mac - Boot Camp: How should I partition for Windows XP, FAT or NTFS?

I've read quite an old article on Ask Dave Taylor (Boot Camp was still beta) and he says to format the Windows XP partition with FAT; Mac OS X can't browse NTFS partitions.

I have a new MacBook Pro (bought Oct 2010) with Snow Leopard. Can I go for NTFS?

Answer

The standard process is to start with a single Mac partition (HFS+ format), then run Boot Camp Assistant. It'll split the drive, and create a FAT32 partition for Windows (which will be converted to NTFS later), and also play some tricks with the disk's partition map to turn it into a hybrid GPT+MBR format (note: this is the reason you should use BCA rather than partitioning it yourself). Then, you boot from the Windows installer disk, have it reformat the FAT partition to NTFS (note: be very careful how you do this, so it doesn't damage the partition map and/or Mac volume -- BCA has instructions, read them) and install Windows. Finally, put in your OS X install disk, and Windows will see it as a driver install disk (incl. a driver to get access to the Mac partition).

Note that Mac OS X can read NTFS, but cannot (by default) write to it; you can change this (see Ryan's answer for instructions), but I've heard of cases where it's corrupted the NTFS volume. Apple leaves this disabled for a reason...