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Level 1

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Can`t boot Windows partition (not installed with bootcamp)

Hello everyone! I would appreciate your time. I will be persistent on recovering the partition and will commit to the work to be done.

I Partitioned a 500GB hard drive (slim HGST drive) in my macbook pro 5.1.

Two visible partitions were created.

Windows 7 Professional 64bits was installed (NTFS) over second partition, of ±450GB.

After installing Windows 7, installed OS X Leopard (HFS+)to the first partition ± 50GB.

They were working ok.

After installing the infamous hfs+ paragon driver on windows, things have changed.

Well, I can't boot windows since then. I erased Leopard because didn't give options on tools and Installed Yosemite as a clean install from a USB (entire procedure done with apple disk utility). Now I have: the Windows partition that I can see the greyed disk0s4 (was disk0s3) and the working Yosemite partition.

So here is my data:

Jacks-MacBook-Pro:~ jackdaniel$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 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 [ 411648 - 103590112] HFS+

3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 104001760 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

4: 0C 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 105271296 - 871501824] Win95 FAT32L

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

Jacks-MacBook-Pro:~ jackdaniel$ sudo gdisk -l /dev/disk0

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.0

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their

partition table automatically reloaded!

Partition table scan:

MBR: hybrid

BSD: not present

APM: not present

GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.

Disk /dev/disk0: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB

Logical sector size: 512 bytes

Disk identifier (GUID): 5646FAF4-E9C6-4E5D-AAF3-2F03B78B31F3

Partition table holds up to 128 entries

First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134

Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries

Total free space is 2029 sectors (1014.5 KiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name

1 40 409639 200.0 MiB EF00 EFI System Partition

2 411648 104001759 49.4 GiB AF00 Apple_HFS_Untitled_2

3 104001760 105271295 619.9 MiB AB00 Recovery HD

4 105271296 976773119 415.6 GiB 0700

The "hold option" function brings me Recovery HD and Yosemite options.

The rEFInd brings me Recovery HD, Yosemite and Windows options, but Windows stops probably when trying to call the boot loader, so stays black screen.

Anyway, I will need that data that was into Windows. Never would assume paragon hfs+ would harm my boot sectors.

Anyone?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on May 17, 2015 10:09 AM

17 replies

Jack Dan Author

Level 1

0 points

May 22, 2015 1:42 PM in response to Loner T

Oh right! So I own you the rest of the history!

Here it is what happened:

1- I thought that testdisk was missing something. We needed its results to change the partition index and try to make the partition readable, at least.

2- So I prospected around the internet for related problems with paragon HFS+ and found lots of people with issues like that: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/257737-stay-away-from-paragon-hfs-9-for-w indows/ and http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1677099 as examples.

3- I realized that what I wanted was the files and folders.

4- Searched the internet for other softwares to try reach the proper partition.

5- Found 5 of them. Chose one, called Stellar Phoenix Recovery 6 as a first run tester.

6- After running the program for awhile, exactly on the same spot we expected, it found the entire partition and folders.

7- I ran Stellar Phoenix and testdisk at the same time to check which one would get to that sector address first. Stellar was a lot faster. Testdiskfailed to find the partition. Stellar didn't. (check images with sector address included).

8- Stellar gave the option to extract the files and folders to any drive. I used a combo of: An external drive connected via USB port and another notebook running Windows 7 connected to the ethernet port as a network. Transferred the files straight from one to another using the macbook pro as bridge.

9- So thats what I did.

10- Now I chose to have 1 partition with Yosemite and on an external drive, Windows 10. Still trying to install Windows 10 on it, but I will never put two system on a single HDD again, macs are just not very well built for anything other than the basics.

11- Got my files and folders back.

I sincerely thank you for being here that fast and for being so kind, I will be returning to seek your knowledge again in the future. You are very professional.

Amazing software: Stellar Phoenix Recovery. Intuitive and straight to the point.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

May 22, 2015 1:52 PM in response to Jack Dan

At least Testdisk was close, but Stellar re-built the MFT. I know Testdisk does not rebuild the MFT, but only looks for lost partitions using the 'front' or 'backup' headers. I am glad to see you have your data back. SPR may be a worthwhile tool for me to explore further.

Thanks for posting back with your findings and recommendations.

Please make sure you have backups of both OSX and Windows to separate external disk as a baseline for future recovery.

Can`t boot Windows partition (not installed with bootcamp)