Almost There with three partitions: OSX, Data, Win8.1

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Level 1

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Almost There with three partitions: OSX, Data, Win8.1

Hi,

I have checked and followed the different recommendations to get a proper partitions arrangement in my 1TB SSD as to have Mavericks, a shared exFAT data, and bootcamp partitions. Up to now, about 100 reboots and three times installing Mavericks and Windows. I have also benefited from the sudo gdisk post by Christopher Murphy a few times when bootcamp ' dissapears'...

What worked for me at the end:

1. Installed Mavericks (via Command-R as my recovery partitition was also gone while experimenting)
2. Used Bootcamp to install Windows 8.1 via USB, giving it 180GB of space at the end of the disk (leaving the rest for Mac)
3. Made sure several times that I could switch via bootcamp control panel/startup disk, and via Command key
4. Resized Mac partition to about 160Gb via Mac Disk Utility. At this point Bootcamp disappeared and used the sudo gdisk procedure to recover bootcamp
5. Switched a few times Mavericks-Windows-Mavericks.
6. Then I tried various ways of making the middle partition being visible to Windows: erasing, creating, +, -, setting as FAT, ExFAT. Finally I just left the space unused (disk utility shows White for Mac, 650GB in gray, White for Windows).

Now Windows will see the partition as unallocated but when I try to assign it to a drive letter using Disk Management, I receive the “There is no space available on disk to complete this operation… Disk shows as:

200 MB Healthy GPT protective Partition
149.4 GB HFS Healthy Primary Partition
620MB Healthy Primary Partition
612.42 GB Unallocated
169.22 GB NTFS Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

I understand there are several recommendations to: just leave as it is, use external disk for data, don't use Mac, etc... but for me, this is the perfect solution for working, developing, and enjoying my iMac. I would prefer not to use additional software to Access data in my drives, or to use virtualization...

Any Support to make this partition functional so that I can share with OS and Windows is appreciated…

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

Posted on Jul 23, 2014 2:49 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Jul 23, 2014 2:54 PM in response to Sandovalxy

If you use Boot Camp then you can only have two partitions: OS X and Windows. You cannot add a third partition which is what you have, in effect, done. To have this actually work requires that you use a different partition manager/boot loader. See The rEFInd Boot Manager - rodsbooks.com.

Given what you have already done I don't know if rEFInd will work initially. You may need to start over by repartitioning your hard drive from scratch. Be sure you have a current bootable backup of your OS X partition.

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Answer 2

Sandovalxy Author

Level 1

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Jul 23, 2014 3:14 PM in response to Sandovalxy

Kappy, thanks for taking the time to read my post and comment. If I was to go the rEFInd way, what would be the procedure from scratch? Will I have issues let's say when Yosemite arrives?

Thanks in advance,

Carlos

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Answer 3

Sandovalxy Author

Level 1

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Jul 23, 2014 3:15 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy, thanks for taking the time to read my post and comment. If I was to go the rEFInd way, what would be the procedure from scratch? Will I have issues let's say when Yosemite arrives?

Thanks in advance,

Carlos

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Answer 4

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Jul 23, 2014 4:20 PM in response to Sandovalxy

I can't tell you anything about Yosemite or even if rEFInd will be compatible with it. I've never used it, but it's the replacement for an earlier utility called rEFIt that I have used. Essentially, you would setup your desired partition scheme. You would install whatever operating systems you wanted in each partition. Then you install rEFIt which takes control of the bootloader and configures a boot manager screen in which each available OS is displayed with its own icon. Much like in OS X if you use OPTION booting. You then click on the OS from which you want to start. Since it does not care that there are other partitions on the drive you can have as many as you want. I assume rEFInd is quite similar. Download it or read its documentation online. That's the best way to find out what it does.

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Answer 5

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,660 points

Jul 23, 2014 5:32 PM in response to Sandovalxy

Have you reinspected the disk with gdisk?

rodsbooks Rod is also gpt fdisk's (a.k.a. gdisk) Rod Smith 🙂

His site has a lot of info on this sort of thing. I have rEFInd setup, but I can't recollect how! I think it can be installed on any HFS partition (read the manual 🙂).

I suspect these issues are because of hybrid partition tables. Windows may read from the MBR whilst Mac OS uses the GPT.

I'm not even sure if you have a hybrid partition so you should read up on it to see if it fits with the situation.

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

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Answer 6

Sandovalxy Author

Level 1

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Jul 24, 2014 11:12 AM in response to Sandovalxy

Gents,

Thanks for your comments and recommendations. Basically installing via Bootcamp was the problem. So this is what I did:

Booted OSX install (Via Command R as my recovery partition was not available)
Launched Disk Utility (before installing)
Partitioned Disk in three partitions (180GB Mac OS Extended Journaled, 650GB ExFat, 180GB MS-DOS FAT), Names were not important
Installed OSX Mavericks into first partition
Launched Bootcamp ONLY to create USB disk to install Windows (using my Win 8.1 ISO file)
Checked that everything went well, checked disk partitions, still ok
Booted, Option Key, Booted from USB, Erased and formatted partitions 2 and 3 (Data and Bootcamp)
Installed Windows in Partition 3 (I left it at the end just because it seems that OSX likes that...). Windows will reboot so you might need to use Option key to avoid computer loading OSX. Bootcamp drivers were installed during the second automatic reboot
Checked back and forth booting Mavericks, Windows via option key and Bootcamp control panel in Windows and Startup Disk in Mavericks

Finally everything is working fine, I can boot both OS systems, share data between the two (pictures can be accessed by iPhoto and Windows version of LightRoom... I am a happy man.. 🙂

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Answer 7

McIvank

Level 1

4 points

Sep 5, 2014 6:10 PM in response to Sandovalxy

Thank you for the detailed instructions!
Through my own experimentation, I've found myself on the same path.
How is this working out for you? No exFAT trouble?

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Answer 8

McIvank

Level 1

4 points

Sep 6, 2014 2:07 PM in response to McIvank

So I am finally up and running. But ended up using gdisk to replace the Protective MBR. At step 6. I verified/repaired the partitions in Disk Utility and I believe this is what muddled the install. Also I'm booting Yosemite Beta.

But anyway, to everyone else having problems... Using Gdisk to restore a protective MBR does not mean you are limited to 4 partitions, all GPTs have a protective MBR - there's actually a MS.technet article on this. Also I cannot attest to the safety/security of using some free software (Gdisk) ...but I'm up and running!

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