My Windows 8 partition is not showing

Hi,

I have an issue with my macbook pro (early 2011) that I’m hoping someone will be able to help me with. I have tried researching the issue on my own and haven’t found anything that fits my specific situation. I consider myself only a little above the average computer user and do not have any formal education in computers.

I had partitioned my brother’s macbook previously with windows 7 and did not have any real issue. I had looked up walkthroughs on youtube and forums. That was about a year ago. This past week I decided I would like to partition my macbook so that I could use windows. My boyfriend already owned a version of windows 8 (64 bit) that had not been used so I assumed it would be fine to use it. I carelessly did not back up my computer. I used boot camp assistant that has two checkboxes with the options of downloading the latest Windows support from Apple and Install Windows 7 or later version. I did both, which prompted me to plug in a USB drive, which I did. When it was done downloading the Windows support, it prompted me to install the cd I was using for installation, which I did, the windows 8 64 bit. Afterwards it prompted me to choose how much I’d like to partition to windows. I chose the option to divide it equally, which if I remember correctly came out to be about 159 GB for the remaining storage on my mac and about 159 GB going to the new windows partition. At some point the computer restarted and I had the option for accepting the terms and agreements for Windows, and I did, then it prompted me for a product key, which I put in. I had options for disk 0, 1, 2 etc and correlating numbers for partitions. When I had done this before if I remember correctly, one of the options should have looked something like “Disk 1 Partition 3: BOOTCAMP” and I believe I would have done a few steps after that including formatting it. But the bootcamp partition was not showing up as an option. So I decided to reboot into my mac and remove the partition and start again when I had someone to help me.

The problem is that, I can’t remove the partition because its not showing up anywhere on my mac, that I can see. I tried using boot camp again to remove it, but it just gave me the same prompts as if I had just started. I also tried going into disk utility and it does not show up there either. I also noticed that the approximate amount of GB I assigned to the windows partition was still taking up that memory. Instead of having the original number of GB of free space on my mac it is now saying I have 85.87 GB free of 159.84 GB. When I tried to partition windows again using boot camp just to see what it’d say, the numbers matched having only 85.87 GB to divide between mac and windows. After looking up various info on my mac, the only thing I've noticed showing what amount of storage I originally had is going into system report and selecting storage and seeing something called logical volume group that has 319.21 GB of which 159.02 is free, which matches the numbers of the partition I made. But I have no idea if that's even relevant or what a logical volume group even is. I should have backed up my computer and should have looked into it more before blindly diving in, but now that I have, I was hoping if someone had an idea of what could have happened or what I might have done wrong. The only solution I have come across is backing up my current computer and reformatting my mac. I’d like to try and avoid this if its possible but will if I have to.

I apologize for the wordy explanation. I was using OS X El Capitan when I did the partition, and I updated it after I did the partition hoping it might help somehow but there were no changes. If any more information is needed or if pictures are required I would be happy to do that. Thanks for your time.

Other information:

OS X El Capitan version 10.11.3

MBP 13 in, early 2011

Processor 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5

Memory 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Graphics Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB

Boot Camp Assistant Version 6.0.1 (522)