Dual Booting

[daxter000]

Just got a Laptop was thinking about dual booting it. I already have windows 7 Home Edition I wanted to try out Mac OS X. so i started thinking about dual booting the operating systems. the only problem is i DONT want to format and partition my hard drive so i was wondering if theres a way to partition without deleting anything? If it matters heres my specs

Acer Aspire 5551-2036
Windows 7 Home Edition
AMD Athlon X2 Processor P320 (2.1GHZ)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 Graphics 1405MB Hyper Memory
3GB DDR3 Memory
320GB Hard Drive

or if its possible use something like VMWAre to make a virtual OS X. and is it even worth the trouble is Mac a good operating system. Even if i did partition it it'll only be a 40-50 GB partition.

[cOOLsp0T]

bah, i hate Crapple Mac Garbage, but i wanna help u. -.-
First load Acronis Disk Director, you must create a seperate Partition for your Mac OSX otherwise not possible. If you use VMWare you need also a extra partition for your Mac OSX.

Start Acronis and make a partition for your Mac OSX by changing the space of an existing partition.

If you have installed the Mac OSX on this partition, you must start Windows 7.

If you have started it, go to your partition in there is installed Win7. It's necessaray that you have configured Win7 that you can see hidden files and systemfiles. In the root fo your Win7 partition exists a file called "boot.ini" open it with a text editor.

Looks a little bit like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINXP
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINXP="Microso ft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

now you must type in your Mac OSX in the Win7 Bootloader file (boot.ini).

Scenario:
Win7 is installed on Master Harddisk on IDE1 and C:\ is the first partition.
Mac OSX is installed on Slave Harddisk on IDE1 and D:\ is the first partition. The Rootfolder for your MacOSX installtion calls "MACOSX" so it must show like this -> "D:\MACOSX\"

boot.ini must show like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows 7" /noexecute=optin
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\MACOSX="Apple Macintosh OSX"

For more informations:
Microsoft Support Information (KB289022)
Microsoft Support Information (KB314081)

[PSPFreak2007]

All you need to do is use virtualbox which is free and look up about hackintosh I won't tell you anymore.

[Negato]

You don't have to reformat your whole drive to partition. You just have to format the partition you make to the file system you'll be using on the OS you'll be installing on it. So your Windows partition won't be touched. Some partition programs will force you to format the whole drive then partition the way you want the install the way you want. But all the good ones won't. They'll allow you to "shrink" your main partition, and use the freed space for your new one. Personally I'm rather fond of GParted and even the Windows Disk Manager works rather decently.

So if you don't want to install any extra software simply;

1. Right click on "My Computer" from your Windows drive.
2. Click "Manage"
3. Click "Disk Management"
4. Right Click the hard disk you wish to partition.
5. Click "Shrink Volume"
6. Enter the amount of MB you wish the new drive to be. ( For gigabytes just open your calc. and do ( 1024 * xx ).

After that is done you will have 'xx' amount of "Non-Allocated" (black) space. And you are done. Unless you know the file system you want to format onto that space. Otherwise, your OS installer will do that for you.

After that, you will have to fix your Boot Manager, if you boot into windows use a program like EasyBCD, as it makes everything extremely simple. Or do as Coolspot has said if you feel safe editing your own system files. That is at least, if you're booting from windows boot manager and not grub or some other boot partition like mine is set up.

[daxter000]

thanks for all the help. i was able to partition now i have to go and get a mac disc