Boot camp: "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition"

1. I would recommend the TM backup and restore. You can let it run overnight, but watch for a few minutes for it to provide an estimate.

2. To erase and restore.

a. Connect you Mac to the TM device via ethernet or USB (as the case maybe).

b. Put the "grey" Restore Disk 1 (Install Mac OSX) into DVD drive.

c. Power-Cycle and select the DVD to boot from.

d. After DVD boots to a menu, run Disk Utility from the DVD, erase your internal drive, and format it as a Mac OS X Extended Journaled disk.

e. Click on Restore via TM backup and select the internal drive as the destination.

f. Wait for a few minutes to check if restore has started and you get an estimate of time.

3. The output of the GPT command is the GUID partition table on your disk.

4. The output of the Fdisk is your MBR (or Hybrid MBR). Windows legacy use a BIOS emulation layer called CSM-BIOS for discovering HW on the Mac.

Barncore wrote:

Also, i already went ahead and bought iDefrag, which i will refund tomorrow (don't worry it's no problem). Honestly, is it worth trying that first, before i go the longer journey of formatting and restoring?

I would leave it on the shelf. 😉

Barncore wrote:

Well i already have a Time Machine backup from earlier today so i might aswell use that, if the result is equal (only difference being some minor complication, right?).

Do either of you have a good link i can use as a guide for this clone and restore bizzo?

Also, is it something i can let run while my sleep? (i'm about to go to bed)

The only difference is in the procedure, the clone is made by plugging in an external drive and telling CCC to clone the internal drive to it ... time passes ... once the internal is erased you just boot up from the clone, run CCC again and clone the external back to the internal. That's it.

Both methods take long enough that you should do it overnight, and you should set your Mac not to go to sleep.

Click on the Apple -> Restart and hold the Alt Key as you hear the chime. It should show a list of disks, one is your OSX partition, the other should be your DVD. Select the DVD.

Yes, you should erase the 1TB drive (not just the Macintosh HD). When you reformat it, it should put back the EFI stuff automatically.

If you want to very the TM backup, connect your TM drive, and looks for a file called backups.backupdb (it is a directory) and if you expand it, you should see entries by date, which should show individual files as you go deeper into the tree.

Since the disk will stay in the Mac and not be sold to someone else, there is no real need for any Security Options. You will be restoring from Backup anyway. Security Erase Options are useful if you do not want a forensic recovery attempt made on your internal drive. You can use FileVault2 (disk encryption) later, if you want to.

In simple terms you have not read the directions for Boot Camp in which this is covered (around page 7) I did suggest readsng them in an earlier thread but It seems that advice was not followed.

Read the directions, from page 1 is good, but the part you need is around page 6 or 7

Barncore wrote:

Edit #2: I found my answer. Thanks

This part can be easily enhanced in Bootcamp Assistant in the future. The Apple NTFS driver can be made to convert the DOS partition that the Disk Utility creates, so this convert-DOS-to-NTFS-during-installation is not required. I have suggested this via Feedback as a feature, but the infinite wisdom at Infinite Loop has chosen this road.

Apple deliberately disable the NTFS Write feature because it is an unreliable implementation. Are you saying that you know that it is not, can you provide some links in support of that?

Barncore wrote:

What directions? Is there a link? I see no directions within Boot Camp, other than "print directions".

Who mentioned a printer, just print to a pdf file.