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User profile for user: wildmanky
wildmanky Author
User level: Level 1
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New Hard Drive, Mac partition cloned and boots fine, but I can't seem to get my BOOTCAMP (windows) partition to boot! Any ideas?

Hello all!


I got a new hard drive for my Mac Book Pro and an enclosure so I could clone the old partitions on to the new drive.


So I...


  1. Put the new hard drive in the enclosure.
  2. Booted up off an install disk and ran disk utility.
  3. Copied the Mac and Bootcamp partitions over to the new drive that was connected VIA USB.
  4. Turned off the computer, took the old hard drive out and put it in the enclosure.
  5. Put the new hard drive in the Mac Book Pro.
  6. Booted into Mac OSX with no problem.
  7. When I rebooted held down the option key to boot into the windows side, it didn't show up as an option.


When I went back into the Mac side, I loaded Disk Utility and saw that I had the Mac partition, the BOOTCAMP partition, and a bunch of unallocated space. When I went into the System Preferences and set the target boot drive to the BOOTCAMP partition and restarted, I got some crazy error about there not being any bootable info on it.


That's where I am at. I have found other posts with people who are having the same problem, but I have yet to find a solution that doesn't involve me buying some 3rd party software. I know it has something to do with (what is called in Microsoft world) the Master Boot Record, but I don't know how to modify that to reflect that the BOOTCAMP partition is a bootable logical drive. I remember in MS DOS land there was some command line FDSK /something command that you would run (I think it was /MBR) to reset the MBR. To me though, all of these terms are shadowy figures in the Ether.


What do I do???


-Ricardo


p.s. I read somewhere to boot off the windows 7 disk and run the system repair tools. I tried that and no change.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Jan 28, 2013 9:02 AM

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11 replies
User profile for user: wildmanky
wildmanky Author
User level: Level 1
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Jan 28, 2013 12:09 PM in response to ds store

The bombrich.com or Carbon Copy Cloner site will copy over the drive, but that gets me no closer to where I am now - i.e. I still can boot from the thing.


The twocanoes.com or Winclone site says it will copy a bootable version over, but I don't know about paying them $20 to enable a partition on my hard drive that already exists to become bootable.


I am sure there has to be a free solution to this problem. Surely I am not the first person in the world to upgrade a hard drive on a Mac Book Pro and expect that I could copy over my BOOTCAMP partition.


-Richard

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User profile for user: ds store
ds store
User level: Level 7
30,735 points

Jan 28, 2013 12:51 PM in response to wildmanky

Erase the BootCamp partition and use Winclone to clone it over.


If not, stick the original drive in the enclosure and hold option key on a wired keyboard to boot from OS X on the clone, then install Winclone there and clone that to the internal Bootcamp partiton.


If the enclosure won't boot (some don't) then you can get a inexpesnvie SATA to USB adapter cable online.


The problem is you cloned the BootCamp partition with Disk Utility, also when you get Windows up again on the new intenral, it will have to be revalidated for the new hardware with Microsoft.


Carbon Copy Cloner clones the OS X partition and makes it option key bootable, and it can update it, unlike Disk Utility.


Winclone does the same for Bootcamp parittions.


Sorry to have to make you spend some money, these two softwares (and many more) used to be free until Apple issued 10.7 with AppStore and Gatekeeper with more iOS like features.

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User profile for user: wildmanky
wildmanky Author
User level: Level 1
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Jan 28, 2013 1:08 PM in response to ds store

Per the Carbon Copy Cloner web site:



Can CCC back up my BootCamp (Windows) partition?


CCC can back up the contents of the Boot Camp partition, but it cannot make a bootable clone of the partition. If your goal is to back up your user data on the Boot Camp partition, CCC will meet your needs. If you're looking to migrate your Boot Camp partition to a new hard drive, you might consider an alternative solution such as WinClone, or one of the commercial virtualization solutions that offer a migration strategy from Boot Camp.



So, I am trying this approach where I create an image of my bootcamp partition, use the mac bootcamp utility to create the bootcamp partition, and then restore the image to the partition that the bootcamp utility created - something to do with bootcamp creating the partition AND modifying the MBR which I guess disk utility doesn't do. Apparently this scheme works. We will see.

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User profile for user: ds store
ds store
User level: Level 7
30,735 points

Jan 28, 2013 1:24 PM in response to wildmanky

Your getting too complicated.


To clone OS X boot partition you use Carbon Copy Cloner (unnecessary since you did it with Disk Utility)


To clone the BootCamp Windows partition you use Winclone.


It's very easy and the software handles all the complicated business. Point A to B and click clone.



So use the original drive to Winclone the BootCamp partition back on and it should handle everything for you.



BTW, Mac's use a GUID parittion table, there is no MBR. Later versions of Windows can use a GUID.


In the older verisons of Windows, Apple did supply a hybrid MBR to convince Windows to install, but not any more.



Do not use Windows disk utilities on a Mac, it's not meant for Mac's, only generic PC's. You will mess up your machine using them.

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User profile for user: wildmanky
wildmanky Author
User level: Level 1
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May 20, 2013 4:58 PM in response to pitav

So here's how this went down.


My thinking was that I simply had a drive that I wanted to replicate on another drive. Just 1's and 0's right? Just copy them over! Piece of cake, right? People told me it couldn't be done. They said the lord himself couldn't do it, but I read online in blogs and posts that there were those who had. That some how people had found a way to hack it and make it work. Nay sayers naysayed, but I ignored them and charged head-on into the glorious hard drive clone wars.


You know that saying about sometimes you lose the battle but win the war? Well, I lost both. On the 7th day, I formatted the drive with the Mac partition and completely reloaded Windows. Unfortunatly, I had no foreknowledge that this version of Mac OS X - whatever it is now - had sneaky little devil partitions that I didn't know I needed to clone along with Master Mac Daddy partition. So, once I finally had windows up and running, I went to load into Mac, and, "whomp-whomp." Not only did I end up having to reload all of windows, I had to reinstall Mac OS X as well - from scratch. Epic fail for me brah. It cut me deep.


So, people might tell you that you have to pay for some program, or that it can't be done. I say you flip em the bird and say, "I am going to pick up the flag where that last soldier fell. I am going to grab that symbol of hope, waive it high, and I am going to storm into battle against savages because I know that at some level, the only thing that separates us from the animals is how we act when we are challenged with adversity - I am prepared to meet that challenge, and I will conquer it."


Good luck my friend. For glory.

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User profile for user: PiLigand
PiLigand
User level: Level 1
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Sep 15, 2013 4:50 PM in response to wildmanky

I got it. It CAN be done. At least on 10.6


How I made it happen (for free) on Snow Leopard:


1) partition, dupe etc all that jazz that you know. Make the mac side work, which it seems we've all been able to do no issues. I used SuperDuper! It worked just fine. (Had it on a disk. I assume you could use any other free way of doing this.)


2) New hard drive running, I used bootcamp assistant to partition the new drive for a new Bootcamp. I don't know if it's necessary to make the new partition this way for some reason, but it's what the process ultimately included, so maybe try without, but it worked with.


3) Natively running original drive on the windows side. Used DirveImage XML to clone windows partition onto new drive connected externally.


4) Back on new hard drive running natively. (Sorry for all the switching.) You'll note that the new Bootcamp partition is NOT bootable at this point. It won't come up in the usual 'alt on startup' boot menu.

Download rEFInd and install on mac side. Technically this is freeware or w/e, but for the love of god, throw money at this man. He totally deserves it.


5) Restarting the computer, rEFInd's boot manager finally recognizes windows. But you'll find windows is a little messed up and still won't quite boot. Get out your Windows CD and pop it in. Do the 'alt boot' thing. Your boot menu options are now "EFI Manager," "Bootcamp," and "Windows Disk." Or some such. Holy Crap! It recognizes Windows! 😀


6) Boot to the CD and tell it to repair the windows volume. It will. My computer also had to do a disk check next time I booted to Windows, which took for-stupid-ever, but eventually worked. (I went to bed in between.)


7) Everything is running smoothly. Plus, you get the rEFInd boot manager, which is also great.


Deets: I have a late 2010 MBP 13". Snow leopard/Windows 7 32-bit (long story) Moved from original 320GB seagate momentus to new 750GB Seagate Momentus XT.

Feel free to share/copy&paste this solution as you see useful. Cheers!

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New Hard Drive, Mac partition cloned and boots fine, but I can't seem to get my BOOTCAMP (windows) partition to boot! Any ideas?

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