Cannot See Windows Hard Drive in OSX

Hi,

when you use the 'Option'-key at startup, is the Windows partition shown ?

Using things like NTFS-3G or Paragons NTFS for Mac can prevent the Windows partition from showing in the Startup Disk pref pane.

Also, if you accidentally or by choice renamed the Windows partition (while in Windows) to a name starting with a . (point), than it is not shown in OSX.

Stefan

I, too, have been having problems with getting my Windows partitions to show up when I'm booted into OSX.

In addition to the partition I created for Windows 7 in Disk Utility, I allocated the last 200GB of my drive to free space that I would later partition and format in NTFS as a partition for my personal data. (Originally, I had partitioned and formatted this as FAT right away with Disk Utility, but Boot Camp Assistant didn't like this and refused to allow me to install Windows this way.)

Is there any way I can get both partitions to show up? I'd much rather not have two copies of the data just for the two environments and emulating Windows is just not an option for me.

This is happening to me also - drive disappeared and can not be mounted with disk utility. I can still boot to it - but I think it disappeared with 10.5.7.

Had also installed VirtualBox. Have uninstalled it and reset NVRAM, but partition will not mount.

This can happen if the NTFS volume has corruption.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265 (I'd suggest following the manual steps by running "chkdsk /f" from a command prompt)

Just for the sake of it - I removed my bootcamp partition - redid it to the same effect.

That ensures that it's not volume corruption.

Run the following from a terminal...do you get any errors?

*mkdir /Volumes/WINDOWS*
*mount -t ntfs /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/WINDOWS*

The results


/sbin/mount_ntfs: /sbin/kextload command failed: Operation not permitted
mount_ntfs: Failed to load NTFS file system kext.

Same happened here,

My boot-campassistant.app shut down during the partitioning process. Now, I am left with 28 unused gigabytes on my hard-drive while 32 disappeared.

You should be able to use Windows to format the partition (space), or use disk manager to correct the partitioning. I never use the boot camp assistant to install Windows, I just have Windows reformat the biggest partition it sees (thats not not OS X's). Of course you problem may be more complicated - but it may be just that simple.

My boot camp partition works - it just does not show under OS X. - It used to - and does on the other Macs that I administer.

That won't work. I can't find the partition. I can't load windows onto something I can't see. Boot Camp won't delete the partition because it can't "see" it. BC wants to repartition, but there's no longer enough room. Disk Utility run from the HD and from the Disk won't work.

So booting from Windows disk during install doesn't show anything but the OS X partition?

I never got to the point where I installed Windows b/c during boot camp partitioning, it "froze".

What I am saying is - place the Windows DVD in the mac and restart holding down the option key, you should see the windows dvd as an option for booting too. When you boot from that, it will show you a partition map at the beginning of the install, hopefully with more than one section.

Okay, everything is fixed now. During partitioning using Boot Camp, everything froze. I was never able to install Windows. I used my OSX disk, rebooted, holding down the C key. Ran Disk Repair TWICE before everything was fixed.

I then was able to run Boot Camp and partition successfully. I followed with installing Windows 7.

Fortuny wrote:
Also, if you accidentally or by choice renamed the Windows partition (while in Windows) to a name starting with a . (point), than it is not shown in OSX.

Stefan

Is there any downside to this? I'd be quite happy not to have the Boot Camp partition showing on the desktop. Thanks.