# Are Hard Drive Specific To A Certain Operating System **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 6, 2010, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-hard-drive-specific-to-a-certain-operating-system/563170 "2010-12-06T18:15:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2010, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-hard-drive-specific-to-a-certain-operating-system/563170/21 "2010-12-06T21:32:20Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > Just to be clear, 'cause I want to make sure I’m understand, assuming today’s SATA drives, nothing old, one that would be sold today. If had the drivers and equipment and cables, I could take a 1tb hard drive for instance, and partition it and put Linux, Windows and a MAC O/S on it. Yep. It’s a bit tricky, mostly because Windows doesn’t play well with the other children. You will need to partition the drive, and generally as long as you do things in the right order and only install what each OS needs as it goes, you won’t have a problem (in other words, when you install Windows, only let it partition and format the parts that it is going to use, and leave the rest as unpartitioned space, that sort of thing - let Windows partition the Windows stuff, let Mac OS partition and format its parts, and let Linux partition and format its stuff). ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2010, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-hard-drive-specific-to-a-certain-operating-system/563170/22 "2010-12-06T21:35:46Z")
By the way, if you google “triple boot mac os windows and linux” you’ll get instructions on how to do exactly that. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2010, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-hard-drive-specific-to-a-certain-operating-system/563170/23 "2010-12-07T07:17:40Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > If memory serves, at one point (\> 10 years ago), hard drives in Sun workstations had a special modification so you had to buy them from Sun. There’s a similar limitation on the Xbox 360, but it is based on the system checking the drive model. If you get the exact same model of hard drive as the official upgrades, you can make it work. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2010, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-hard-drive-specific-to-a-certain-operating-system/563170/24 "2010-12-07T08:51:49Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > Just to be clear, 'cause I want to make sure I’m understand, assuming today’s SATA drives, nothing old, one that would be sold today. If had the drivers and equipment and cables, I could take a 1tb hard drive for instance, and partition it and put Linux, Windows and a MAC O/S on it. > > The when the computer boots up, choose which one to boot into? Or is it a matter of not a real O/S but an emulator. > > We were talking about current SATA hard drives, I’ll have to wait till I see my friend again to ask him, specifically what he meant. Thanks for the answers so far, interesting stuff I’ve got 6 OSes on my desktop machine. All booted from a bootloader that lets you choose. I’ve never tried to get OSX to run on a PC machine, so that’s not one of them. No, it ain’t easy, because as **engineer\_comp\_geek** said, Winblows doesn’t play nice with others. But it can be done. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2010, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-hard-drive-specific-to-a-certain-operating-system/563170/25 "2010-12-07T10:40:31Z")
My guess would be that your friend was referring to this: > **[Hybrid hard drives are not a Vista Premium requirement](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2006/06/4328/)** > > Hybrid hard drives are not required by Microsoft, contrary to reports. ---
**Author:** ![Pitchmeister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pitchmeister/32/3459_2.png) [@Pitchmeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pitchmeister)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2010, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-hard-drive-specific-to-a-certain-operating-system/563170/26 "2010-12-07T10:53:19Z")
> [@TheFifthYear](#): > > No, Macs can read Windows formatted discs just fine. The reverse is not true. Sorry, but that’s not the case (anymore?). Windows 7 at least can read Mac-formatted discs just fine, just like MacOS X can read NTFS-drives, but neither can write on the other, unless you have a specific program installed that allows write access. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-hard-drive-specific-to-a-certain-operating-system/563170.md?page=1)