Does anybody know a way to create a MBR partition in Lion other than Boot Camp Assistant way? In terminal or some 3rd party software?
Thank you
MacBook Air
You can add a partition to your hard drive using disk utility. Open disk utility, select your hard drive then click the partion tab. You can then select the size and format of the partition.
I apreciate your intend of help but did you actually tried this yourself? Disk Utility only ads partition on the same GUID partition table, I need a MBR partition.
Does anybody know a way to create a MBR partition on Lion, other than Boot Camp Assistant way? In terminal or some 3rd party software?
Thank you
One physical disk can have only one Partition Map. That may be MBR, GUID, or APM.
It may have multiple partitions with different Formats.
See #1 in Using Disk Utility.
What are you trying to do, and why?
Message was edited by: Pondini
No, this is wrong. Boot Camp Assistant is able to create a MBR partition on the same drive where OS X is installed (on a GUID). I want to create a MBR partition to install Windows 7 on it but I can't use Boot Camp Assistant because on Lion is partitioning my drive only after I connect a Super Drive and at this poing I have no access to a SuperDrive. Boot Camp Assistant (3.2) on Snow Lepard works fine without a SuperDrive but on Lion they managed to restrict this working and needed function.
No. It creates a second partition on your HD, formatted for Windoze. It does not, and cannot, put a second partition map on the same physical HD.
Note what Step 2 says on page 5 of the Boot Camp instructions.
Windows can only be installed on MBR partition scheme. OS X is installed on a GUID partition scheme. Boot Camp allows you to run Windows and OS X from the same drive so MBR + GUID on the same physical HD.
To answer the question actually asked, the command line utility fdisk (run as "sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0" for the appropriate disk0) can create and edit MBRs, even if the disk has a GPT partition table.
You need to verify that the MBR and the GPT partition tables agree with each other - at least as far as the start and end blocks of all the partitions they contain. OS X ignores the MBR. Disk utility will try and write a "correct" MBR, or just punt, and create an MBR with a single partition spanning the entire disk as a "protective" partition.
Booting an OS using the MBR (i.e. - Windows) when it doesn't correctly describe the disk partitions it contains is a recipe for disaster.
rEFIt (a Mac boot manager) has a couple of useful tools here. Partition Inspector will display both GPT and MBR partition maps. On boot, there's a tool that will copy the first four partitions from the GPT to the MBR (basically, a smarter version of what Disk Utility tries to do).
There's also a third party utilllity called gdisk that is like fdisk, but for gpt partition tables.
How to create a MBR partition in Lion without Boot Camp Assistant?
