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All replies
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Helpful answers
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Jul 25, 2011 7:44 AM in response to zzeeshanby The hatter,It has always been a problem and presented such difficulties.
Only now there are two partitions where before there was one (Mac OS Lion + Recovery)
Buy a big external drive.
Upgrade the internal drive.
Use a Windows HFS driver like Paragon's for Windows to read and write to HFS from Windows.
They also have an NTFS for Mac OS but doesn't work properly yet in Lion, allows writing to Windows from Mac OS side.
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Jul 25, 2011 8:06 AM in response to The hatterby zzeeshan,Well, external drive is always an option but carrying one all the time isn't a good idea.
Yeah NTFS read/write on Lion is not proper yet but still is good enough to read write.
Its very wierd because I dont know about all people, but I personally like to manage my data in seperate partitions just to be on safe side. Being a programmer my self and have a lot of knowledge about file system, MBRs, GTPs I find it bad because supporting this kind of feautre is not a big problem.
I hope 1 day Apple does it or one day any other person just finds a way to do it but in last 1 day, wasted enough time already so can't try it again;)
If anyone ever did find a solution without use of external disk, please do update this thread.
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Jul 25, 2011 8:26 AM in response to zzeeshanby ds store,I think you can do it, but you first have to download Lion again (don't install, click on the icon and "Show in Finder") and create a bootable dvd (a few actually for backup) following these instructions.
http://www.eggfreckles.net/tech/burning-a-lion-boot-disc/
Once you have this you backup all your data off the Lion drive to a external drive (cloning with Carbon Copy Cloner is very good), then hold c and boot off the Lion disk, go to Disk Utility and wipe the drive completely and use the partition tab to create as many partitions as you need.
Then hold option and boot off the clone and clone that to one of the partitions (or use the Lion installer), and then setting up the others as needed.
Starting with 10.6, Bootcamp only allowed one more partition on the drive. To create more required wiping the drive and creating more partitions that way and installing a OS into each one or changing the partitions format.
I'm going to test this out on my lab rat Mac, as I want to install Linux and Windows along with Snow Leopard and Lion.
I took the Bootcamp route yesterday for a dual Snow/Lion, but want to add more partitions.
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Jul 25, 2011 9:12 AM in response to zzeeshanby The hatter,XP I know from others couldn't boot if the partition number was higher than 4.
Windows 7 64-bit could boot from GPT if Apple's UEFI was less proprietary than it currently is.
As for setting up multiple partitions, I keep changing my mind as to how many, how large, running out of space. That is why I prefer a tower,.
iMac (though that offers an SSD + 2TB drive, the idea being put OS on SSD and put data partitions on 2TB volume).
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Aug 28, 2011 4:44 AM in response to zzeeshanby ernopena_nyc,Successful setup of OS X Lion + Bootcamp Windows 7 Ult + Data Partition
After many, many hours I think I've finally figured out how to successfully install Mac OS X Lion with Windows 7 on a Bootcamp partition AND an 3rd data partition. Here is a screenshot of my setup on my 13" MacBook Pro:
<Disk Utility screenshot></___sbsstatic___/migration-images/160/16036907-1.png>
As you can see, I have my internal 500GB hard drive partitioned the following way:
- 120GB OS X Lion (system and apps)
- 316GB workspace partition (user files, projects)
- 64GB Bootcamp Windows 7 Ultimate
To make this work, I started with the standard procedure of installing OS X Lion on a single Mac OS Ext partition and using Bootcamp Assistant to build the Bootcamp partition for Windows.
Then I did 2 key things:
- Before installing Windows on the Bootcamp partition, I first went back to Disk Utility, shrunk the OS X Lion partition, and inserted a 3rd partition Workspace_HD for all my user files. Then I restarted and installed Windows 7.
- After Win 7 Ultimate, the Bootcamp drivers and Office 2010 were installed and activated, I DID NOT make any changes to any partitions. I can put whatever I want on any partition, but I CAN NOT shrink, resize, delete, create, or modify any partition. Any change to the partition tables after Windows is installed will BREAK the Bootcamp partition.
I went thru 3 broken installs of Bootcamp/Win7 to figure this out.
Again, the key to this working is creating your extra partitions AFTER you make the Bootcamp partition but BEFORE you install Windows.
I will rebuild my system for a 5th time to fully document the process with screenshots, but this time with 5 partitions: OS X Lion startup, Workspace, custom 20GB OS X Lion recovery partition, 30GB FAT32 shared Mac/Win data partition, and a Bootcamp partition with Windows 7 Ultimate.
Until then, I hope this works for you!! Good Luck!! ;-)
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Sep 2, 2011 2:35 PM in response to ernopena_nycby wwwandy,You have used Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the data partition. When I tried the same, I get an error saying there is not enough room when I create a Data partition that is the remainder of the space. Thanks for the info however, Very helpful in trying to replicate.
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Sep 11, 2011 9:25 AM in response to ernopena_nycby NESTi,Hello
Well I tried your way ernopena_nyc, but that wasn't working for me.
1. I installed Mac OS X Lion on my 800 Gb partition on my Macbook Pro
2. created a 100Gb partition with Boot Camp assistant
3. closed the assistant
4. changed partition size of the "Main" OS X drive to 100Gb
5. created a new partition of around 600Gb for my documents
6. rebooted and started teh windows 7 installation
7. When the partition screen of windows 7 poped up, I couldn't install windows on the Boot Camp partition.
=> it says: .... Drive is part of the GPT. Windows could not be installed.
thx for the help
Marc
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Sep 11, 2011 9:43 AM in response to NESTiby zzeeshan,Well, before I posted this, I used the exact method that "ernopena_nyc" sent and also 5-6 other methods but to no avail. I got this unable to install windows message few times as well and sometimes Windows will not boot.
There is no realiable way as far as I can know to do this. But I did found one LONGGGGG way which is valid is most cases.
1. Install Snow leopard.
2. Now create boot camp
3. Before reboot, shrink partition like "ernopena_nyc" told.
4. Then create another FAT or HFS partition, whatever you like
5. Install Windows.
At this time everything will work.
Now upgrade Lion and windows will keep on working.
No other reliable way to directly install Lion 1st and then try to do paritioning and windows install etc.
Hope this helps
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Sep 11, 2011 10:25 AM in response to zzeeshanby NESTi,In this post here MarkN123 explains the Problem:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3293948
I think thats my problem too.
with the recovery and the efi partitions the disc has 5 partitions which isn't working
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Nov 24, 2011 12:00 PM in response to zzeeshanby Esodmumixam,Thank you for this thread. As a long time Windows user, I am playing with my first mac since 1992, and am dealing with the exact same issue. In addition, I messed up when reinstalling Lion on a clean drive, by creating MBR partitions with Disk utility (I thought I was going to save time later...).
So, just to confirm before I go through the entire process again, Is there any way to create 4 partitions if we delete the recovery disk partition:
OSX, OSX data, W7, W7 Data?
It seems another alternative would be to swap the Super Drive with a second hard drive. Then we would have:
Disk 1: Recovery Disk, OSX, OS data
Disk 2: W7, W7 data.
Thank you for your thoughts.
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Jul 29, 2012 7:44 AM in response to zzeeshanby luca85,Hi,
like many other users, I guess, I spent a lot of time in order to setup my disk with three partitions:
osx, data and Bootcamp.
I managed to do that with OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion WITHOUT deleting the Recovery Disk, which I think is quite useful. The solution was to have Bootcamp as the first partition and was provided by Movreak in this forum:
Notice he managed to have two data partitions, on top of Windows 7 and OsX! Moreover he didn't need to partition the disk with Bootcamp, which I discovered is very picky in terms of the Windows disk image you are using. So all the posts in various forums that state it is not possible to install Windows if you have more than 4 partitions in the same drive are actually wrong.
I really hope this helps other users.
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Jul 29, 2012 7:58 AM in response to zzeeshanby ds store,If the main purpose of having three partitions on your boot drive is to keep data seperate from OS X for performance reasons, then I suggest a easier method of clone/reverse clone I have outlined here.
How to properly defrag a Mac's hard drive
When the clone occurs, Applications is written first, then System, then lastly Users accounts, this does a excellent job of optimizing and defragging all in one step.
It only has to be done rarely as Users is usually the area that see's the most change and it's last to be written on the drive, thus it expands and contracts into the avialble free space, not affecting Applications or System
Sure if a lot of Applications or OS X upgrades occur, then another clone/reverse clone is in order, but it's going to be a rare occurance for most.
If having a third partition is designed to store data there for Windows and OS X to access equally, instead of having two copies of data in each partition and the hassle of updating one or the other as needed, then I understand why one needs three parititons. However those requiring this are such a small portion that Apple likely is going to break it somehow in the future OS X upgrades.
