11-13 10:20 pm

FAT32 or NTFS?

#2 2007-11-13 10:27 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#3 2007-11-14 12:52 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#4 2007-11-14 8:46 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#5 2007-11-15 2:16 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#6 2007-11-15 2:25 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#7 2007-11-15 4:06 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

R1RyGuy wrote:

#8 2007-11-15 5:37 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#9 2007-11-23 6:39 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#10 2007-11-23 6:41 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#11 2007-11-30 7:25 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#12 2007-11-30 8:16 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

33specter wrote:

#13 2007-11-30 9:11 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#14 2008-07-29 9:15 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

babyfett wrote:

#15 2008-07-29 2:46 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

Chickenhawk wrote:

33specter wrote:

#16 2008-07-29 3:50 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#17 2008-07-29 3:54 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#18 2008-07-29 5:48 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

DizFanatic wrote:

#19 2008-07-29 6:18 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#20 2008-07-29 6:30 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#21 2008-07-30 9:31 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

sturner wrote:

#22 2008-07-30 9:43 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#23 2008-07-30 11:43 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#24 2008-07-30 11:59 am

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

#25 2008-07-30 12:18 pm

Re: FAT32 or NTFS?

Board footer