Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition

Erase the drive (backup first) then reinstall OSX,

Another option is to Winclone the Bootcamp, convert the SSD to a single-partition in Disk Utility by deleting bootcamp using Boot Camp Asistant, and restoring via Winclone. Without Winclone, it is installing Windows from scratch.

Loner T wrote:

Another option is to Winclone the Bootcamp, convert the SSD to a single-partition in Disk Utility by deleting bootcamp using Boot Camp Asistant, and restoring via Winclone. Without Winclone, it is installing Windows from scratch.

That's not a method I would use, but YMMV

I wouldn't do it that way either. I'd reinstall Windows thereby removing any potential issues because of a bad initial install, etc. Just reinstall to be safe.

Hello,

Could I get some help to recover my bootcamp volume (doesn't mount on macos 10.8.5) ?

I've created a new partition to clone 10.8.5 and upgrade to 10.9 (so 5 partitions now with recover for 10.8 and 10.9 and windows7).

After that, I lost bootcamp boot possibility.

Reading this topic, I managed to recover windows7 boot. Everything's fine with it.

The remaining issue is that bootcamp volume doesn't mount anymore on MacOs session.

Here are some infos:

niko_pc:~ ecapet$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

gpt show: disk0: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168

gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167

start size index contents

0 1 MBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

409640 1368172656 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1368582296 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1369851832 232110792

1601962624 194043480 4 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1796006104 1269544 5 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1797275648 156248064 6 GPT part - FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF

1953523712 1423

1953525135 32 Sec GPT table

1953525167 1 Sec GPT header

and

niko_pc:~ ecapet$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1: EE 0 0 2 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 1797275647] <Unknown ID>

*2: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1797275648 - 156248064] HPFS/QNX/AUX

3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

Command (? for help): p

Disk /dev/disk0: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB

Logical sector size: 512 bytes

Disk identifier (GUID): 00001AE6-3049-0000-9668-0000004B0000

Partition table holds up to 128 entries

First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134

Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries

Total free space is 232112221 sectors (110.7 GiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name

1 40 409639 200.0 MiB EF00 EFI system partition

2 409640 1368582295 652.4 GiB AF00 Customer

3 1368582296 1369851831 619.9 MiB AB00 Recovery HD

4 1601962624 1796006103 92.5 GiB AF00 Mavericks

5 1796006104 1797275647 619.9 MiB AB00 Recovery HD

6 1797275648 1953523711 74.5 GiB FFFF BOOTCAMP

bootcamp is on 6th partition with apparently bad partition GUID code

Command (? for help): i

Partition number (1-6): 6

Partition GUID code: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF (Unknown)

Partition unique GUID: 86A43569-5455-4E83-933D-E890E59E3FC6

First sector: 1797275648 (at 857.0 GiB)

Last sector: 1953523711 (at 931.5 GiB)

Partition size: 156248064 sectors (74.5 GiB)

Attribute flags: 0000000000000000

Partition name: 'BOOTCAMP'

Can I fix this issue ?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Eric

Partition GUID type code for Bootcamp is

EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

More than 4 partitions are not supported.

You can download gdisk (GPT fdisk) from Sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/ and use the following link for a gdisk tutorial - http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/

Please backup all your important data before you do anything to the disk.

Hi Christopher Murphy, Loner T and everybody else,

I have a problem and maybe you can help me to solve it :-)

-----

Due to iOS programming I switch from an Windows machine to an Macbook Air mid 2013.

- I want to use Mac OS X only for XCode etc

- I will use approx. 90% of the time Windows 7 (due to MATLAB, ANSYS, etc.)

- I need one partition (NTFS or exFAT) for file exchange between Mac OS X and Win 7

Until now I did not manage to have an partition beside Mac OS X and Win 7 (installed via Boot Camp) at all, because Win 7 won't boot after creating an additional partition :-(

What would be the most performant way respectively how to set this up?

----

Can you maybe assitst me to install/create this three partitions without problems?

thx and kr

RockOn

It's not possible because it's not three partitions, but five. The EFI System partition and Mac Recovery HD partitions are hidden. Only 4 partitions are possible with Apple's Boot Camp implemenation. You could delete the Mac Recovery HD partition, and then you'd have EFI System partition, Mac HD, Windows, and "Extra".

But in any case you need software that can read/write either NTFS from OS X, or HFS+ from Windows for this "Extra" partition. Therefore I see no advantage for creating a separate partition. Just directly read/write to either the Mac HS or Windows partition.

Hey Chris, when and how would you delete the recovery HD partition? For when, anytime before creating the 5th partition? How, as I think it requires a terminal command, right, or can I do it via disk utility?

I would like to have a 'data' partition on larger SSDs so clean installing, in theory, would not require me to restore the data files.

Well, actually I gave such an incomplete answer as to be misleading because it rapidly becomes so complicated what to do next that for the mortal user I'd say a "data" partition should be something they need to get straight out of their head entirely because it's not supported by Apple at all, or any of their utilities. They've created a very restrictive environment to make a complicated thing easy, and by easy they give you basically provide two paths when in fact they only intended to provide one. The other path is even permitting Disk Utility to work on a Boot Camp modified disk -that's when most people run into trouble.

1. Find on the Internet how to enable Disk Utility debug mode, and in that debug menu how to reveal hidden partitions on the disk.

2. Now you can delete Mac HD.

## What comes next, I'm actually not sure because I haven't tested it, and therefore what Boot Camp will tolerate or disallow.

3. You probably want to use Boot Camp Assistant, to both create the Windows install media, and also do the initiatial resize of Mac HD, and create a FAT32 volume for Windows which will be named BOOTCAMP. If you try doing the next step before this one, I think Boot Camp Assistant won't proceed - but I haven't tried it.

4. Use Disk Utility to split the BOOTCAMP partition into two: one for Windows one for Data. Both must be formatted as MSDOS (a weird way of saying FAT32).

5. When you get to the Windows installer you must make sure you pick the right partition (it should be the 3rd one in this case; the 1st FAT32 partition), and reformat it as NTFS before installing Windows. There's some obscure way to get Windows to install on FAT32, and it's a bad idea, if the installer still allows this.

6. After you get done with the Windows installation, you may want to reformat the 4th partition whatever volume format you want. I suggest NTFS or HFS+ first. Then FAT32. Then exFAT. NTFS/HFS+ are journaled file systems. FAT32 and exFAT are not. FAT32 has two FATs so repairs are fairly straightforward and tend to work. exFAT has one FAT and repairs are less successful.

But really my main advise is that extra partitions are ill advised and antequated. Just pick a folder on either the OS X or Windows side of things, and get the software needed for one or both OS's to be able to read/write the other OS's file system.

Or get an external drive and partition and format it however you want, as these limtations don't apply there like they do on boot drives.

Another suggestion I would make, is to use virtualization software like VirtualBox, Parallels, or Fusion and share folders between the two OSes. If you need access to underlying hardware on the Mac for any purpose then VMs do not solve that problem, but do help in lessening the aggravation of Bootcamp partition management, so that is a choice to be made.

The NTFS driver in OSX is readonly, but can support read-write of NTFS, with a possible hack.

http://www.cnet.com/news/how-to-manually-enable-ntfs-read-and-write-in-os-x/

I have also used NTFS-3g (OpenSource version of Tuxera), which requires OSXFuse.

http://www.macports.org/ports.php?by=name&substr=ntfs

Hi Christopher,

thank you for your help! I try to go the the way you described in detail. I think in step 2 you mean "delete the Recovery HD"?! Am I right that I will be able to use this Internet recovery/install without the Recovery HD?

thx

RockOn

Hi Loner,

thanks for the tip with enabling NTFS write!!!!!!

kr

RockOn

Oops. Step 2 should be delete Recovery HD, not Mac HD.

Yes, step 2 should be delete Recovery HD not Mac HD.

If you delete Recovery HD, you will no longer be able to do an emergency boot from the drive, which also means you can't run Disk Utility to do any sort of repairs. Instead, you'll need to boot OS X over the Internet. If you option-key boot to get the boot manager, you'll see a way to connect to a network, and you'll be able to boot the computer from the network and there you'll have the option to use Disk Utility or reinstall the OS.

The other thing you can't do without Recovery HD is encrypt the drive with FileVault 2.