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An Update to my Mac COMPLETELY Obliterated Boot Camp

Apple Community,

Please help me. Two days ago I performed an update; I have a 27 inch 3.2 GHz iMac (not sure what kind of specs the community needs here). I updated to the OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 and the update completely erased my boot camp. I had 300-400 (not exactly sure how much I had) GB partitioned to the Windows 7 side. I tried to just repartition it today, and start from scratch. It won;t let me do it. Can I recover this data? Can I just revert it?

Please someone help me...

Stephanie

Also, I will check this regularly...

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Nov 1, 2015 6:57 AM

60 replies

Loner T

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Nov 2, 2015 10:41 AM in response to treehuggwanz

Was the ESD-USB (shown in your diskutil list) built using BC Assistant to help Repair W7?

treehuggwanz Author

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Nov 2, 2015 10:47 AM in response to Loner T

I want to say yes, but I am unsure I completely understand the question. What do you mean "Repair W7"?

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Nov 2, 2015 10:53 AM in response to treehuggwanz

If the OSX partitioning is correct and the Windows volume is visible in OSX, but Windows does not boot, a Startup Repair is used to correct the Boot sector or any other type of file corruption. If you could not start a Repair, that is fine, but a partial repair or failed repair was completed, it cam lead to more severe issues.

Do you keep backups of Windows?

treehuggwanz Author

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Nov 2, 2015 10:58 AM in response to Loner T

So I do not have any backups of windows (dumb, I know). In my startup disk, where you would boot up windows via boot camp, windows isn't even showing, which led me to believe that the update just completely erased windows side. Which is why I initially just decided to cut my losses and try to start over.

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Nov 2, 2015 11:05 AM in response to treehuggwanz

If you re-attempt Windows installation using BC Assistant, it makes it almost impossible to recover. BCA will do additional sector moves (the 1269536 entries you see are examples of these).

Testdisk has a program called PhotoRec (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec) that you try to extract files using a signature based recovery, but it does not look very promising. This recovery can take a long time.

treehuggwanz Author

Level 1

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Nov 2, 2015 11:10 AM in response to Loner T

Was it the update that did this? Just from what you can see here?

Will my windows product key work if I just start from scratch? My windows side was mostly for gaming PC games, and most saved data was in clouds, so data retrieval is not going to be a big deal.

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Nov 2, 2015 11:15 AM in response to treehuggwanz

It could be the update. Have you used any third-party tools before the upgrade to resize/re-partition Windows?

Your product key will work for re-installation, since your configuration has not changed.

treehuggwanz Author

Level 1

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Nov 2, 2015 11:17 AM in response to Loner T

Thanks for all your help Loner, is there anything I should do to prep my Mac for this? It seemed to not want to let me do this yesterday morning...

treehuggwanz Author

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Nov 2, 2015 11:22 AM in response to Loner T

No, I never used any third party tools.

Also I never resized or repartitioned. I gave a hefty size to the windows size so that I would never have to do that. I read, and heard about a lot of headaches of people who had to do that. So thought I would avoid it.

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Nov 2, 2015 11:29 AM in response to treehuggwanz

Run BCA, and if you run into any issues, post back and we can tackle them.

treehuggwanz Author

Level 1

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Nov 2, 2015 11:30 AM in response to Loner T

Awesome!!

Thanks Loner T!! 🙂

treehuggwanz Author

Level 1

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Nov 2, 2015 11:48 AM in response to Loner T

So this is what it is saying to me

And this is most definitely windows 7

All I can think to do is to delete the the ISO image and redo the ISO image?

treehuggwanz Author

Level 1

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Nov 2, 2015 12:18 PM in response to treehuggwanz

I am pretty sure I did it correctly....

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Nov 2, 2015 3:15 PM in response to treehuggwanz

I assume you are using Create an ISO image for Boot Camp from Windows installation media - Apple Support to build the ISO.

treehuggwanz Author

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Nov 3, 2015 7:16 AM in response to Loner T

Yup, the exact site that I used...

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An Update to my Mac COMPLETELY Obliterated Boot Camp