Q: Bootcamp Assistant Issues
-
Aug 20, 2016 1:11 PMby RTbrain,Here's what I have. Ignore the BOOTCAMP partition (500GB). I tried making one with Disk Utility but BootCamp won't use it. Also Lifesaver (2.0TB) is an external drive.
Last login: Sat Aug 20 12:18:04 on ttys000
You have mail.
Christines-iMac:~ christinewright$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *3.0 TB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 2.5 TB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s5
4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 500.0 GB disk0s4
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_HFS Lifesaver 2.0 TB disk1s2
/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Boot Camp *2.8 GB disk3
Christines-iMac:~ christinewright$ diskutil cs list
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found
Christines-iMac:~ christinewright$
-
Aug 20, 2016 2:03 PMby Loner T,On a 2012 Mac, W7 will be installed using legacy BIOS with MBR partitioning.
This has two limitations.
1. The Windows partition must start within the first 2TB of a disk larger than 2TB and cannot be larger than 2TB in size.
2. The number of partitions is limited to four (4).
First, disconnect the external disk, otherwise it will cause problems. Second, delete the 500GB partition you created, as it cannot be used.
To be able to install Windows, we need to split this disk in two or three parts (two parts will work, if you are willing to create a Windows installation larger than 1TB). The EFI and Recovery HD are always needed and should not be manipulated or modified in anyway without using diskutil commands.
-
Aug 21, 2016 6:26 AMby Loner T,Use Disk Utility, remove the current 500GB partition. Run a Disk Utility Verify/Repair.
Run the following two procedures with all external storage and hubs disconnected.
Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support
How to Reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support
Run BC Assistant and create a partition, which is larger than 1TB. If you do not get any errors, continue and install Windows. If you get errors, please post back with the terror message(s), and we can check.
-
Aug 21, 2016 9:39 AMby RTbrain,I'll tried it again. But when I tried using BC Assistant I kept getting the error
"The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition." It didn't give the option to create a partition of any size. The only partitions are the main one, the EFI partition and the Recovery HD partition.
The 500 GB partition you had me remove was create AFTER I got that error a few times and I wanted to try something else. The external drive was unplugged when partitioning.
-
Aug 21, 2016 9:54 AMby Loner T,Boot into Internet Recovery - About OS X Recovery - Apple Support - using Command+Opt+R and run Utilities -> terminal and execute
diskutil repairDisk disk0
If you do not get any errors, boot normally, otherwise use Command+C to Copy the terminal output, quit Terminal, start Safari, and Command+V to Paste the output as a reply to this discussion.
If BCA will not allow any partitioning after this, we can manually create a partition using Terminal. Do you have a USB Installer created using the steps in Install Windows 7 and earlier on your Mac using Boot Camp - Apple Support ?
The Terminal command for partitioning (also used by BC Assistant) is ...
diskutil resizeVolume
Usage: diskutil resizeVolume MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode size
[part1Format part1Name part1Size part2Format part2Name part2Size
part3Format part3Name part3Size ...]
Non-destructively resize a disk. You may increase or decrease its size.
When decreasing size, you may optionally specify new partitions to create
to fill the newly-freed space. Specify these new partitions as in the
diskutil partitionDisk command. A size of zero will cause a grow fit-to-fill.
Ownership of the affected disk is required.
Valid sizes are floating-point numbers with a suffix of B(ytes), S(512-byte-
blocks), K(ilobytes), M(egabytes), G(igabytes), T(erabytes), P(etabytes),
or (%)percentage of the total size of the whole disk.
A size of "limits" will print the valid range for the current conditions of
the file system and room to grow up to an immovable object (next partition).
A size of "R" for the target partition will resize it to the maximum
possible; "R" cannot be used for the size of new partition triples, if any.
resizeVolume is only supported on a Journaled HFS+ file system.
-
Aug 21, 2016 10:23 AMby RTbrain,Using Internet recovery and Terminal to repair the disk and the partition map did not help. It found no errors. I ran Disk Utility itself for good measure and that didn't do anything either.
I'm reluctant to use Terminal to partition the drive. Why would that work when using Disk utility to do the same did not?
-
Aug 21, 2016 11:43 AMby Loner T,RTbrain wrote:
Using Internet recovery and Terminal to repair the disk and the partition map did not help. It found no errors. I ran Disk Utility itself for good measure and that didn't do anything either.
Good.
I'm reluctant to use Terminal to partition the drive. Why would that work when using Disk utility to do the same did not?
In DU, you created a 500GB partition, which is beyond the 2TB limit. If you notice, the Macintosh HD was 2.5TB and BOOTCAMP was 500GB. W7 Installer cannot address any disk blocks after 2**32 blocks when a MBR is used. Your Mac does not fully support EFI Windows.
Using either DU to Terminal utility, you will need to
a. either create a >1TB Windows partition so it starts within the first 2TB, or,
b. create three partitions, with the middle one being used for Bootcamp, if you want windows to be less than 1TB.
The advantage of using Terminal is to be able to see the execution and monitor for any errors. If you do not want to use Terminal diskutil commands, run DU, split the 3TB into two parts, and then split the upper half into two parts so that BOOTCAMP fully resides between the first 2TB of the disk. Your partitioning will look like..
HFS (OSX) + Bootcamp (<1TB) + HFS (Unused temporarily)
or
HFS (OSX < 2TB) + Bootcamp (>1TB).
BCA is supposed to do this automatically, but there are numerous bugs.
-
Aug 21, 2016 1:16 PMby Loner T,The Bootcamp partition should be FAT32.
To merge the first and third HFS partitions into a single OS X partition requires the creation of a CoreStorage Volume group/Volume. If we do this, you will not be able to see OS X from the Windows side, because there are no CS drivers for Windows provided/written by Apple.
-
Aug 22, 2016 9:08 AMby RTbrain,I split my HD into two partitions using DU. OSX 1.5TB and BOOTCAMP 1.5TB.
Then I run BCA to install Window. BCA seems to just want to reformat the whole thing into a single drive again.
There are no options to install.
And when I do use BCA to merge the partitions and try again, I get the original message, "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition."
I'm at a loss.
