Q: The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition
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Aug 24, 2016 11:03 AMby Loner T,Did you run SMC and NVRAM Reset with the single SATA disk in the MP?
Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support
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Aug 24, 2016 1:15 PMby Loner T,According to Mac Pro (Early 2009) - Technical Specifications , the original storage configuration was
Storage
- Four 3.5-inch cable-free, direct-attach hard drive bays with built-in independent 3Gb/s Serial ATA channels; four internal hard drive carriers included
- Up to 8TB of internal storage3 in hard drive bays 1 through 4 using hard drives in the following capacities:
- 640GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 16MB cache
- 1TB or 2TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 32MB cache
- Optional Mac Pro RAID Card with 512MB cache and 72-hour cache battery backup
- 18x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
- Writes DVD+R and DVD-R discs at up to 18x speed
- Writes DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL discs at up to 8x speed
- Writes DVD+RW discs at up to 8x speed
- Writes DVD-RW discs at up to 6x speed
- Reads DVDs at up to 18x speed
- Writes CD-R and CD-RW discs at up to 32x speed
- Reads CDs at up to 32x speed
- One open optical drive bay for optional second SuperDrive
Since you have a 4TB drive, partitioning it is a challenge for BC Assistant. Can you run
diskutil repairDisk disk0
from OSX Terminal manually, and retry BC Assistant.
If it does not work, we will need to manually partition the disk and use a physical W8.1 DVD to install Windows.
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Aug 24, 2016 2:00 PMby Josephm,Yeah running the disk utility from the terminal did not effect BC Assistant.
Makes sense. I figured my issues had to do with a hardware configuration I was not privy to.
So if I manually partition the drive like this (see attached screenshot) and take my Windows ISO file and create a DVD with the built in super drive, I should be in business?? Or am I over simplifying? Sorry for sounding like such a noob.
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Aug 24, 2016 2:23 PMby Josephm,So like this? Sorry again to sound like such a dummy.
For someone with my limited experience level, would it maybe just make more sense to buy a new drive and install it in one of the 3 available SATA bays? Then use that drive with BC Assistant and save this 4TB drive for backups on both the SSD and the new Windows drive?
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Aug 24, 2016 9:17 PMby Josephm,Thanks again for all your help Loner T! I actually ended up getting it to work following this article about converting my partition to a GPT: http://fgimian.github.io/blog/2016/03/12/installing-windows-10-on-a-mac-without- bootcamp/
Including this little addendum for El Capitan: http://superuser.com/questions/508026/windows-detects-gpt-disk-as-mbr-in-efi-boo t
Just in case you were interested. Really appreciate your time!
