I have an external hard drive with a bootable HFS+ partition on it. I have unallocated space on this drive that I want to create a new exFAT partition on, so that my entire family's computers, both Macs and PCs, can use the new partition. I still want to be able to boot into the HFS+ partition from a Mac. I can only find sparse and/or conflicting information on this. On the one hand, I am reading about people not being able to access the exFAT partition from a PC unless the partition is actually created using Disk Management on a PC. On the other hand, when I try this on a Win7 system, I get a warning saying that the operation I selected will convert the basic disk to a dynamic disk, and I won't be able to start installed operating systems from any volume on the disk.
How can I create an exFAT partition on my external disk that is readable by both WinXP (SP3), Win7 and Mac, without losing the ability to boot from the existing HFS+ partition?
Answer
XP? Sorry, but you can't get there from here. Intel based Macs boot from GPT partitioned hard drives, and Windows XP can't read GPT discs at all without a third party driver, if one exists.
If you create the partition on your Mac, Vista and 7 should see it, I would think, unless Apple is doing something wrong with the partition table.
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