Scotch_Brawth
Level 3
(820 points)
Q: Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition
I'm running OS X 10.8 and Windows 7 x64 Pro.
After properly setting up Boot Camp to dual-boot Windows on my Mac mini, I decided to test whether or not it was true that creating another partition (a data partition for OS X) would interfere with Boot Camp. Wikipedia claims it does interfere but without citing a source, whilst the Boot Camp documentation itself only specifies that the disk must be a single partition _prior_ to setup - there's no mention of whether the disk must be _kept_ that way afterwards.
I opened Disk Utility, reduced the size of my OS X parition from 420GB to 80GB, and created a new partition in the unallocated space. Here's how it looks now:
When I attempted to proceed with the process, I did receive a warning that doing this (and I quote), "may" cause problems with Boot Camp. Seeing as it was inconclusive, I thought I'd give it a shot - nothing ventured…
Of course, it borked Boot Camp, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here. Whilst OS X boots just fine, the Boot Camp partition now no longer shows up in the Startup Manager, though it does in the Startup Disk prefPane. If I do attempt to boot into Boot Camp, I receive the following message on a black screen:
No bootable device --- insert boot disk and press any key
The advice given to someone who had this same problem was, "fix your damaged Boot Camp volume." But I'm at a loss as to how to do that.
So, anyone know how to proceed now so that I can keep my partitions as is, whilst fully restoring normal Boot Camp functionality?
Mac mini (Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
Christopher Murphy
Level 3
(555 points)
sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
If you get any error messages at this point, report the error messages, don't proceed further.
You're now in gdisk interactive mode. Menus/commands are single characters followed by return/enter. So type ? and <enter> and you'll get the main menu listing commands. Type p <enter> and it will print (display) the current GPT. Since you have 5 GPT entries, you can't use a 1 for 1 GPT to MBR scheme like Apple does. The following suggestion is safe, but all hybrid MBRs are non-standard inventions, and therefore I can't tell you how Boot Camp Assistant or Disk Utility will react to this hybrid MBR should you decide to make changes later. What I can tell you is Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X themselves have no problem with this MBR scheme.
r <enter> go to the recovery & transformation menu
h <enter> create a new hybrid MBR
5 <enter> add partion 5 to the MBR
<enter> accept the default MBR hex code of 07
y <enter> set the bootable flag
n <enter> do not protect more partitions
o < enter> print (display) the MBR
You should have two entries. One type EE, one 07, with the 07 entry marked with * under Boot. If you don't, report back. If you do, write out the update partition information, and hope a power failure doesn't occur for the next few seconds...
w <enter> write partition table to disk
reboot. hold down option - you should be able to boot into either Mac HD, Recovery HD, or Windows.
I just tested this same five partition GPT and 2 partition MBR on a working system and the instructions above worked.
Note, so long as CSM-BIOS and thus MBR are required for Boot Camp instead of EFI booting Windows, we're stuck with flaky MBR problems, as well as the 2TB disk limitation for Windows boot disks.
Also, I filed bug ID 11980880 at bugreport.apple.com and referenced this thread.
