How can you get OS X to see Fat 32 partition?

I partitioned my hard drive in Vista and created 10 GB of Fat32 partition in hope to share them between OS X and Vista. But when I rebooted into OS X with bootcamp, OS X can't see this 10 GB Fat32 partition.

How do I get my OS X to recognize it? I already tried disk utility, but it doesn't see the partition.

 

Thats really strange cause OSX can normally see and write to FAT partitions. Its NTFS that it has issues with. Thus perhaps vista did something strange?
What I don't get is how you boot into OSX using bootcamp?
And why didn't you just use OSX to partition your hard drive?

Thus my suggestion is to start again and reformat with disk-utility and then use the boot camp assistant to setup vista.
Good luck
a

 

If you already created a Boot Camp partition and you go into the Windows side and split the Boot Camp partition in 2 you won't see it in OS X.

Intel Macs use the newer GUID partition table format as part of EFI. Basically the partition table tells the OS where the partitions are located on the HDD and is particularly important on booting to identify the boot partition. The problem is that Windows still uses BIOS and it's associated MBR partition format. So in order to get Boot Camp working Apple created a hybrid GUID/MBR format and when you use the Boot Camp assistant it edits the GUID to create your new partition and the changes are then automatically copied over to the MBR so they are in sync. However, in Windows if you try to split the Boot Camp partition, it'll change the MBR, but won't be mirrored to the GUID which is why OS X can't see it.

Sadly, neither Disk Utility or Boot Camp Assistant within OS X allows the creation of 3 partitions: 1 OS X, 1 shared, 1 BootCamp. This is probably to avoid probably to avoid limitations in the Windows installer that require Windows to be installed in the first 4 partitions in order to boot properly so if you created too many partitions and selected the wrong one to install Windows you might not be able to boot. And creating a new partition in OS X after Windows has been installed is also problematic since it could change the partition numbering and Windows may again not boot properly because it expects to boot on say partition 3 yet the Boot Camp partition is not partition 4 since you added a new partition. I believe the way Boot Camp works is that it needs to be the last partition so any partition you add will be placed on top of it and change it's partition number making it all confused.

There are some sites on the google where people have success using more partitions than 2 with Boot Camp. However, they don't seem very clear on the matter and some are a bit complicated.

The simplest way that seems to work requires a complete format. When you start from the OS X install DVD, you can go into Disk Utility, delete all existing partitions, create 3 partitions, adjust their size, and select the appropriate format for each of them. I create the 1st and 2nd partitions as HFS+ and the 3rd MS-DOS FAT and named it BOOTCAMP. I then installed OS X in the 1st partition and later Windows in the 3rd. Boot Camp Assistant wont read the 3 partitions, so you'll have to start the Windows installer DVD manually by holding down option on Boot and selecting the DVD. Make sure you install windows on the right partition and you'll have to remember to reformat that partition within the windows installer since Windows doesn't seem to like the FAT format that OS X uses. Windows should be installable and bootable just like how Boot Camp Assistant does it. I made my 2nd partition HFS+ and I use MacDrive on the Windows side to read/write to it, but I presume if you want FAT you can just format it MS-DOS FAT from within Disk Utility in the OS X DVD when you are first installing.

 

Thanks for all your input, especially you Itcommander.