a question about bootcamp and virtual systems?

SooTyLaD · 1 Jun 2008 at 08:32

hey guys...

talking about running XP (or vista) on my macbook, obviously the fastest i will get it to run is natively in bootcamp, but which is faster out of a) a purely virtual install and b) a bootcamp install being ran as a virtual OS?

is it the same or is the bootcamp install maybe faster?

Spyhop · 1 Jun 2008 at 09:53

I'd guess at A being faster, if anything. Using the data from a bootcamp install in the VM might have to go through extra translation steps to get things in to the format that the VM expects.

Beepcake · 1 Jun 2008 at 09:56

In my experience it's B. It's using a proper file system on a proper partition, rather than a giant file on the OSX partition. They did changes to Parallels and VMWare a good while ago which improved disk file performance, but the other method still seems faster, and you have the advantage of being able to boot native if you need it.

SooTyLaD · 1 Jun 2008 at 10:41

if you do use a bootcamp partition as a virtual os, i assume you can't do all the snapshot stuff?

also, does anyonebody have any tips on increasing the performance of a virtual install? maybe running it from a separate (external) physical drive or something?

Beepcake · 1 Jun 2008 at 11:01

No, you can't use snapshots with the bootcamp partition. I use "normal" VMs for testing stuff (I have an XP and Vista install with snapshots) and a BootCamp one for working.

A different drive would definitely help reduce slowdown. There's not a huge performance difference between the two now, I just think being able to boot natively into a BootCamp VM is definitely worth having.

Sic · 1 Jun 2008 at 12:11

I agree - I use my bootcamp partition in a VM whem I want to copy large files from my external HD to my Windows partition. I find it really useful having the VM facility there - saves me booting into a different OS to test websites! I was really surprised at the speed as well.

rp2000 · 2 Jun 2008 at 09:36

Hi All,

I have 2 machines in VM Ware. 1 is an XP install created in VM Ware and 1 is my previous Bootcamp partition.

Bootcamp uses a 60GB IDE disk and the native VM uses a 20gb SCSI disk (In terms of physical data both machines have about 10GB in use).

My 2 machines are setup the same more or less (in terms of software). I was using Bootcamp first and then decided to create a VM with same settings (with a view to ditch Bootcamp).

Obviously, I booted the Bootcamp in VM Ware as well and it performs slower/worse than the native VM for a few reasons, which I guessed below:

1) The Bootcamp partition loads 2 sets of drivers, the BC drivers that Apple provide and the VM Tools. The VM native machine only has to load the latter.

2) The Bootcamp partition is using a virtual IDE driver of some sort to access the HDD, The VM machine is using a SCSI driver to access the 20gb hdd. (just like VM on other systems using a virtual SCSI driver over IDE improves disk access etc)

3) Longer bootup times (see reason 1 for explanations).

4) Password required to open the Bootcamp VM, no snapshotting or suspending.

I plan to ditch the bootcamp install very soon as I cannot think of a single reason to keep it. I even watch videos in the XP VM and it works fine. I don;t play any games as such or have not come across any CPU intensive software/tasks that I need desperately that cannot be done in OS X (yet). (I will keep a WinClone image of the machine in case I ever need to go back to Bootcamp).

Finally, XP is not good at all in BootCamp. I have used XP extensively for years and the experience on a MAC in BC is crap tbh. It crashes, hangs, has standby/hibernate issues. Obviously this is down to the BC drivers but it is still not a pleasurable experience using XP in OSX BC if you have used XP on a decent non MAC machine before. In VM it is fine (no crashing

)

rp2000

Ender · 2 Jun 2008 at 13:04

rp2000 said:
Finally, XP is not good at all in BootCamp. I have used XP extensively for years and the experience on a MAC in BC is crap tbh. It crashes, hangs, has standby/hibernate issues. Obviously this is down to the BC drivers but it is still not a pleasurable experience using XP in OSX BC if you have used XP on a decent non MAC machine before. In VM it is fine (no crashing )

rp2000

I've found the opposite, my xp partition has worked just great in bootcamp, and I havent had any crashes. If you do get crashes, try downloading updated drivers for them off the company's website (also helps improve performance i find)
Overall I havent had any problems with xp sp 2 and have recently updated to sp3 and thats been fine as well so far

rp2000 · 2 Jun 2008 at 14:44

Ender said:
I've found the opposite, my xp partition has worked just great in bootcamp, and I havent had any crashes. If you do get crashes, try downloading updated drivers for them off the company's website (also helps improve performance i find)
Overall I havent had any problems with xp sp 2 and have recently updated to sp3 and thats been fine as well so far

You are probably using different hardware to me. I am using the latest 15 MBP (penryn 2.5ghz) and all latest Bootcamp drivers and updates. The same crashes and instability occurs in 2 other peoples machines I know off with same hardware (I have done tests). I have reached the conclusion that Apple's drivers are not as robust as they should be (considering the minimal variations in hardware they have to support compared to other computer vendors). So I just use VM now and sacrifice the performance (I don't play PC games so no biggie).

rp2000

Ender · 2 Jun 2008 at 14:52

rp2000 said:
You are probably using different hardware to me. I am using the latest 15 MBP (penryn 2.5ghz) and all latest Bootcamp drivers and updates. The same crashes and instability occurs in 2 other peoples machines I know off with same hardware (I have done tests). I have reached the conclusion that Apple's drivers are not as robust as they should be (considering the minimal variations in hardware they have to support compared to other computer vendors). So I just use VM now and sacrifice the performance (I don't play PC games so no biggie).

rp2000

True, I'm using a Generation 2.1 Macbook C2D, What I was trying to say was that have you tryed not using the drivers that are included with the bootcamp installation, and instead downloading the pc equivalent off the manufactures sites. Ie download the latest nvida drivers for the 8600gt mobile gpu, and the (real tech i think it is) audio drivers etc, rather then relying on apples drivers. From what I've heard doing this solves allot of the problems people have faced, as I do agree with you that apples drivers are sub par for windows bootcamp, however you can use windows drivers instead to solve the stability problems

rp2000 · 2 Jun 2008 at 14:58

Ender said:
True, I'm using a Generation 2.1 Macbook C2D, What I was trying to say was that have you tryed not using the drivers that are included with the bootcamp installation, and instead downloading the pc equivalent off the manufactures sites. Ie download the latest nvida drivers for the 8600gt mobile gpu, and the (real tech i think it is) audio drivers etc, rather then relying on apples drivers. From what I've heard doing this solves allot of the problems people have faced, as I do agree with you that apples drivers are sub par for windows bootcamp, however you can use windows drivers instead to solve the stability problems

I did consider it, but to be honest the whole episode was enough to put me off using XP in Bootcamp (which is not a bad thing considering I am a "switcher" to Mac OS X). It has made me find the alternative Mac software for common windows tasks so now I only keep XP for uTorrent and office which both run fast in VM. Might replace the Bootcamp partition with Vista to see if that is any better without faffing around with drivers.

rp2000