BootCamp partition reporting wrong size?

I just installed Windows 7 on my iMac.
I just wanted to play a few games... still I cranked the slider up from 20gb to 55gb before I made the initial partition to ensure that I have plenty of space.
Yet, as soon as I tried to download a game off Steam, it said I needed 2.8gb of space & only had 2.4gb left...
Wha........???!
So, I opened "My Computer ". Sure enough, there appears to be only about two gigs left... I right clicked the Windows and Program Files folders to check properties. They are all normal sized... Indeed, if I select all folders on C and check the size... it's about 16gb.
What gives? Where's the other 35+ gb??

Get WinDirStat and see what is hoging up the space.
http://windirstat.info/

Similar Messages

Disk Utility partitions with wrong sizes

I'm trying to partition an external drive do clone/backup my TiBooks harddrive, but, I can't get DU to get the right partition sizes. Using 80 GB 2.5" drive (same size as my current internal drive). I make four partitions, set the sizes, then do a partition, and after the partition is done my partitions are now different sizes. I've dried 'Locking' them, but, still doesn't work.
I played with the sizes, and still can't get the partition sizes I set up to partition correctly.

If the two drives are not exactly the same, then don't expect to be able to partition both of them exactly the same. Different drives will have different specifications and are not identical simply because they are both advertised as 80 GB drives. Even two drives with the same model number from the same manufacturer may differ if the firmware isn't the same on each due to different dates of manufacture. Why is it so critical for you that they be exactly the same?

Disk Utility: Reporting wrong size for disk after a restore

First up, hardware is G4(PPC) running OS 10.4.11
I've just purchased and installed a new 500G drive for this old workhorse as an upgrade for the previous secondary drive. Set it up with a single partition, JHFS+. No problems so far. Went to copy the files from the old drive to this new one and thought, "Why don't I try that handly looking Restore button?". +Yeah, apparently a bad idea+. The old drive is 120GB. I set its (only) volume to be the source and my newly created partition to be the target; set it going and left it alone. All appeared to be well when I came back, until I checked the available space on the new drive.
Disk Utility now reports that this new, 500G drive has a Total Capacity of 128G (137,438,952,960 bytes).
*Remedies tried so far:*
- I've tried reformatting/partitioning, but wasn't able to convince it otherwise. Also tried it booting from an install DVD just in case that made a difference.
- I downloaded a utility from the drive manufacturer which I managed to get on to an ancient, dusty w2k box. Reformatted the drive with 2 NTFS partitions. This seemed to do the trick as they both mounted when I rebooted the Mac. However, when I went to reformat the volumes to JHFS I noticed that the total disk size was still being reported as 128G. Still, they reformatted fine and I transfered my data to them. On a reboot, though, the Mac decided that it didn't want to see the second partition and only shows me disk1s10, ignoring the second partition I set up.
- I have an identical, empty drive to the 500G. I thought I might be able to use the Restore "feature" to trick it back. Set up the second 500G in a firewire box, ran the restore from the empty volume to the screwed up one. No dice.
I thought that OS X ignored any sort of BIOS info on a drive and merely looked at the physical media. Is this correct? Does it store this gathered info in a file somewhere that I can delete?
*This is a call for help.*
I have no problems playing with the command line as root, if that's the sort of suggestions you've got. I just thought I'd ask here before I fdisk/dd etc from new500 to old500. Geometry of the new500 is 60801/255/63.

Thanks! That sounds like a good short term solution for a backup.
EDIT: Cross reference link for anyone who happens to google this thread with a similar problem:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7230072&tstart=0
Message was edited by: mr_lunch

Disk utility reporting wrong size drive

I have a Macbook 4,1 with an 120GB Hard drive. The hard drive has 3 partitions:
12GB Linux Partition
100GB OSX Partition
1GB Linux Swap Partition
It also has 7GB of Free Space at the end of the drive
Now I want to shrink the OSX Partition down to around 80GB (It has 30GB available space) so I have 27GB of Free space to create a Windows Partition. The problem is when I go into disk utility it reports the above partition structure but it also reports I have "100.3GB Free space" at the start of the drive. This is obviously incorrect. It seems harmless enough but the problem is it causes a "The chosen size is not valid for the chosen filesystem" error when I try to resize the OSX partition because the system adds up the size of all of the partitions, realises it's 220GB and so throws the error because it's above the 120GB Drive size. I can't seem to get it to realise that there is no free space at the start of the drive. I've tried using a couple of Linux partitioning programs like GParted and they recognise the correct partition structure but they had a couple of unrelated problems.
Does anyone have any ideas how I can get Disk Utility to sort itself out?

I do not think you can use DU for resizing if you used a linux disk utility before. I never could do that, but am ready to learn how to do that.

Finder reports wrong sizes

The size column in finder frequently reports sizes of folders wrongly as does get info. I have a whole series of folders showing 208K when there are 10-80 37Mb files inside. I can open the folder and see that all the files are there and have the right sizes, but the folder still reports 208K. If I alter the label colour, it will update the sizes, but this is very tedious!
Any way to persuade finder to calculate sizes properly?

all sorted now

Time Machine always reporting wrong size after several full resets

Good afternoon,
I have been using Time Machine on a Macbook Pro 2012 backing up to a QNAP NAS TS-419 P II
After a year of using Time Machine without any issues I've now ran into a situation i do not seem able to resolve.
For several reasons I wanted to do a full Time Machine reset and do a new full back.
For that, after trying various solutions with no succes, I've deleted the sparse bundle, switched off Time Machine support, restarted the NAS, switched on Time Machine support again. Furthermore i did full reset on the Macbook following as per http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html
However every time I start a new backup Time Machine seems to limit the sparse bundle to 1.07 TB, while I have not set any file size restrictions. Next to that it's also reporting only 657 GB of the 1.07 TB is actually free. As if the old sparse bundle with the backups were still there.
Anyone who has been facing the same issue?
Thanks,
Gijs

Actually, I can shorten this down to just:
Mount TimeMachineBackup disk, it reports ~95GB free.
Repair it, it reports 800+GB free
Unmount it
Remount it, it again reports ~95GB free.
Rinse. Repeat.

Time Capsule as Ethernet or USB HD and reporting wrong sizes

I have three questions related to these issues.
I'm using my 500GB Time Capsule (2007 model) as a backup drive. BUT, every time I disconnect the computer, it just won't back up any more. It says it needs twice the room that it really needs, and more than is left on the drive. So now I'm trying to back up via ethernet cable by just dragging files and skipping the Time Machine backup. Apple tech told me TC can be used like any other hard drive, but it comes up as a shared drive, not a device (on left panel of open window.)
I've been dragging files to the TC to copy but this is extremely slow (15 hours to copy 5G. Some files can't copy at all, and just end the copying process, completely. This unit has been exchanged once by Apple, is no longer on warranty, and is just doing the same as the first unit. So, I guess it's something I'm doing here.
QUESTIONS:
1. Can someone tell me how I can use this drive as a reliable backup by directly copying files via ethernet and if this length of time is normal?
2. Can anyone tell me if I can connect the TC to the computer using the USB connector. I tried connecting a firewire drive to the computer, then daisy-chaining the TC via the USB, but neither mounted after that?
3. Finally, can anyone tell me how to reliably use Time Machine to avoid the problems I'm having, such as doubling the amount of bytes I need to copy data? What went wrong there?
Thanks
Michele

MickiB wrote:
Hi Pondini,
Thank you for those links. I managed to get the Time Capsule erased and just manually copied my drive to the Time Capsule. After rebooting it copied faster and with the right sizes, so, for the fast fix, that worked.
There's little point to copying the entire contents of your HD that way; that won't make a usable backup; you can recover things by drag and drop, but you can't use it to restore your whole system. In a pinch, you might copy just your home folder that way.
I guess I can't expect it to behave as if it were any other drive. It still comes up under "Shared", but otherwise, it works like any external drive, so that's good.
Yes, a few things are different, being on a network rather than directly-connected via USB or FireWire.
BUT, for some reason, I never got an email telling me you posted, and just checked today to see what's new, if anything. Being subscribed to my own question doesn't seem to be enough this time!! Weird, but, oh well.
Check the email address associated with your profile. If it's correct, also check with your ISP; their spam filter might have intercepted it.
Thanks so much for taking your time to answer me. One day soon I'll need to back up again, so will try what you suggested.
It sounds to me like you need a larger internal HD, and/or an external HD, so you have room for all your stuff, and can use the TC for proper backups. Especially if your stuff is important to you, a good backup plan will be sure you have at least two copies of everything important in at least two separate places. Actually, many folks recommend a minimum of two full backups, one of which is off-site (so you're also protected against fire, flood, theft, and direct lightning strike on your power lines). See #27 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum), for some suggestions.

ITunes 6 Reports wrong size IPOD

I recently installed version 6 and now my 20 gig 4G shows up as a 60 Gig. It goes through the process of d'loading all of my music to the player, but the player is no showing any songs.

Do you have any mapped network drives? Try unmapping them. It's possible that Windows gave the iPod the same drive letter as one of your mapped drives, so when you sync, it's copying all the files to the network drive instead of the iPod.
You can change the iPod's drive letter using the Disk Management tool.

How can I remove the BootCamp partition? as the size i created ws too small to install MS Office on 64Bit Windows 8.1 on MacBook Pro (Aug'13)

How can I remove the BootCamp partition drive for Windows 8.1, as the size which I created was too small for me to install Microsoft Office onto Windows 8.1 64-BIt. The machine which I have is the MacBook Pro 13' inch purchased in August 2013.

Either use Paragon's CampTuneX to resize it or use Boot Camp Assistant to remove the partition and restore the drive to one partition. Then create a new, larger Boot Camp partition. This will remove/delete/erase your Windows system.

Bootcamp Partition Will Not Mount - Size Bootcamp Partition Will Not Mount - Also Size Discrepancies

I have bootcamp installed on an internal hard drive in my Mac Pro running 10.8.5. This HD had two partitions, one of which I had 200GB allocated for my Windows install. I reached a point where I was at nearly 100% capacity on that drive and needed more room. This is what I did:
Used Disk Utility to shrink the Mac OS Extended partition.
Erased free space on that partition.
Booted back into Windows and used MiniTool to extend the bootcamp partition to unallocated space.
MinoTool then performed a restart and finished it's job upon startup.
I am still able to boot into Windows and Mac just fine and I did create a backup of each OS before starting.
I have two issues now, however. Parallels no long recognized that Bootcamp partition. I decided to delete that VM and I had to uninstall Parallels completely anyways due to an upgrage isse to Parallels 9. After upgrading, Creating a VM from my BC was not an option. This is because the BC partition will not mount, it is greyed out in Disk Utitlity.
I tried installing Tuxera NTFS and the disk still cannot be mounted.
The other issue is that Disk Utility does not show the Bootcamp partition with the correct size. It still shows it with the original 200GB but does show that the Mac Partition was shrunk. In Windows, however, either using MiniTool or Windows Disk Managment, it shows the correct sizes for the partitions.
I'll attach a screenshot of DU.
I would like to be able to mount the drive successfully so that I can use the partition once again for Parallels.
This is the system.log display when attempting to mount the BOOTCAMP partition and when disabling Tuxera from the system preferences:
Nov 7 08:35:46 ***-mac-pro.local com.apple.SecurityServer[27]: Succeeded authorizing right 'system.volume.internal.mount' by client '/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app' [973] for authorization created by '/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app' [973] (100013,0)
Nov 7 08:35:46 ***-mac-pro.local com.apple.SecurityServer[27]: Succeeded authorizing right 'system.volume.internal.mount' by client '/usr/sbin/diskarbitrationd' [15] for authorization created by '/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app' [973] (100002,0)
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS driver 3.10 [Flags: R/W].
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS volume name BOOTCAMP, version 3.1.
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk3s3, pid 5414): ntfs_lookup_inode_by_name(): Directory index record with VCN 0x3 is corrupt. Corrupt inode 0x5. Run chkdsk.
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk3s3, pid 5414): ntfs_windows_hibernation_status_check(): Failed to find inode number for hiberfil.sys.
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS-fs warning (device /dev/disk3s3, pid 5414): ntfs_system_inodes_get(): Failed to determine if Windows is hibernated. Will not be able to remount read-write. Run chkdsk.
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk3s3, pid 5414): ntfs_attr_find_in_attribute_list(): Base inode 0x9 contains corrupt attribute list attribute. Unmount and run chkdsk.
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk3s3, pid 5414): ntfs_inode_read(): Failed to lookup data attribute.
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk3s3, pid 5414): ntfs_inode_read(): Failed (error 5) for inode 0x9. Run chkdsk.
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk3s3, pid 5414): ntfs_inode_attach(): Failed to load inode 0x9.
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk3s3, pid 5414): ntfs_secure_load(): Failed to load $Secure.
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk3s3, pid 5414): ntfs_mount(): Failed to load system files (error 5).
Nov 7 08:35:47 ***-mac-pro kernel[0]: NTFS-fs error (device /dev/disk3s3, pid 5414): ntfs_mount(): Mount failed (error 5).
Nov 7 08:35:48 ***-mac-pro.local com.apple.SecurityServer[27]: Succeeded authorizing right 'system.privilege.admin' by client '/Applications/System Preferences.app' [5297] for authorization created by '/Applications/System Preferences.app' [5297] (100012,0)
Thanks,
Josh

Josh,
I will defer to Christopher on correcting the GPT, but I agree it is incorrect. On a much simpler, single disk Macmini with Bootcamp...
sudo gpt -r -vv show /dev/rdisk0
gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: mediasize=500107862016; sectorsize=512; blocks=976773168
gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: Sec GPT at sector 976773167
      start       size index contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640 725093952      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
725503592    1269536      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
726773128        632
726773760 249999360      4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
976773120         15
976773135         32         Sec GPT table
976773167          1         Sec GPT header
sudo fdisk /dev/rdisk0
Disk: /dev/rdisk0          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 [    409640 - 725093952] HFS+
3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 725503592 -    1269536] Darwin Boot
*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 726773760 - 249999360] HPFS/QNX/AUX
diskutil list /dev/disk0
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            371.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                128.0 GB   disk0s4
PS: I see Christopher's response.

How to increase the size of bootcamp partition in macbook-late 2009

How to increase the size of the bootcamp partition in macbook late 2009, without using any third party softwares.

Pick yourself up by your own bootstrap too?
Reinstall after restoring to HFS only then.
You want something that works, then spend the $20 on Paragon CampTune or WinClone 3.

Increasing size of the bootcamp partition

What is the easiet way to do this without having to wipe the partition clean and reinstall windows?
Thanks

12/24/12 Re: Winclone: How to increase the bootcamp partition size without starting over.
I never post but this worked so well for me that I will break down & tell my story. I use bootcamp only to Run Quicken via VM Fusion but I have been fighting a too small partition size for years & constantly getting "low memory" warnings from Windows. I didn't want to hassle reinstalling windows & quicken plus I didn't have the discs. I discovered Winclone 3.6, $20, gave it a try because of good reviews. It worked great. It made a copy of the bootcamp partition & placed it on my Mac osx, Lion, desktop. (I first had to convert my windows xp from fat 32 to ntfs but that was easy using built in windows commands after a google search on how to do it). I then used the Mac disk utility to delete the old partition & create a bigger partition. Winclone then restored the old bootcamp (windows & quicken) onto the new larger partition. The only issue was that I had to find a wired keyboard to reactivate windows (my wireless mouse worked but not the keyboard initially?). This program saved me a lot of grief. Good luck.

I installed win 8.1 on my iMac on the bootcamp partition and can't access OSX anymore. What am I doing wrong?

Ever since I installed Windows I don't have an option to switch to Mac.I installed it on the bootcamp partition with the lastest OSX and Windows versions. I did this a few years ago with an older Mac and Vista and remembered a prompt to choose OS during boot. I get nothing but Windows now. Any ideas?

if you restsrt and hold down alt, what boot options do you see
try restarting holding down command+R, choose disk utility and tell me what you see on the upper left hand side under the name of your physical drive

Success: moving bootcamp partition to an external drive

Background
Due to the relatively small, non-exchangable SSD on my Mac, I'd limited the bootcamp partition to 50GB when installing Windows. I needed to install new software in Windows, but was running out of space fast and didn't have the necessary space on the Windows side. I don't use Windows that often and for that reason, I wanted to move the Bootcamp partition to an external hard drive, freeing up space for the Mac side on the internal SSD. I'd read many conflicting reports on the web, some claiming they'd done it successfully, while others said it would be impossible, because Windows 7 wouldn't run from an external drive. I had a HDD in a USB 3 enclosure, and first tried to install Windows to this (using various guides on the web). I was very close to success with this USB 3 drive, but Windows would fail during start-up. Most reports claiming to have successfully been able to run Windows 7 from an external drive, had used Thunderbolt drives, so I decided to get myself a Lacie Rugged USB 3/Thunderbolt series Solid State Drive.
Hardware used
MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display (mid 2012), 2,3 GHz Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD
Lacie Rugged USB 3/Thunderbolt series, 120GB Solid State Drive
Software used
Mac OS X Mavericks, 10.9.2
Windows 7 Ultimate
Plus several free downloads from the internet, see description below.
Procedure
Step 1: Get the Thunderbolt drive to work under your Bootcamp Windows 7 installation.
This should be simple enough, but proved to be a little tricky. Here’s what I did (assumes you are running Mac OS X before you begin):
1. Make sure your Thunderbolt drive is disconnected before proceeding.
2. Restart your Mac and hold down the option key (alt key on some keyboards) during startup.
3. Choose the Windows drive to start up Windows 7 on your Bootcamp partition.
4. After log in to Windows 7, download the necessary driver software for your Thunderbolt drive (find it at the manufacturer’s homepage of your Thunderbolt drive - in my case lacie.com).
5. If the downloaded driver installer is in a compressed format (like zip for example) be sure to decompress it before running the driver installer.
6. Shut down your computer.
7. Connect your Thunderbolt drive to your computer.
8. Start up in Windows 7 (see items 2 & 3 above) and if it all went well, you should now be able to see your Thunderbolt drive under Start>Computer.
Step 2: Format your Thunderbolt drive in NTFS-format.
Still running Windows 7 with your Thunderbolt drive connected and visible to the system, it is now time to format your external Thunderbolt drive in NTFS-format. There are several ways of doing this. I used the procedure described here at tedhhack.co.uk.
Step 3: Follow the directions at intowindows.com to clean install Windows 7 onto your external Thunderbolt drive.
As described at intowindows.com, this involves downloading Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) and running command line tools. At step 9 in the described process at intowindows.com, at the point where the installer asks if the drive you are installing to is a USB hard disk, the correct input is Y for yes, even if your external drive is a Thunderbolt drive (and obviously not a USB hard disk).
At step 10 in the described process at intowindows.com (Reboot your PC), remember to hold down the option (or alt) key at every restart in the installation process, so as not to start up in Mac OS X. Also, since your machine now has two Windows 7 installations, Windows Boot Manager will appear and ask you to “Choose an operating system to start” and there is a list of two Windows.
I don’t know how to tell which one is on the external drive and which one is on the internal drive at this point, but I started with the top one on the list and this turned out to be the one I wanted (the newly installed one on the external drive). If you pick the wrong one (on the internal drive) at first, simply restart the computer and choose the other one. You know you got the right one when the installation process continues and asks for further input.
After the Windows installation is complete (there will be at least one other restart required - remember to hold down the option (alt) key to start up in Windows, and choose the same Windows on the list in the Windows Boot Manager), you’ll be running a freshly installed, but crippled Windows 7, as you still haven’t installed the specific drivers for your hardware. But don’t worry, that will be fixed in the next step.
Step 4: Clone your Bootcamp partition from your internal drive to the external Thunderbolt drive.
In this step you will copy all the software, drivers, settings and other files from your Bootcamp partition on your internal drive to your external Thunderbolt drive. The easiest way to do that is to clone your Windows partition - and to that end you’ll need to download some free software: AOMEI Backupper Standard 2.0 fits the bill perfectly, as it will let you clone at the same time as resizing the partition to fit your external Thunderbolt drive (I went from a 50GB internal Bootcamp partition to a 120GB external Thunderbolt SSD).
1. Download AOMEI Backupper Standard 2.0 (I used the 17MB download for Windows 7), install it, and run it.
2. In the left column choose “Clone” and in the right column choose “Partition Clone”. By choosing Partition Clone instead of Disk clone, you won’t ruin the newly created (but invisible) boot partition on the external Thunderbolt drive.
3. Press Next and choose your internal Bootcamp partition as the Source Disk.
4. Press Next again and choose your external Thunderbolt drive (your newly installed Windows 7) as the Destination Disk.
5. Press Next again and you’ll get a warning that you will erase the contents of the destination partition and it asks if this is what you really want to do. Press Yes to this question.
6. Next screen is an Operation Summery. Toward the bottom of the Operation Summery screen there are a few interesting options: Edit Size of Partition, Clone Sector by Sector and Align Partition to Optimize for SSD.
7. If your destination partition is larger than your source destination like mine was, press Edit Size of Partition. This will take you to another screen, where you can drag to resize the partition. I dragged this all the way to the right to give Windows 7 the full size of my external Thunderbolt drive.
8. Leave the checkbox Clone Sector by Sector unchecked.
9. If your external Thunderbolt drive is an SSD, put a check in the checkbox entitled Align Partition to Optimize for SSD.
10. Now press the Start Clone button.
11. When the cloning process is done, exit AOMEI Backupper and restart your computer (holding down the option or alt key) to start up in your new clone of your old Windows 7 with all the same software, drivers, settings and files.
Step 5: Enjoy running all your Windows 7 applications from your external Thunderbolt drive!
Step 6: Here is where I need help/advice – can I remove the Bootcamp partition on my internal drive now?
I am reluctant to entirely remove the Bootcamp partition from my internal drive, as I am unsure whether this will disable me from starting up in Windows. I would love to hear from anyone here with insight on the matter.

Step 6: Here is where I need help/advice – can I remove the Bootcamp partition on my internal drive now?
To answer my own question in Step 6 above, no, or at least I haven't found a way yet...
Here's what I've done so far:
Used the Bootcamp Assistant to remove the bootcamp partition on my internal drive.
Booted the system with the option (alt) key pressed down and now there was NO Windows drive to choose.
Therefore I used the Bootcamp Assistant to install Windows back onto my internal drive (including installing Bootcamp drivers in the Windows environment). This time I chose the minimum partition of 20GB for the Windows installation on the internal drive.
Booted into the new Windows on the internal drive and installed the drivers for my Thunderbolt drive.
Restarted with the option (alt) key pressed down, chose the Windows drive, but Windows Boot Manager still didn't pop up to allow me to choose the Windows installation on the external Thunderbolt drive.
Booted from the Windows DVD and chose Repair.
Restarted with the option (alt) key pressed down, chose the Windows drive, and now Windows Boot Manager finally popped up, which allowed me to choose the Windows installation on the external Thunderbolt drive again, phew!
So, I can run Windows 7 from the external Thunderbolt drive, but I have to use 20GB of my internal drive for a Windows installation I'll never use. Not the best solution, but at least I've saved 30GB of space compared to my previous Bootcamp partition - and I now have enough space to install the Windows 7 software I need on the external Thunderbolt drive...

Parallels unmounted BOOTCAMP partition, I cant remount, cant use BC or Para

This is a crosspost from the parallels support forums. Nobody has responded there and I have tried a few more things and all have failed, desperation is rising.
I hope someone here has some kind of idea what might be going on because I have some very valuable data on my boot camp partition and I did not expect a trial of Parallels to destroy it...
I tried installing the Parallels trial version of Desktop 6. For some reason it would not ID my boot camp partition and said that I had to mount it using the disk utility. I thought this was strange but didn't think much more of it. I continued to use my computer for other purposes for about an hour and decided I wanted to head back to my BOOTCAMP side, so I restarted into Windows and recieved "Disk read error, press ctrl +alt +del" from the DOS prompt. Restarted a few times and continued to get the same error.
I returned to OSX and discovered that my BOOTCAMP partition no longer appears on my desktop, or as an option for Startup Disk. If I start Disk Utility, I see my OSX partition, and then I see my BOOTCAMP partition, but now it is unmounted (greyed out) and reads "disk0s3". Attempts to mount it have been unsuccessful. If I try the same from the terminal I receive "Volume on disk0s3 failed to mount".
I attempted to use Parallels to read the drive to at least recover my important documents but when I pointed it to the (what used to be) boot camp partition, the virtual machine reported "no OS installed on this drive".
In some research in the issue, I read something about MacFUSE or NTFS-3G locking down the mount abilities of the drive. Someone is having a similar issue as me here, for example. Finder does see a folder with one file called "ntfs-3g" in /opt/local/var/ in a FUSE folder, but other than that I see no indication of ntfs-3g being installed. Not only that but I attempted both uninstalling and installing MacFUSE from System Preferences. In both cases I could still not mount the drive or boot to my boot camp partition.
Please help! I'm really at my wit's end here and I am horrified at the thought of losing all of my data.
No idea if this helps but here is diskutil info on the partition
Some further research indicates there may be an issue with MBR? This is getting far out of the realm of my expertise so I would have no idea where to start investigating.
Device Identifier: disk0s3
Device Node: /dev/disk0s3
Part Of Whole: disk0
Device / Media Name: BOOTCAMP
Volume Name:
Escaped with Unicode:
Mounted: No
File System: MS-DOS
Type: msdos
Name: MS-DOS (FAT)
Partition Type: Microsoft Basic Data
Bootable: Is bootable
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: SATA
SMART Status: Verified
Total Size: 125.3 GB (125294346240 Bytes) (exactly 244715520 512-Byte-Blocks)
Volume Free Space: 0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Blocks)
Read-Only Media: No
Read-Only Volume: Not applicable (not mounted)
Ejectable: No
Whole: No
Internal: Yes
More information, from rEFIt:
* Report for internal hard disk *
Current GPT partition table:
# Start LBA End LBA Type
1 40 409639 EFI System (FAT)
2 409640 243417127 Mac OS X HFS+
3 243681280 488396799 Basic Data
Current MBR partition table:
# A Start LBA End LBA Type
1 1 409639 ee EFI Protective
2 409640 243417127 af Mac OS X HFS+
3 * 243681280 488396799 07 NTFS/HPFS
MBR contents:
Boot Code: Unknown, but bootable
Partition at LBA 40:
Boot Code: None (Non-system disk message)
File System: FAT32
Listed in GPT as partition 1, type EFI System (FAT)
Partition at LBA 409640:
Boot Code: None
File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
Listed in GPT as partition 2, type Mac OS X HFS+
Listed in MBR as partition 2, type af Mac OS X HFS+
Partition at LBA 243681280:
Boot Code: Windows BOOTMGR (Vista)
File System: NTFS
Listed in GPT as partition 3, type Basic Data
Listed in MBR as partition 3, type 07 NTFS/HPFS, active
I have also tried booting from ubuntu live CD (which did not work and resulted in a very scary loud sysbeeping and flashing of the front LED). Then I tried booting from win7 CD. That may still be a viable option but I need to find a USB keyboard because the stock mackbook pro keyboard seems to not send input when i am prompted for "press any key to boot from CD/DVD".
I also tried uninstalling parallels and installing VMWare Fusion. Fusion also does not detect the BOOTCAMP partition. It doesn't see it at all. Assuming this is because it is still unmounted.
I do not care if I lose my install, I will probably want to do clean installs of both leopard and win7 after this is all over. But I really do need to recover my data. If anyone knows of a utility that can browse unmounted NTFS volumes locally from OSX, I will buy you a thousand peachy penguins.
Message was edited by: emtheory

Still no definitive solution but a few updates.
I was able to boot off the win7 DVD. Apparently I was not slamming the keys fast enough the first few times. I selected the option to repair an installation of windows, but it couldn't identify any NTFS partitions. At that point I decided any hope of booting from this partition was lost, and I may as well just focus on data recovery. I found a tool called FileSalvage which sweeps partitions, mounted or unmounted, and looks for the signature of known file types. It can then restore those files. I believe I should be able to restore most of the files I need with this type of tool, but unfortunately it costs $80. I am still looking for any similar DIY or freeware solutions.

BootCamp partition reporting wrong size?

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