Bootcamp will not partition new 3TB HDD. Need help!

Not possible.

To support Windows, Apple hardware uses a CSM-BIOS. The Windows installer, when booted in BIOS mode, only supports the MBR partition scheme, which is limited to 2.2TB disks. Not partitions, disks.

It would seem eventually Apple will need to update their EFI firmware so Windows can EFI boot instead, in which case Windows will then support GPT. And a huge number of hybrid MBR problems go away as well as the 2.2TB limit.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/235088/everything_you_need_to_know_about_3tb_hard _drives.html

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/hybrid.html

Why not shrink the drive first and leave 900GB free space.

One person used Disk Utility to create a 3rd or 4th (counting Lion R) and was able to use the partition that came after Windows.

then in Windows insaller format the partition - I bet you can and still have 800GB data (NTFS? HFS? up to you).

I know it can happen.

I did install Windows on PC with UEFI just to test and is working fine and of course GPT and 350MB "system reserved" that Windows 8 created to use (larger than the 100MB Windows 7's)

EFI booting Windows on Apple hardware is fraught with problems. It might work with some hardware. There's a long thread about this on MacRumors.

One cannot have Windows (BIOS booting) after the 2.2TB limit on the disk. Only the first 2.2TB of sectors can be defined in the MBR. So you could have something like: 1TB for Mac OS, 1TB for Windows, and the last 1TB formatted JHFS+/X as a data disk for Mac OS. You can't format it FAT32 or any other format for Windows, because Windows will only ever treat the boot disk as MBR and won't see the space after the first 2.2TB.

But the GUI tools aren't going to let you configure a disk this way. I've already tried and they've failed, although there are many more ways to get it wrong than right. But officially Apple has no way to support 2.2+TB disks with Boot Camp.

I had to do it with gdisk. And because hybrid MBRs are flakey and dangerous, there are different ways of lowering the risk. I personaly only expose the Windows partition in the MBR, and make sure that Windows is the last partition butting right up to the last sector the MBR can define (about 2.2TB).

Ultimately what we need is updated EFI firmware, that will allow Windows 8 to EFI boot on a Mac. Then all sorts of problems go away including the very non-standard hybrid MBR mess, and the 2.2TB disk limit.

Thing is, this newer firmware will most likely only be on newer hardware. The knowledge base has several articles listing limitations of what relatively recent hardware cannot 64-bit boot Windows due to a firmware bug that's unlikely to ever get fixed.

Maybe with all the new Ivy Bridge based systems and there are more offerings now. UEFI was finalized in very late 2007. So we gradually saw Mac Pro Early 2008 and first all MacBooks, then only MacBook Pro, then.... and the move to native default boot 64-bit kernel which also has not made it everywhere (but Mountain Lion should close the door on EFI32).

Well Apple is still not using UEFI. It's still EFI Intel 1.10 based, with some bits of UEFI thrown in. So it's a hybrid firmware. All the hardware I have from 2008 to 2011 experiences VBIOS corruption during EFI boot when booting Linux, which is a bigger problem than not having a fully UEFI 2.x firmware. Apple could still incorporate just enough UEFI into their hybrid firmware so that EFI booting foreign OS's (Windows and Linux) are possible without problems. As of yet, it's a miss with the hardware I've tried, although others have gotten EFI booting to work in a handful of cases. It's very hardware specific though.

New to me, I thought Early 2009 Mac Pro firmware 2.0x which is some flavor of EFI64.

My Mac Pro 1,1 EFI 1.1 was 'born' in summer 2005, a yr prior when Intel Skulltrail platform was in engineering and then a prototype.

Apple update to mine in Aug 2007 did one thing: supposedly to improve Windows support, it added a full 30 seconds booting Windows from click and go to click and... and... and... wait at the light.

Windows Vista SP1 64-bit had the a UEFI boot (2008 also) but that has changed too.

I think Windows 7 SP1 has changed it again.

But 64-bit Windows will not boot on MacPro 1,1 since those changes - have to use Imgburn or some other method to get around it. 2008+ Mac Pro do support "whatever MS and Apple" versions are using.

I always see "next yr" like 2013 as "Ivy Bridge will mature" or "2014 will offer better support for XYZ (DDR4, PCIe 3). SATA3 is still even now in 2012 not a clean done deal and using SSDs not always a happy fit or reliable enough.

64-bit EFI != UEFI 2.x

Apple's 2.x firmware updaters are updater versions, not the version of UEFI.

And the current 2011 models of Macbook Pros are likewise Intel EFI 1.10 based, confirmed by rEFIt/rEFInd shell, or the official EFI shell (shell.efi). However, newer hardware is using GOP instead of UGA for graphics, where GOP is a UEFI thing, and UGA is an Intel EFI thing.

If you want to boot Windows: MBR and setup FREE SPACE and even use Disk Utility

If you want GPT data, Partition tab Options..... and set to GUID

FAT is old and user space. MBR and GPT are the partition table (hidden) on which those user partitions reside as subsets.

Mac also has an EFI and Lion Recovery

Windows 7/8 will try to use 100-350MB that looks like FAT system reserved (actual boot is done here, just as the EFI partitioin is what OS X needs though I have never wiped out the EFI to see how much trouble or not I would be inn).

Again, you can use the 3TB disk using GPT for either Windows or Mac OS and have full access to 3TB.

But if you install Windows on that 3TB disk, you're stuck with 2.2TB. And there is no official GUI means of configuring the partitions, or the GPT and necessary hybrid MBR, to get Windows to boot.

I've only done it with Linux, because the Mac OS X version of fdisk is ancient.

For the same 3TB vdisk, Mac OS X fdisk sees 1849032704 sectors, or ~900GB, while linux fdisk sees the whole 3TB disk. Of course in the MBR it can only encode up to 4294967294 sectors, or ~2.2TB.

More and more people are going to want to do Mac + Windows with 2.2+TB disks and right now it's a show stopper.

The hatter: If you want to boot Windows: MBR and setup FREE SPACE and even use Disk Utility

That'll work, however it will be a fixed 2.2TB disk instead of a 3TB disk. There will be no way to access the rest of the space on it.

In fact, at least the Snow Leopard Disk Utility, will not even let you use MBR for a 2.2+TB disk. It's grayed out. Can't be done. Can't use Windows on 2.2+TB disks with included tools. I can't test this with the Lion Disk Utility to see if it behaves differently.