How do I remove the old windows boot camp partition which is now useless on my new Macbook pro

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Level 1

4 points

How do I remove the old windows boot camp partition which is now useless on my new Macbook pro

I had boot camped windows Vista to my old Macbook Pro 2009.

When I bought a new Macbook Pro Retina Late 2013, I restored from my Time Machine backup. It never put Windows Vista on as there was compatability issues.

I recently tried to partition in Boot Camp to install Windows 8 so that I can use a particular program for work. The "ghost" partition is still there and I can't see an option to make the HD as one again. Boot Camp wants me to format the HD as single and journaled which I understand but if I restore from my backup it puts the "ghost" partition back in. 6 hours of waiting to find that out!

Any ideas?

Thanks

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Jan 29, 2015 10:00 PM

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Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Jan 30, 2015 3:14 AM in response to Brent212_uk

You can move Vista to the new MBP, using products line Winclone or Clonezilla.

TM does not (and cannot backup) NTFS partitions, but it can and does restore the disk layout.

Does Bootcamp Assistant allow you to Remove the Windows installation (and the "ghost" partition)?

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Answer 2

Brent212_uk Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 30, 2015 3:51 AM in response to Loner T

Thanks for responding.

Boot Camp shows my HD as a rectangle when I go to the "partition" tab but nearly half of it is white. Is this the free space?

The error message I got was:-

The disk cannot be partitioned because some of the files could not be moved.

Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS extended (journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp assistant again.

I was only making a small partition, so it couldn't have been too big.

There is no evidence of any Windows installation or a physical partition but it must be there to get that message. Is that correct?

I can't see an option to format my whole HD but even if there was, the problem would reappear when restored from TMachine.

UPDATE:

just tried to make the white area on my HD into a new partition and then erase it.

I'm trying Boot Camp again to see if that has worked. It just takes about 2 hours to get to the problem stage again!!

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Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Jan 30, 2015 7:28 AM in response to Brent212_uk

Can you post the output of the following commands from OSX Terminal? (Enter your password when prompted by the "sudo" commands, and it will not be echoed back).

diskutil list

diskutil cs list

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

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Answer 4

Brent212_uk Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 30, 2015 9:15 AM in response to Brent212_uk

Thank you everyone.

My solution has worked. I covered the area with a new partition called Macintosh HD2 then erased it and started again.

WIndows 8.1 has gone on

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