Retina iMac 3tb Fusion drive Boot Camp failure

Last login: Tue Mar 24 11:46:05 on ttys000

Garths-iMac:~ garthscovill$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk2

Password:

gpt show: /dev/disk2: mediasize=3000592982016; sectorsize=512; blocks=5860533168

gpt show: /dev/disk2: PMBR at sector 0

gpt show: /dev/disk2: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: /dev/disk2: Sec GPT at sector 5860533167

start size index contents

0 1 PMBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

409640 5858853696 2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

5859263336 1269760 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

5860533096 39

5860533135 32 Sec GPT table

5860533167 1 Sec GPT header

Garths-iMac:~ garthscovill$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk2

Disk: /dev/disk2 geometry: 97451/255/63 [1565565872 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

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

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

1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 4294967294] <Unknown ID>

2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

Garths-iMac:~ garthscovill$

There is no Bootcamp partition on disk2. Can you create it and post the output of the same commands for the 3.0TB disk? It should stay disk2.

Here's the response when I backed out of Bootcamp right after the drive is formatted in FAT and right before Windows formats to NTFS. I'll let it go through the NTFS format step and resend.

Last login: Tue Mar 24 12:21:13 on ttys000

Garths-iMac:~ garthscovill$ diskutil cs list

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)

|

+-- Logical Volume Group 1143BF70-AF5D-4BCD-B304-88AED9DC6949

=========================================================

Name: Macintosh HD

Status: Online

Size: 2922186924032 B (2.9 TB)

Free Space: 114688 B (114.7 KB)

|

+-< Physical Volume A9135F13-9EB4-4B6F-AE30-D3F0D5C2E44B

| ----------------------------------------------------

| Index: 0

| Disk: disk0s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 120988852224 B (121.0 GB)

|

+-< Physical Volume 4A157D52-4FDF-4D62-98BE-47A05ED9E1E7

| ----------------------------------------------------

| Index: 1

| Disk: disk1s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 2801198071808 B (2.8 TB)

|

+-> Logical Volume Family 26F33773-506B-4DB2-8B7D-925B093B3F55

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

Encryption Status: Unlocked

Encryption Type: None

Conversion Status: NoConversion

Conversion Direction: -none-

Has Encrypted Extents: No

Fully Secure: No

Passphrase Required: No

|

+-> Logical Volume D4CE18F5-E627-46F3-85A5-D93732E1E5E4

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

Disk: disk2

Status: Online

Size (Total): 2915999940608 B (2.9 TB)

Conversion Progress: -none-

Revertible: No

LV Name: Macintosh HD

Volume Name: Macintosh HD

Content Hint: Apple_HFS

Garths-iMac:~ garthscovill$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk2

gpt show: unable to open device '/dev/disk2': Resource busy

Garths-iMac:~ garthscovill$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk2

fdisk: /dev/disk2: Resource busy

Garths-iMac:~ garthscovill$

BCA seems to be broken pretty badly. You reduced the HDD from 3.0TB to 2.9 TB, which is roughly 100GB beyond the 2TB boundary. MBR method of installation will fail. EFI Boot is likely to work, provided there is a valid protective MBR in place. This is the same issue as the OP. The only method I know is to use a custom resizeStack command as was suggested to the OP.

I'm having a similar issue with a new 5K late 2015 iMac with a 3T Fusion drive. Had created an image of my previous working install from a 2011 iMac using Winclone as a backup. I used BCA and followed the Apple methods for installing Windows. It always got stuck at the point of reformatting from FAT to NTFS. I talked to several 'senior' engineers at AppleCare who were really no help. The engineer I talked to this morning said that the 3T Fusion drive was not compatible with Bootcamp which seems to be inconsistent with what is on the Apple website. It's frustrating since I bought this particular model for the faster Fusion drive to use with both Windows and OS X.

I have also created a partition for windows and have used Winclone to create a duplicate of my previous install. The install appears to be all there in terms of the files and I can see it when I boot using the option key, but the computer refuses to boot into Windows. Every time I select Windows as the startup drive it tries and then switches to OS X.

Do you have any ideas about how to fix this? I really want to get this computer set up for dual boot. If I cannot with the current hardware setup, then I will need to contact Apple about a return.

Can you start a new discussion and post pertinent details? Winclone between 2015/2016 (destination) and pre-2015 Macs (source) is not supported, even by TwoCanoes due to block size differences on disks. I am aware of only one instance of it actually working in many attempts.