Q: Bootcamp - Create new partition and format in Windows 7

Boot Camp only permits two volumes: OS X and Windows. You cannot have more than two. As soon as you tried creating a third volume you fouled up the drive's partition scheme. It cannot be fixed using Boot Camp Assistant nor Disk Utility. You need to back up the OS X partition, then repartition the drive back to a single volume, reinstall OS X, then use Boot Camp to create a new Windows partition. This is it.

NTFS partitions can't be modified by OS X since to the Mac OS, they are read only. You can shrink it with a third party utility.

1) Purchase WinClone.

2) Follow their directions for resizing a Windows Boot Camp partition. Skip the last part of the instructions if you don't want the Windows partition to be the default startup volume.

The limit is due to the MBR that is used by Macs to support Windows. With Windows 8+, on newer Macs (which have extensive EFI) support, it can be installed using EFI on a GPT disk. There are also Hybrid MBRs which can be created, but they are very fragile and OS updates cause heartburn.

The other option is to use two disks, rather than 1 and dedicate a single disk to Windows which would allow a maximum of four (4) MBR partitions. Be aware of issues with disks larger than 2.2TB limitation with the MBR implementation.

I was wanting to create multiple partitions inside of Windows.

Okay, I didn't get that from the way your initial post was worded. So if I have this straight, you want break up the current 500GB Windows partition into three separate Windows partitions. In the end, NTFS partitions still take up a total of 500GB, but are now the original Win partition (now smaller), and two new NTFS partitions taking up the rest of the space. Correct?

Well, no, it's not clear. Shrink the Windows drive - self explanatory. Create 2 extra drives - not clear at all. Two Windows NTFS drives? Two Mac formatted drives? One of each? Details matter.

So to ask again. Is what I posted before this correct? Yes or no. I ask because what you want to do can be done right from within Windows if you're creating two more NTFS partitions out of the original.

Kurt Lang wrote:

I ask because what you want to do can be done right from within Windows if you're creating two more NTFS partitions out of the original.

In a single disk system, the MBR looks like this. Even Windows cannot add an entry, unless this Hybrid MBR is manipulated by hand prior to the partition creation. For example, one can create the '0xEE' entry as start=1, size=1454211071, which then allows Windows to create two more entries. If that is done by hand, the GPT and MBR are now out-of-sync. which means OS upgrades or anything done in Disk Utility will cause a data loss or create Windows boot issues.

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Password:

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 121643/255/63 [1954210120 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

         Starting       Ending

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

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

1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>

2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 - 1452530904] HFS+      

3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [1452940544 -    1269536] Darwin Boot

*4: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [1454211072 -  499998720] HPFS/QNX/AUX

If the OP really wants a clean installation, pure EFI of both OSX and Windows is the best solution.

It can be done from within Windows. You can separate out a partition into new partitions from its GUI. Even to the startup drive. As far as Windows is concerned, that space belongs to it and you can do whatever you wish to that space.

I would certainly have a full backup before proceeding, though. As I would if I didn't have Windows installed at all and was creating or removing Mac partitions on a drive.

Kurt Lang wrote:

 

It can be done from within Windows.

Where do you think this partition information will be written to on the MBR that I listed? To the MBR? To the GPT?

I've done it in the past and was playing with it again just now. It can be done, but is extremely dangerous. One slip up and the entire drive is lost.

If the OP ever decides to return, there's a much safer way to to do what he wants from OS X. I started describing the steps above and it works flawlessly. I've done it myself. The difference from WinClone's page of instructions (since he wants multiple drives, not just a resized Win 7 partition) would be these additional steps:

3) Once you've used WinClone to shrink the Windows partition and create a WinClone backup of it, use Disk Utility to delete the NTFS partition.

4) You now have a 500GB hole of unused space on the drive. Create three new MS-DOS partitions to whatever size you want. Make sure one of them is big enough to hold the minimum space necessary for Win 7, plus at least an extra 10GB of working space. Click Apply and exit DU.

5) Use WinClone to restore the shrunken backup you made to the partition you want Win 7 back on. It will automatically become an NTFS partition when the restore is done.

6) Boot to Win 7 and reformat the other two MS-DOS (FAT32) drives as NTFS.

Done.

If you have a working system, can you post the MBR and GPT for the disk on which this has been implemented?

My guess is that the MBR has a single entry for the concatenation of the three parts in a single entry.

This is what I had suggested in the my earlier post with a Hybrid MBR and a single entry for all non Windows partitions, which would mean

MBR entry #1 - EFI,OSX,Recovery HD

MBR entry #2 - MS-DOS (or NTFS) Partition 1

MBR entry #3 - MS-DOS (or NTFS) Partition 2

MBR entry #4 - NTFS/Bootcamp.

At this point any DU/Bootcamp manipulation will kill the disk. Fdisk/MBR cannot support more than four entries. Also, if four (instead of three) MS-DOS partitions are created, then this method will not work either, which is the MBR limitation.