Mac Forum / Applications / Virtual PC / July 2004

On a Powerbook 1.5Ghz, 1G RAM

Just got a copy of virtual PC from my University and installed Win XP.
As a PC user as well, I've installed Win XP many times and followed
the same procedure as I normally do.

1. Pick the partition
2. NTFS Formatting
3. Let it install

This time (my first time with Virtual PC) I saw another option on the
formatting screen--leave everything as is.  Not knowing what that
would do I just formated with NTFS since that's what I normally do
when I install on a PC.  After installation, Win XP ran kinda slow (I
thought) and I couldn't mount the hard drive on my mac.  I don't have
any experience with Virtual PC so then I just moved the PC/Image to
the trash and thought I'd redo the whole process and try leaving the
formatting.

Now here's the big question...

I'm looking at the MAC hard drive and it says the formatting is "MAC
OS Extended (Journaled)".  I assume Virtual PC takes an image file and
your Win XP install is just a file.  However, if I choose to set it up
to format NTFS (I guess a windows format?) will that conflict with the
native Mac OS formatting?  Could I have formated a 1.5 to 2 gigabyte
section of my hard drive for my Win XP that I have now lost to my Mac
hard drive forever?  (Does this make sense to anyone?  I'm trying to
say something along the lines of--Help, I just installed Win XP and
formatted NTFS.  Now I deleted it.  Did I just create a NTFS section
in my hard drive that is not not recognizable by my Mac and thus it's
gone???)

I called Apple but they were no help.  I am NOT paying microsoft $35
for a yes/no answer to this.