Trading Files Between Boot Camp and Macintosh

After saving a certain Tipper's computer hard drive from (scary music please) certain death. I came up with this great tip.

Do you need to move filed between the Boot Camp side of your computer and your Macintosh side? This tip is not for the faint of heart. Sick of using dumb things like thumb drives? Here is your tip of the month:

You need an Intel Macintosh, an external drive, Boot Camp (already installed), a windows formatting utility (came with the drive).

First, you need an external drive. I happen to have a 120 GB Western Digital sitting around. I also just so happen to have an extra external case sitting around.

Step Two:
After your external drive is hooked up make sure there is no data on there. I mean it . . . no data.

Step Three:
Restart and hold down the option key and go into Boot Camp (windows).

Step Four:
Plug your nose as you enter into Microsoft land.

Step Five:
Go though all the warnings and comments from Microsoft.

Step Six:
Insert your CD (or download using Firefox) your formatting software.

Step Seven:
You need to be able to do a custom partitioning of the hard drive.

Step Eight:
Make your windows partition as large as you want. I used 20 GB. Use FAT32 formatting for the drive. Do not use Fat 16 or your files will be huge. Do not use NTFS (you cannot write to that in Macintosh Land).

Step Nine:
Set the next partition to Free Space. If that is not possible use anything. It really does not matter.

Step Ten:
Restart and boot into happy Macintosh Land. You can breath now.

Step Eleven:
Go to your Utilities folder in your Applications folder. And double click (or launch) Disk Utility.



Step Twelve:
Go to the correct drive. Not the name of the partition but the drive. In my case it is called: 111.8 GB WDC WD12 00JB-OOEVA Media

Step Thirteen:
Click on the Partition tab. Change the Free Space to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) a Journaled drive is optional. You can use non-Jounraled.

Step Fourteen:
Click Partition and Wait.

Step Fifteen:
Quit Disk Utility and go and enjoy the drive. Only the FAT32 will be seen in Windows. However, both are seen in happy Macintosh Land.


Have a great day.

MacIke