14 DAY TRIAL // Now that the initial frenzy over Apple's Boot Camp is beginning to recede, other, more practical issues are beginning to arise. One of these is sharing information between Mac OS X and Windows XP on the same machine.
Windows cannot handle Mac partitions, meaning that it is unable to access information on the other volumes. This is a mixed blessing. One hand, it makes the dual boot process arduous because, if you need a file you cannot access while in Windows, you need to reboot and copy it over to the other partition. Doing this repeatedly, can become very annoying, even if the reboot process is quite fast. One the other hand, there is the safety issue this addresses. If Windows cannot see or interact with your Mac partitions, it means that, if you get any virus or worm in it, it will not be able to affect OS X in any way, and all the files in your Mac partitions are safe.
There is software out there, such as Mediafour's MacDrive, that will allow Windows to access files on Mac disks directly. This means that you will be able to access everything from everywhere. However, it does make you more vulnerable. Apple made Boot Camp and it works flawlessly, surely they could have included the functionality of MacDrive by default, had they deemed it a smart and required move.
Fortunately, there is a third way, which lets you have your cake and eat it too. Simply create a new FAT-32 partition, which will be visible regardless of which OS you are in and use it as a transfer medium in which to keep files and work that needs to go between OSes. This way you can both access the information with ease and keep the two operating systems separate, so that one cannot hurt the other.