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I have a 13" Macbook Air 6,2, and I finally have it set up to triple boot Ubuntu 13.10, Mac OS X 10.9.1, and Windows 8. However, I'd like a shared partition that I can drop files on between the three systems.

I've used Disk Utility from Mac OS to set up a partition for this, but Windows 8 is unable to see/use the partition (tried FAT, Mac OS Extended, and ExFAT formats).

My partition setup, if it matters, is:

  • /dev/sda1 - EFI partition
  • /dev/sda2 - Mac OS X
  • /dev/sda3 - Mac Recovery HD
  • /dev/sda4 - Windows 8 (NTFS)
  • /dev/sda5 - Ubuntu (Ext4)
  • /dev/sda6 - Linux swap
  • /dev/sda7 - Shared partition

How can I use Disk Utility (or something else) to modify my partition to be accessible by Ubuntu, Windows, and Mac OS?

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The original FAT16 has a 2gb size limit. FAT32 might work.(4gb per file max) You should be able to mount a NTFS file system under linux although the write function is considered experimental.

For some versions of MAC it is necessary to buy a software driver to support read and write for the NTFS file system.

The original msdos specification allowed for 4 primary partitions. If you wanted more than 4 one of the 4 slots had to be an extended partition type and the extended partition could then contain a number of partitions.

If the MAC disk utility violated this by allowing more than 4 partition without an extended partition this could be causing the problem.

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  • I'm not super concerned about file size limits right now, but the FAT drive (nor either of the other formats I mentioned) doesn't even show up in Windows Explorer to have files added to it.
    – Cat
    Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 18:43
  • Does it show up under Disk Management? Maybe you just have to assign it a drive letter.
    – cybernard
    Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 18:48
  • No, it doesn't. The first four partitions show up, but the remainder (Ubuntu, swap, and shared) just shows up as a block of unallocated space.
    – Cat
    Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 18:50
  • I think the easiest solution is to swap partition sda3 for sda7. I realize this is NOT easy, but it is easier than creating an extended partition if you don't already have one.
    – cybernard
    Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 19:11

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