i think you are becoming a guru, does that scare you?

Well, I updated my page on New Year’s Eve, and the good news is that validator.w3.org thinks it’s real spiffy. Ok, maybe not "spiffy" but "valid" would be a better word for it.  Valid HTML 4.0 Transitional.  I’m proud of this accomplishment because I think it means that I’ve learned something, and I’m not just tossing some things together that I think will work.  The bad news is that "Bobby" still doesn’t like it, and fooling around with this stuff has helped me to procrastinate on submitting final scores for my students.  That’s pretty insignificant bad news, so I’m happy.  Thanks for your advice!

Since I’ve got this unfortunate tendency to live abroad, my dad and I decided to swap computers - my Cube for his Powerbook.  Now, the Powerbook has a 10 GB hard disk.  For a while I’ve sorta coveted the iPod, but it’s a) too expensive b) I’d be afraid to damage or lose it because it’s so expensive c) if I wait longer I’m sure someday it will have more PDA-ish abilities.  So I’ve pretty much decided to buy an external drive, and I’ve pretty much decided which one to buy, although I’m debating between having only Firewire or having Firewire and USB.

So here’s a question for you, or anyone else who has 2 cents: is it possible to partition an external hard drive in various file formats, allowing me to access the Windows-format partition if I hook the drive up to a PC?  My co-workers always seem to want me to help out with computer stuff, so it would be useful if that was possible.  I’ve been looking for an answer to this on the web and I’m almost sure it can be done. However, when I experimented with the Mac OS X Disk Utility and a 128 MB flash card, the only options that were available were Unix and Mac formats.  Yet if I reformat the card without partitions, the Windows format is available.  Hmmm.

And if I could get that to work, would it be possible to use this
and install Windows on the partition, so that I could have a "Windows machine"?

Posted by *amanda* on 3 replies

Comments:

01. Jan 2, 2004 at 01:23pm by Anthony:

It’s definitely possible to create multiple partitions on a Firewire drive through Unix/Linux, so there’s no technological reason it wouldn’t work.  But I don’t know whether the Mac OS in particular will let you do it.  But given that OSX is Unix-based, I think it probably will; at least, it ought to.

However, Bochs is a PC emulator, and it doesn’t need a "Windows" (aka, FAT16/FAT32/NTFS) partition to run on.  According to the FAQ on the Bochs website:

Q: Does bochs use a disk partition to install the OS?

A: No.  You use a disk image file, which is simply a large file, like any other file, on your platform’s disk.

So you don’t actually need a separate partition to run it on.

02. Jan 6, 2004 at 05:18am by *amanda*:

I’ve come to the conclusion that the partitioning can be done, and if Mac OS won’t do it, I can do it with some program in the terminal window.

Is it really true that it is unlikely for a Windows PC to recognize a partition that is in its own format, unless it is the first partition?

I know that Bochs doesn’t *require* a separate partition, but if I used it, and began creating files, and wanted to share the files with my boss’s computer, I might as well.

03. Jan 7, 2004 at 12:29am by Anthony:

> Is it really true that it is unlikely for a Windows PC to
> recognize a partition that is in its own format, unless it
> is the first partition?

I think this is true for ancient versions of Windows (i.e. Windows 95/98, which are 6 or 9 years old, and Windows ME which is basically Win98 with an updated browser).  But modern versions like 2000 and XP should recognize FAT/FAT32/NTFS partitions on a disk even if they aren’t the first partition.  But if you’re talking about *booting* from a partition that isn’t first, that’s another story; I don’t think it will work unless the first partition is unusually tiny.

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