Windows on Mac Compatibility (Parallels?)

[Kanti13]

I just got a MacBook Pro (running Lion) and I am extremely new to it (never even used one before). I have a ton of questions, but I'll keep this about running windows and compatibility issues.
I also have a new external HD from Apple, and 2 old ones that I've been using with my PC. I don't know if I should be reformatting something…

I have a new version of Windows 7 that I want to use. I would rather not partition the hard drive and only be able to boot into OS at a time. I've read about Parallels Desktop for Mac. It sounds good to me, but idk what I'm doing so I would really appreciate some feedback if anyone knows about it. (I have no problem with the price! I don't need freeware).

Some things I'm wondering:
Will I have full access to my NTFS formatted drives using Windows with parallel?
Can I have access to both my old NTFS HDs and my new "Promise Pegasus R4 RAID system" external HD? (it uses thunderbolt, or whatever thunderbolt does, in case that's important.)
From what I've read, I get the impression that trying to reformat my Apple HDs can cause serious harm. Should I reformat any old HD that I want to use into HFS+ Journaled? The only thing I've ever used is PC and stuff that's made for it so I have no experience with file systems and don't know much about them.

I have read about Paragon (NTFS for Mac). Does anyone know if that would help improve compatibility and would it in any way HURT my computer?

I want to be able to pre-process my footage using avisynth under windows, save the files to my external drive and then use them in my adobe applications which I bought for Mac OS. Post-processing/compression will also be in Windows probably so I really need it to work both ways.

Thanks so much in advance for any advice!!!

Specs:
2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
8GB RAM
500GB Solid State Drive

*Tell me if this topic is too long and I'll split it into two*

[LantisEscudo]

Last I checked, Mac OS had read-only access to NTFS drives by default. You can get full access by buying and installing either Paragon or TuxEra, or by installing OSXFUSE and NTFS-3g. The last option is still in beta for Lion as far as I know, and may take compiling things on your own for some parts.

Current Seagate GoFlex drives ship with a copy of Paragon that only works with Seagate drives, so if you have one of those, you can give it a try that way.

Another option would be formatting the drives to exFAT, which both Windows 7 and OS X handle natively. Remember, though, when you reformat the drives, you'll lose any data currently on them, so if you want to keep the data, copy it off first, then format, then copy the data back.

If you want to read your drives on Windows, you should be using either NTFS or exFAT, because Windows won't read HFS+ drives without an additional driver. A Boot Camped install of Windows includes this driver, IIRC, but a virtual machine installation like Parallels won't. I also have a personal preference for HFS+ (non-journaled) for external drives, because it's slightly faster at writes, but that's your choice.

Parallels is an option for running Windows, but like any virtual machine option (VMWare, VirtualBox, Parallels, etc.), it's going to be significantly slower than running it natively on the hardware. For processing video, you're probably better off partitioning and using Boot Camp.

If you're going to rip/preprocess on Windows, edit on OS X, and compress back on Windows, you'll need to choose codecs that are available on both Windows and OS X. My first suggestion would be to install Perian, which expands your options tremendously.

Uncompressed RGB is your most compatible, but the files will be absolutely MASSIVE
HuffYUV works on both (once you have Perian installed)
Lagarith may work on both, if Perian has been updated to include it (I haven't checked and don't use Lags)
UTVideo is the newest option, as of version 10.0.0. You'll have to install the package from here (page in Japanese). It also currently only decodes to RGB, so be aware of how many colorspace conversions you'll be introducing if you use this.

My personal preference is HuffYUV, because that was the only reasonable option when I was using that workflow.

[Kanti13]

Thank you so much for the response!
None of the Mac users I know deal with external storage, so the advice I got was just what worked for them, not really relevant. Then all the contradictory stuff online is pretty confusing for a noob >_<

So if I understand correctly, with boot camp then I'll be able to read/write to my HFS+ external from both operating systems? And in that case there wouldn't be any need to reformat to exFAT would there? If I wanted to use one of my old externals I could move everything off it and then format it to HFS+.

And if I went with a virtual machine I should reformat everything to exFAT including the internal SSD? and if so, would that erase everything that came installed on the Mac?

I've installed Perian already and I tried to play a couple clips (just with quicktime cuz I haven't installed my software yet). Lagarith didn't play but huffyuv looked good so that's what I plan to use from now on. I figure if there's a problem with .avi I'll use one of the programs recommended in Kionon's sticky (assuming they're still available and work with lion) to change the container to .mov

This is kind of a side question, but do you know if, in the boot camp scenario, I could have both an HFS+ external and a NTFS external plugged in and be able to use both of them at least from the Windows partition? I do a lot of writing and I have an extensive archive of word documents that I need access to (one major reason for real windows and not just simulation.) And it sounds like by installing Paragon even Mac could fully access the NTFS (though I don't know if I would need it to).

I'm thinking now that bootcamp is my most likely path. I wanted windows in the case I want to access or run something that absolutely wouldn't work with Mac. But hopefully I can switch to as many Mac native alternatives as possible over time. I don't want to give up anything in the AMVapp at the moment though.

[LantisEscudo]

So if I understand correctly, with boot camp then I'll be able to read/write to my HFS+ external from both operating systems? And in that case there wouldn't be any need to reformat to exFAT would there? If I wanted to use one of my old externals I could move everything off it and then format it to HFS+.

I did some more research, and unfortunately, the HFS+ driver that Boot Camp installs for Windows is a Read-only driver. Paragon also makes an HFS+ driver for Windows ($20), though. You're probably better off using exFAT.

And if I went with a virtual machine I should reformat everything to exFAT including the internal SSD? and if so, would that erase everything that came installed on the Mac?

If you go with a virtual machine, you should format your externals with exFAT, but not the internal SSD. You won't be able to access your internal SSD from the VM (unless you set up something like a bridged network; that'll be in the documentation for whatever VM software you choose), but you should be able to use your externals without many issues.

This is kind of a side question, but do you know if, in the boot camp scenario, I could have both an HFS+ external and a NTFS external plugged in and be able to use both of them at least from the Windows partition? I do a lot of writing and I have an extensive archive of word documents that I need access to (one major reason for real windows and not just simulation.) And it sounds like by installing Paragon even Mac could fully access the NTFS (though I don't know if I would need it to).

That shouldn't be any problem, though the HFS+ drive would be read-only. I have drives with several different filesystems plugged into my Windows machine all the time. I do the same thing with my Mac frequently, though mine is Snow Leopard, not Lion. And there is a Mac edition of Office if you really need to edit Word documents on OS X.

[Kanti13]

Thanks.
I thought that Paragon HFS+ driver would be a decent, and simple, fix. But after extensive googling and reading through a bunch of forums I came across too many horror stories without solutions. And also read this about their tech support:

Thanks for the reply. However...
The link you provided is not working.
The knowledge base link on the Paragon site is also not working.
The community forum link comes back here.
The support services link states that complimentary support is free for 30 days after purchase and is then $99.95 per incident.

After getting some more advice I decided that I want to wipe my pc, do a clean install and then set up a network to write to the external (since it uses thunderbolt cables and can't plug into the pc). Seems like a simple fix while I slowly wean myself off of windows with mac alternatives. And I won't break my new comp -__-
I think your WIP tutorial will be very helpful
I've got a lot of learning to do.

I can't do anything atm cuz there's a networking glitch with Lion tho...
I'll try to start learning how to do this all on Mac, although there seem to be a lot of bugs getting in the way. And I get the impression that this is typical with Apple???
I hope they don't take to long to fix it up.

Thanks for your help!

[Mister Hatt]

I kinda skimmed over this entire thread but given my current encoding environment is built on parallels, I suppose I could comment. What I've been doing is running a tightly tuned Windows XP 32bit install in an 8GB parallels container in coherence mode. My documents/home/whatever dir in Windows is actually in OSX and mapped via network (in Windows) so as long as I use relative paths I can edit crap in OSX and use it in Windows. Same goes for saving lossless etc so I don't eat my HDD space in Windows. Can access the Windows HDD in OSX at /Volumes/C or ~/Documents/Parallels/Windows XP.pvm/Windows Disks/C (they're symlinks) so that's not an issue. Only problem I've run into is the amount of RAM I give to Windows but that's kinda limited by \macbookair/ and the fact that my font collection is filling the HDD rapidly even when I just copy what I need over.

Either way, I can access Windows apps from spotlight and dock and can call OSX apps from inside Windows thanks to Parallels utils or whatever it's called. Everything works rather seamlessly and I haven't had much trouble setting anything up. Suppose I could document the process but it's pretty basic. One thing I have noticed is some DLL linking issues in Avisynth but not sure if that's bad plugin builds or Parallels getting in the way somehow.

Related to above posts, BootCamp etc is silly and NTFS support in OSX blows anyway. So does rebooting when most of the more important tools run better in OSX to begin with. My advice is to use Parallels in coherence if you like it, or any other VM sharing setup, but IMO that's the best for encoding and footage prep. Note that I do my actual encodes in OSX itself with custom brews of x264 and the rest. I only use Windows for Avisynth and VirtualDub and extracting PGS from images. Given that avs is only 32bit for all intents and purposes, a 3.2GB RAM 32bit VM works absolutely fine if you can spare the RAM for it.