vmware fusion, parallels, bootcamp - which one?

[nervegrind3r]

hey all. need some advice from the mac elite.

I just got my macbook, and popped in my 200gb 7200 seagate badboy. I initially set up 3 partitions, 1 for osx, 1 for windows, and 1 as file storage or future linux parition. Bad news for me though, bootcamp will only work with the main partition. In other words, I can only have 2 partitions max on my system, which is a huge downer. Is there a way around this?

now, I heard of vmware fusion and paralles to run windows through OSX. As far as I know, these programs just run virtual machines in OSX like I run XP through a virtual machine on my vista system.

My issue is that I dont want/need to run virtual machines; I want to boot from startup into windows or osx like with bootcamp, not necessarily run the os within another os.

So, is there a way to have a minimum of 3 partitions, and boot directly into the OS I want to use with any of these 3 programs? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[mshan]

VMWare Fusion is supposed to be a lot more stable than Parallels, though I've read people say Parallels seems more Mac like in it's interface.

You can use VMWare Fusion to create a virtual machine of a Boot Camp Windows partition.

If you only need Windows for occasional WMV stuff that doesn't play back natively in Mac OS X, I just use Flip for Mac and punted VM Ware Fusion completely.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Would you be able to play Warcraft 3 using Parallels or Fusion at a decent fps?

 

[mshan]

I am just an user of Mac OS X that is slowly transitioning everything I can away from Windows.

Mac experts in the forum will hopefully chime in and give you more definitive answers.

I would say install Windows using Boot Camp, then create a Virtual Machine of that boot camp partition using VM Ware Fusion, and see what you think.

I think you can even download a trial version of VM Ware Fusion from the website for a free test drive.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: nervegrind3r
hey all. need some advice from the mac elite.

I just got my macbook, and popped in my 200gb 7200 seagate badboy. I initially set up 3 partitions, 1 for osx, 1 for windows, and 1 as file storage or future linux parition. Bad news for me though, bootcamp will only work with the main partition. In other words, I can only have 2 partitions max on my system, which is a huge downer. Is there a way around this?

now, I heard of vmware fusion and paralles to run windows through OSX. As far as I know, these programs just run virtual machines in OSX like I run XP through a virtual machine on my vista system.

My issue is that I dont want/need to run virtual machines; I want to boot from startup into windows or osx like with bootcamp, not necessarily run the os within another os.

So, is there a way to have a minimum of 3 partitions, and boot directly into the OS I want to use with any of these 3 programs? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

none of the virtualization programs will do what you want.. as they don't mess w/ booting. They strictly allow the USE of a bootcamped partition as a VM (which IMO is too slow vs a normal VM, at least w/ parallels).

I have no idea if there's a way around bootcamp's 2 partition limit... but what about using it to boot to linux, and then using a linux boot loader to pick between linux and xp? would that even work...

 

[TheStu]

Since BootCamp Assistant will partition for you (and it might do other things with the EFI) then all you need to do is restore your drive to a single partition (easy and non-destructive in Leopard's Disk Utility), then using the BootCamp Assistant break off a partition large enough for both Windows and Storage.

Put your Windows disk in and use it to partition that into 2 smaller one. For whatever reason, there is a 4 active partition per drive limit. I do not know if that is an OS X limitation, or an EFI limitation. That is why you can only at best, triple boot (which I did for a while). The EFI takes up 1 partition, roughly 250MB in size (active), OS X takes another (active), Windows would take a third (active) and another OS could take the fourth.

 

[nervegrind3r]

Originally posted by: TheStu

Put your Windows disk in and use it to partition that into 2 smaller one. For whatever reason, there is a 4 active partition per drive limit. I do not know if that is an OS X limitation, or an EFI limitation. That is why you can only at best, triple boot (which I did for a while). The EFI takes up 1 partition, roughly 250MB in size (active), OS X takes another (active), Windows would take a third (active) and another OS could take the fourth.

I'll give this a try, thanks. The one other thing I had a problem with is using hirens bootdisc. I like to make images once I install the OS so I can quickly restore, and using ccc for the osx partition was easy, but I could not boot from hirens into acronis to make a disk image of the windows partition. Any experience with that by chance? I'll mess around with this over the weekend again. Thanks

 

[TheStu]

Well, I have never had much luck with imaging Windows easily. I mean Carbon Copy Cloner is great and it makes a nice, simple, bootable copy of your entire drive, or a partition thereof, and on top of that you can also dictate what it backs up.

I have yet to find any solution for WinXP that does the same thing. I tried Acronis, but it has weird limitations (trying to clone a 30GB partition to a 160GB drive, it wouldn't do it because the 30GB partition was on a 250GB hard drive, which is larger than 160 obviously) And I found another cloner as well that seemed to work, but it had trouble rewriting the data. It would clone it, and you could boot from it, but it wouldn't write it back... kind of annoying.

With Windows my usual approach is to partition the drive down and give Windows maybe 20-30GB. Then I store all my things on another partition and use nLite to create a slipstream disc so I can quickly reinstall and it will have everything done for me.

 

[mshan]

What do you think of Super Duper vs. Carbon Copy Cloner?

 

[Tyranicus]

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
Would you be able to play Warcraft 3 using Parallels or Fusion at a decent fps?

Why would you need to? Warcraft 3 is OS X native.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: mshan
What do you think of Super Duper vs. Carbon Copy Cloner?

If you are just in it for the cloning, I prefer Carbon Copy Cloner, it seems more straightforward to me. However, if you want regular incremental backups made to your clone, then you need the for-pay version of SuperDuper!

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
Would you be able to play Warcraft 3 using Parallels or Fusion at a decent fps?

Fusion 2 will have decent 3D acceleration hopefully: DX9 w/ shader support.

 

[aphex]

Parallels worked great for me, until Leopard. Now its a steaming pile of dog doo.

Switched to VMWare and have been MUCH happier.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: aphex
Parallels worked great for me, until Leopard. Now its a steaming pile of dog doo.

Switched to VMWare and have been MUCH happier.

parallels 3 work? or were you still using 2.5?

I'm trying to use vmware, but it does not like my film scanner. I've been giving virtualbox a run, and it's pretty fucking nice given it's FREE. Unfortunately, still can't give it it's own network card.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Originally posted by: manly

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
Would you be able to play Warcraft 3 using Parallels or Fusion at a decent fps?

Fusion 2 will have decent 3D acceleration hopefully: DX9 w/ shader support.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Are you able to "alt-tab" between Warcraft 3 and say Adium?

 

[Parasitic]

Parallels still doesnt have DirectX working properly. I have to play FF7 under software rendering mode still or else there's a ton of graphical glitches and random crashes.

 

[dirtboy]

Parallels 3 works just fine for me. I haven't had one issue with it.

 

[nervegrind3r]

well, I installed XP again, but could not format more than one partition through windows, not even using Acronis (acronis just sees one volume it doesnt like). I read something about using Bart PE that I have to investigate to make backups possibly. Its a shame because parallels and vmware (I tried both) dont allow me to reboot into windows, I can only run them as virtual machines, which I dont want to do. Bootcamp is my only option, and im stuck with no windows backup so far :\

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: nervegrind3r
well, I installed XP again, but could not format more than one partition through windows, not even using Acronis (acronis just sees one volume it doesnt like). I read something about using Bart PE that I have to investigate to make backups possibly. Its a shame because parallels and vmware (I tried both) dont allow me to reboot into windows, I can only run them as virtual machines, which I dont want to do. Bootcamp is my only option, and im stuck with no windows backup so far :\

You can hook up your VM to bare metal iirc. I remember reading something about setting up the VM to read from a Boot Camp partition.

Also, once you get your Boot Camp setup, just use WinClone to back it up right from Leopard:

http://twocanoes.com/winclone/

Also, I am also a fan of VMware. Parallels was great, but their v3 has caused me too many problems. VMware OTOH has been flawless. I'm very happy with VMware, plus it feels faster than Parallels.

 

[nervegrind3r]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: nervegrind3r
well, I installed XP again, but could not format more than one partition through windows, not even using Acronis (acronis just sees one volume it doesnt like). I read something about using Bart PE that I have to investigate to make backups possibly. Its a shame because parallels and vmware (I tried both) dont allow me to reboot into windows, I can only run them as virtual machines, which I dont want to do. Bootcamp is my only option, and im stuck with no windows backup so far :\

You can hook up your VM to bare metal iirc. I remember reading something about setting up the VM to read from a Boot Camp partition.

Also, once you get your Boot Camp setup, just use WinClone to back it up right from Leopard:

http://twocanoes.com/winclone/

Also, I am also a fan of VMware. Parallels was great, but their v3 has caused me too many problems. VMware OTOH has been flawless. I'm very happy with VMware, plus it feels faster than Parallels.

This is exactly the program I needed, but the shit dont work for me

I blew my bootcamp partition using the bootcamp utility. Then I created a new bootcamp partition using half the size of the hard drive (~93gb), and then quit the installer. Then, I ran winclone, did a restore, chose the image file, selected the bootcamp partition, but when I click restore, I get an error message similar to "the image size is too large! The image is 1.020343024230+ 11 bytes and the partition is 6.234324342 + 9bytes". wtf does that mean? My xp image file is about 2gb. I tried resizing the bootcamp partition to 5gb, 32gb, and 93gb, same type of error each time I do a restore. I also get an error each time I try to expand or shrink the bootcamp partition.


im going try netrestore and ccc from bombich when I get home later. Thanks for the pointing me in the right direction though.

 

[sourceninja]

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy

Originally posted by: manly

Originally posted by: ChAoTiCpInOy
Would you be able to play Warcraft 3 using Parallels or Fusion at a decent fps?

Fusion 2 will have decent 3D acceleration hopefully: DX9 w/ shader support.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Are you able to "alt-tab" between Warcraft 3 and say Adium?

Command-M to switch from fullscreen to windowed view.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: nervegrind3r

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: nervegrind3r
well, I installed XP again, but could not format more than one partition through windows, not even using Acronis (acronis just sees one volume it doesnt like). I read something about using Bart PE that I have to investigate to make backups possibly. Its a shame because parallels and vmware (I tried both) dont allow me to reboot into windows, I can only run them as virtual machines, which I dont want to do. Bootcamp is my only option, and im stuck with no windows backup so far :\

You can hook up your VM to bare metal iirc. I remember reading something about setting up the VM to read from a Boot Camp partition.

Also, once you get your Boot Camp setup, just use WinClone to back it up right from Leopard:

http://twocanoes.com/winclone/

Also, I am also a fan of VMware. Parallels was great, but their v3 has caused me too many problems. VMware OTOH has been flawless. I'm very happy with VMware, plus it feels faster than Parallels.

This is exactly the program I needed, but the shit dont work for me

I blew my bootcamp partition using the bootcamp utility. Then I created a new bootcamp partition using half the size of the hard drive (~93gb), and then quit the installer. Then, I ran winclone, did a restore, chose the image file, selected the bootcamp partition, but when I click restore, I get an error message similar to "the image size is too large! The image is 1.020343024230+ 11 bytes and the partition is 6.234324342 + 9bytes". wtf does that mean? My xp image file is about 2gb. I tried resizing the bootcamp partition to 5gb, 32gb, and 93gb, same type of error each time I do a restore. I also get an error each time I try to expand or shrink the bootcamp partition.


im going try netrestore and ccc from bombich when I get home later. Thanks for the pointing me in the right direction though.

I have an old tutorial over here that should work for you, it's from the pre-Hackintosh days:

http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=2745