Bootcamp vs rEFIt & rEFInd, mbr, gpt

I've been trying to install Windows 8.1 on Yosemite via Boot Camp Assistant, but got an error:
Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has a mbr partition table, On EFI system window can only be installed to GPT disks.
After fighting with rEFIt and rEFInd to overcome the issue (which I then deleted by deleting its folders and its StartupItems file), I came across the instructions how to change the partition tables to GTP via gdisk. So I did that and voila - Windows let me to choose that partition for the installation. My joy lasted as long as the last step of Win setup process when I received an error saying the windows can't modify the boot information. It's now throwing me below error:
Recovery
Your PC needs to be repaired.
The Boot Configuration Data file is missing some required information:
File: \BCD
Error code: 0xc0000034
I've tried few command prompt solutions suggested by Microsoft, which didn't work, like
BCDboot x:\windows /s c: /l en-us
Bootrec /fixmbr
Bootrec /fixboot
Bootrec /scanos
Bootrec /rebuildbcd
The last two commands gave an error "Windows installations found: 0".
I'm lost at that point. There is cleary an issue with remainings of rEFIt / rEFInd, as my computer doesn't boot correctly - it throws an error "No bootable devices found". However, if I press an option key during chime it allows me to pick my OS X SSD, which is now called EFI Boot instead of it's name (EVO SSD).
How can I bring the boot back to normal? Could that be an issue when trying to install Windows?

Yes, I did use EFI boot. Also, what I meant earlier on is that I have created a fresh protective MBR on that disk using gdisk.
Here is the output:
[quote]
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 30401/255/63 [488397168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  488397167] <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     
[/quote]

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  • [SOLVED] Converted MBR- GPT: Gummiboot installation borked

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  • Win 8.1 Upgrade causes GPT/MBR Mismatch

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    Mark Ulmer

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       2          409640       975693095   465.1 GiB   AF00  Customer
       3       975693096       976962631   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
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    Partition number (4-128, default 4): 4
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    Last sector (976963584-1953525134, default = 1953525134) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: 1952806911
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    Changed type of partition to 'Microsoft basic data'
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    Command (? for help): w
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    I would really like to know the answers to these questions (as scattered as they are.) Any help would be appreciated!
    Unnecessary info:
    (I started learning about BIOS/UEFI and MBR/GPT the hard way a few days ago by trying for hours to install Windows 7 on my dad's Windows 8 laptop because I could NOT get Win 7 installation to work...it kept asking for drivers before I could install until I finally used the Windows USB install tool, put the stick in a different USB, AND formatted the drive as MBR because Windows 7 would NOT install on the existing GPT drive until I used diskpart.exe -clean. And I have read that Win 7 64 bit will work fine on a UEFI/GPT setup. I used the Windows 7 USB boot tool which did NOT give me a UEFI: and regular option. It showed up simply as "name of usb" without a UEFI in front. Since I read that Windows 7 must either be in BIOS/MBR mode or UEFI/GPT mode that this drive would not boot in UEFI mode, and I don't know why...Although I believe I read that Win 7 cannot be installed from a USB in UEFI/GPT mode, only BIOS/MBR.  UEFI/GPT mode requires a DVD install but I did not have a drive to test this.)

    I have a Y510p which is running dual boot Windows 8.1 and Arch Linux.   I think that it is strongly advised to do plenty of reading ahead of any install if you will be using UEFI and Linux so that you understand all the issued before making critical changes to the existing system.
    Yes, if the machine comes with Windows 8 (as mine did) then the disk will be formatted with a GPT partition table (instead of the old MBR partitioning scheme), and will boot using UEFI. If you are going to try to keep the existing Windows 8 system and add Linux then you will need to keep the disk with its GPT partition table and partition structure, but you can shrink the Windows 8 C: drive to make space for the Linux partitions that are needed ( a root partition and at least a /home and/or /opt partition and possibly a linux swap partition also ).  If you want to boot the Linux install via UEFI then you can simply add the required boot directory to the EFI System Partition (ESP).
    However it is very important that before trying to do any linux install that you switch off Fastboot from within WIndows 8 (or 8.1). Also most Linux distributions are in some difficulty booting using Secure Boot, though a few such a Ubuntu and Fedora are supposed to be able to do so. Hence it is much easier to work with Linux if Secure Boot is first switched off from the BIOS settings menu.
    The order of operations that I used was;
    1) Switch off Secure Boot from the BIOS - and boot back into the Windows 8 system to check that it boots OK.
    2) With Windows 8 running go into the settings and switch off Fastboot (which does a hybrid suspend when it shuts down instead of a full normal shutdown - if you don't do this then the memory gets overwritten when booting Linux in the future which means booting back into Windows will fail). 
    3) Reboot back into WIndows and check all is well, and if so then use the disk management facility within Windows 8 to shrink the C: drive to make room for the Linux partitions.
    4) Reboot to check Windows 8 still boots OK.  
    5) If you are going to update to Windows 8.1 then do so, and then update everything once it is booted (it is a huge update and takes ages!). Once done then you will likely have to update drivers for the graphics cards, the clickpad and possibly the wireless chip and ethernet chip. I found that I needed to get drivers that were newer than were available on the Lenovo website, by going to the relevant hardware manufacturer website (eg for synaptics for the clickpad). Then spent a week or so in the evenings getting Windows 8.1 configured the way I like it.
    6) Then I did a lot of reading about the various options for the boot manager that would suit a UEFI boot for a dual boot system for Windows 8.1 and Arch Linux and there was a choice of Grub, Gummiboot, rEFInd, and others - and after reading the details I decided on rEFInd as my boot manager which can boot not only any new Arch Linux install but automatically finds the Windows UEFI boot files and presents the options in a nice graphical window once the system gets past POST at bootup.
    7) It was important to check which partition was the ESP and to know what partitions I needed to create for the Arch Linux system.  Then I went ahead and booted from a usbkey to a uefi install system, and very carefully proceeded with a standard Arch Linux install, being particularly careful to know where to put the rEFInd boot manager files and the kernel and initrd files. Also I used efibootmgr to write the appropriate NVRAM boot entry in the motherboard memory so that the uefi boot system knows where to find the rEFInd uefi boot files in the ESP.
    8) Once complete the system boots to Arch Linux as the default, with a nice Windows icon which you can select with the arrow keys within the boot timeout period (default 20 seconds).
    I noted also that it is possible to create boot stanzas in the rEFInd boot manager config files which allow rEFInd to chain load other Linux systems or even other bootloaders if you wish - so it is very flexible. So if you want to you could install a grub standalone set of diretories/files so that if the normal linux boot fails then you can select the grub icon from rEFInd and chainload grub to boot either the same Archlinux install, or point to a third linux distribution if you have more partitions containing that third install which might be Ubuntu or Mint or ....
    Either way although getting to understand how uefi boot works is a learning curve it is actually generally simpler than the old legacy BIOS boot. With uefi you no longer need an MBR on the drive, and only a suitable EFI System Partition which has to be VFAT formatted. However if you want to have one of the linux distributions booting from legacy MBR then you need to create an MBR at the start of the drive - so you would need to move the start of the first partition and create a suitable sized Master Boot Record otherwise MBR boot can't work. If you do that then of course you have to be careful if the Windows partition is the one being re-sized that it doesn't mess up the Windows boot! However since using uefi to boot rEFInd allows a chainload to grub/gummiboot or other bootloaders then there should be no need to mess with MBR booting if you go down that route.
    If you are interested in rEFInd then the author Rod Smith has a good set of documentation that describe the details at http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
    He is also the author of a really excellent disk partitioner for GPT disks - http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/
    Clearly it is necessary to read up on the boot facilities available for any linux distribution that you plan to put on the system.
    One nice thing is that uefi boot with an efistub supported kernel build is really fast on the Y510p. My system boots Arch linux in about 7 seconds to the KDE login prompt once the POST is complete and that only takes a couple of seconds.  Of course Windows is much slower once it is selected at the rEFInd screen and takes somewherearound 40 seconds or so to boot, but at least Linux is super fast!
    Anyway I hope that this helps.

  • Using USB for Bitlocker in a Bootcamp install of Windows 7 x64 Ultimate on early-2011 Macbook Pro

    First of all some details on my current setup:
    Macbook Pro 15" (early 2011) with a i7 QM processor and 8 GB RAM, Superdrive and HD installed
    Mac OS X 10.7.3
    Windows 7 x64 Ultimate in a Bootcamp setup
    Existing partitions on HD are EFI, MacOS X, Bitlocker Startup, Windows
    I removed "Recovery HD" after creating DVD image contained in latest Lion installer from AppStore.
    What I got so far:
    It took some time to find a way for Windows getting a second partition to be used for Bitlocker startup files. Using existing partition layout I replaced previously existing "Recovery HD" partition for Bitlocker partition in Windows (after taking dd-based image of Recovery HD).
    Recently I tried to enable Bitlocker and continued to fail on Bitlocker System Check claiming to have no access on USB while booting. And that's my issue ...
    I read about using Windows' diskpart to have a GPT partitioned USB stick containing single NTFS partition. I tried to achieve the same with disk management in Mac OS X though it was creating a hybrid MBR/GPT setup that wasn't recognized by Windows at all. Then I tried partitioning in Mac OS X to have GPT partitioning, used Clonezilla Live CD's gdisk to apply hybrid setup another time. I even tried to do the whole partitioning in Linux using gdisk, but Windows still didn't recognize the formatted partition on USB stick then. So, the only way found is using diskpart in Windows to get a GPT-based USB-stick with a single NTFS partition.
    I put my startup key there (attributed as hidden, system file) and tried to restart several times. On every boot Windows is prompting for inserting valid startup key as it wasn't found. The partition is encrypted already and entering the printed 48 digits recovery key gets me in every time.
    If I keep the stick inserted the boot is noticeably delayed, but it's instantly continuing as soon as I unplug the stick. So there is something processing the stick ... I tried different sticks, but hope it's not related to using one special stick since they are used to support similar (equivalent) interfaces, aren't they?
    Don't tell me about using TrueCrypt or similar as I prefer to use existing software instead of adding 3rd-party software doing things the same way. And for True Crypt USB must be readable at boot as well. And previous trials with different approaches rendered all failing at some point of setup. Finally, I don't want to reinstall existing Windows as it keeps me from working even more.
    Found some post regarding trouble with Lion installations (e.g. I can't use rEFIt ... it simply didn't show up and this seems to be related to using Lion), found the KB article of Apple on preparing USB external storage for use at boot, but all troubleshooting hints didn't help.
    What the heck is wrong with this setup?
    EDIT: There is no problem to have Bootcamp starting previous Recovery HD partition now Bitlocker startup partition instead of originally prepared Bootcamp partition, which is encrypted now. This is in contradiction to other posts here. I'm sure Apple support isn't best choice to ask for support as this problem is MS specific and thus Apple won't care that much ...

    Well, I've seen lots of those threads as well and most failed to manage cooperation of Bitlocker and FileVault, have trouble to get a second partition for windows to use with bitlocker or truecrypt etc. But these issues don't apply to me anymore.
    Next there are threads instructing how to get a USB stick to work with Bitlocker claiming to have GPT instead of MBR so EFI is gaining any access on them. Those cases seem to work with MacBooks running with Windows, only, thus passing the issues mentioned in paragraph before as well.
    And there is my confusion originating from: I can remember some sites claiming to have trouble with EFI on a Mac using Lion, but all those sites are older than Lion's final release date. So I don't know if there is a similar issue today or if I'm actually missing some option ... rEFIt isn't working with Lion according to the refit site itself. Some sites claim EFI is behaving differently on whether there is a super drive or not as Lion isn't supporting USB booting as long as booting from DVD/CD is available ... what's true about those facts? Is my problem related to having a super drive? Are things getting better as soon as I'm replacing my superdrive by a second internal drive? Is it that strange or some sort of plausible behaviour?
    According to GPT, Windows 7 is obviously failing to properly detect hybrid MBR/GPT setups on USB sticks while that's what MacOS' disk manager is doing on having GPT-based single partition stick with exFat format. Instead of using the second hybridized partition it's accessing the protected part, only. If I'm converting a disk to GPT in windows everything works fine, but then without hybridized MBR ...
    Regarding the fans I'm with you ... as soon as processor load is exceeding 5% the fans get quite noisy ...

  • HOWTO: Resize Bootcamp (NTFS) partition for free using gparted

    Hi,
    Well, if you find your Bootcamp/NTFS/Windows partition running out of space, you may want to increase it or decrease it. The OSX Bootcamp utility doesn't allow resizing the NTFS partitio nor does Disk Utility. Here is a free solution ...
    NOTE: I've tried this on Windows 7 64bit, but it should work with other windows setups in a similar manner.
    Requirements:
    1. SysRescueCD (for an NTFS capable 'gparted')
    - http://www.sysresccd.org/Download
    2. rEFIt bootable CD (or install to hard disk, doesn't matter)
    - http://refit.sourceforge.net/doc/c1s5_burning.html
    3. Windows XP/Vista/7 CD (depends what you've installed)
    - just for a quick 'repair' at the end, no reinstall here!
    In short:
    1 Shrink Mac partition in OSX's Disk Utility
    2 Grow the NTFS partition in gparted booting off sysrescue CD (reboot->option key). This may take 30mins to a few hours to complete!
    3 Boot the rEFIt CD -> choose "start partitioning tool" -> hit yes when it says it needs to sync the MBR with the GPT.
    4 Boot your Windows CD.
    Vista/Windows7 CD -> hit the repair option to fix the boot record.
    XP CD -> you may need to go to the administrative shell and type fixboot and then fixmbr.
    5. Reboot and you should be able to boot into Windows via the option key as before. I liked rEFIt a lot so I installed it to my disk itself. (FYI, I did notice I needed to install rEFIt a few times to get it to show up during boot time)
    Message was edited by: SidOnline

    One bug I learnt:
    if
    1. you set the 'boot' flag on the Windows partition in gparted AND
    2. you use gptsync to sync the GPT with the MBR (i.e. MBR->GPT translation)
    then
    you will find that your Windows partition becomes inaccessible in OS X. Your partition is OK - you can boot in windows etc - OS X just doesn't see it as a NTFS partition.
    Solution:
    1. Don't enable the boot flag in gparted. Simple, no need to read further.
    If you're done it and have been hit by the bug and would like to see Windows/Bootcamp again in Finder, read on...
    1. Goto http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=31562, post #9 has a tool to fix it. Download the diskpart.zip file (it's got diskpart.efi)
    2. Extract the diskpart.zip file, copy the diskpart.efi to /efi/tools on your OSX volume (default location for hard disk install of rEFIt).
    3. Reboot, in the rEFIt menu, select the EFI terminal
    4. type fs1: and hit enter. This should take you to your Leopard volume (for me fs0: was the 1st partition (EFI boot partition), fs1: was the 2nd partition (Leopard)
    5. type _cd /efi/tools_ and hit enter
    6. type diskpart and hit enter
    7. As the post linked above says, type
    +select <zero-based disk number>+
    inspect
    +chtype <zero-based partition number> MSDATA+
    For me this was
    +select 0+
    inspect
    +chtype 2 MSDATA+
    Look at the output of select to make sure you're using the right number - if you have your eyes open it's hard to make a mistake!
    Behind the scene details:
    Your partition type is set to NTFS in the MBR table (which is why windows can load it up etc) but if you do the above then the partition type in the GPT is written as EFI instead of NTFS (or more accurately 'MSDATA'). This is a bug in gptsync and I believe Chris (writer of rEFIt) is aware of this - at least another post elsewhere made it look like that. I guess you can't blame it since EFI, GPT tools are still in their infancy.
    BTW, to sync the GPT with the MBR, there is a tool gptsync. I believe it's a tool from Intel's EFI toobox. It exists as either an efi program (i.e. gptsync.efi, runs when you select it from rEFIt's menu) or as a OSX program (just gptsync, runs when you download it and type 'sudo gptsync').

  • Bootcamp partition lost after moving to larger HDD (Mavericks and Win7 X64)

    Hi Folks!
    I read those topics concerning lost and broken bootcamp partitions and I am Wondering if someone may help me.
    What was my aim: Due to lacking space of my 320 GB HDD I moved to a 750 GB HDD.
    I did this by installing Mavericks from a USB disk and rebuilt it with TM. After the installation I had a fully working Mavericks partition and the MacOS recovery partition.
    Next step was to rebuild the Bootcamp partition. For that I installed a new copy of windows via bootcamp assistant. After booting up the first time I booted the mini partition wizard cd, deleted the bootcamp partition and rebuild the partition from the old HDD changing the size fitting to the available space. After rebooting I chose to boot from the Win7 DVD and chose the repair option to fix windows. Everything worked well, I could boot into Win7 and it showed me both partitions (Mavericks and bootcamp).
    BUT
    when i boot into MacOS it is not able to mount the mavericks partition.
    After checking it with fdisk and disk I found out that the bootcamp partition was recognized as FAT32 by the disk utility program, which always told me that it was not able to repair the bootcamp partition.
    So I followed Christopher Murphy's instructions to change the type for FAT 32 (0C) to ntfs (07) with the effect that I can't boot windows anymore due to "operating system not found" error.
    So this is what the refit partition inspector tells me about my HDD:
    *** Report for internal hard disk ***
    Current GPT partition table:
    #      Start LBA      End LBA  Type
    1             40       409639  EFI System (FAT)
    2         409640    731457695  Mac OS X HFS+
    3      731457696    732727239  Mac OS X Boot
    4      732727296   1465147391  Basic Data
    Current MBR partition table:
    # A    Start LBA      End LBA  Type
    1              1       409639  ee  EFI Protective
    2         409640    731457695  af  Mac OS X HFS+
    3      731457696    732727239  ab  Mac OS X Boot
    4 *    732727296   1465147391  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 731457696:
    Boot Code: None
    File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
    Listed in GPT as partition 3, type Mac OS X Boot
    Listed in MBR as partition 3, type ab  Mac OS X Boot
    Partition at LBA 732727296:
    Boot Code: Windows BOOTMGR (Vista)
    File System: NTFS
    Listed in GPT as partition 4, type Basic Data
    Listed in MBR as partition 4, type 07  NTFS/HPFS, active
    This is the info got gives to me:
    sudo gdisk -l /dev/disk0
    GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10
    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: 1465149168 sectors, 698.6 GiB
    Logical sector size: 512 bytes
    Disk identifier (GUID): 3AA6D384-5EC7-48C6-B593-4513AFF55241
    Partition table holds up to 128 entries
    First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1465149134
    Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
    Total free space is 1805 sectors (902.5 KiB)
    Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
       1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
       2          409640       731457695   348.6 GiB   AF00  Macintosh HD
       3       731457696       732727239   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
       4       732727296      1465147391   349.2 GiB   0700  BOOTCAMP
    philipp-3:~ Phil$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0
    Password:
    Sorry, try again.
    Password:
    gpt show: disk0: mediasize=750156374016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1465149168
    gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
    gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
    gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1465149167
           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   731048056      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
       731457696     1269544      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
       732727240          56        
       732727296   732420096      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
      1465147392        1743        
      1465149135          32         Sec GPT table
      1465149167           1         Sec GPT header
    This is what fdisk gives:
    sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
    Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 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 -  731048056] HFS+       
    3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 731457696 -    1269544] Darwin Boot
    *4: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 732727296 -  732420096] HPFS/QNX/AUX
    And this is a photo of the disk util (in german)
    And this is the error when I try to check it:
    Next step is to try to cover the windows copy. I guess startup repair will work, unfortunatly I  have no DVD at the moment right here.
    But my problem is not the restoring of windows but to mount the bootcamp partition in Mavericks again.
    Any help?
    Thanks in advance
    Phil

    Ok, it works again. But actually I don't know why. After neither startup repair nor mini partition manager could repair the ntfs partition, i deleted it and rebuilt it from the old HDD (fortunately not deleted yet). The only thing I did in difference was to boot into Mavericks before starting startup repair after i copied the partition. For any reason Mavericks recognized it this time. I have no clue why but everything is working.
    So far...

  • Bootcamp windows 7 x64 installation on macbook air 2012 installation screen problem

    Below are some pics on what happens after osx restarts to boot into the USB - windows 7 installation.. tried 2 different USB drives and got the same result. any ideas? please help.

    Well, I've seen lots of those threads as well and most failed to manage cooperation of Bitlocker and FileVault, have trouble to get a second partition for windows to use with bitlocker or truecrypt etc. But these issues don't apply to me anymore.
    Next there are threads instructing how to get a USB stick to work with Bitlocker claiming to have GPT instead of MBR so EFI is gaining any access on them. Those cases seem to work with MacBooks running with Windows, only, thus passing the issues mentioned in paragraph before as well.
    And there is my confusion originating from: I can remember some sites claiming to have trouble with EFI on a Mac using Lion, but all those sites are older than Lion's final release date. So I don't know if there is a similar issue today or if I'm actually missing some option ... rEFIt isn't working with Lion according to the refit site itself. Some sites claim EFI is behaving differently on whether there is a super drive or not as Lion isn't supporting USB booting as long as booting from DVD/CD is available ... what's true about those facts? Is my problem related to having a super drive? Are things getting better as soon as I'm replacing my superdrive by a second internal drive? Is it that strange or some sort of plausible behaviour?
    According to GPT, Windows 7 is obviously failing to properly detect hybrid MBR/GPT setups on USB sticks while that's what MacOS' disk manager is doing on having GPT-based single partition stick with exFat format. Instead of using the second hybridized partition it's accessing the protected part, only. If I'm converting a disk to GPT in windows everything works fine, but then without hybridized MBR ...
    Regarding the fans I'm with you ... as soon as processor load is exceeding 5% the fans get quite noisy ...

  • Clarifications of the Hybrid MBR

    Hello All,
    I am in the process of trying to wrap my head around some details regarding a multi-boot setup with OS X Lion and Windows 7 on an early 2011 15" MacBook Pro.
    Specifically, I am trying to get a clear understanding of a Hybrid MBR in relation to this.  I have scoured this forum along with the Mac Rumors forums and to some extent the InsanleyMac forums.  I have found a lot of info, but in some cases, the info is confusing because various sources seem to contradict each other.
    I am looking for some details about the hybrid MBR and how it is actually created.
    Below is what I have come to understand so far . . .
    My questions are on BOLD . . . and indented . . .
    Most of the sources explain that the hybrid MBR is a modified GPT Protective MBR.
    "The protective MBR is an MBR that defines a single partition entry (of type 0xEE) that covers the entire area of the disk used by GPT structures and partitions.  It is designed to prevent GPT-unaware programs from accidentally modifying a GPT disk."  (Apple TN2166)
    The MBR has space or slots for four partition entries (primary partitions) and in the case of the protective MBR only one is used to define the entire area of disk that is partitioned via GPT???
    A hybrid MBR is a modified GPT protective MBR.
    It uses up to three of the MBR's four primary partitions to point  to the same space that's marked out by three GPT partitions.  (The remaining MBR primary partition contains the EFI System Partition)
    In the case of Lion, the Recovery HD accounts for one more of these partitions, leaving two that can point to GPT partitions????
    I ran across a statement somewhere as follows:  (can't remember the source at the moment . . .)
    "As you may know, your drive has two partition tables.  A GUID partition table and an MBR partition table.  It's a hybrid scheme."
    "When you use Disk Utility to add a FAT partition, say, it alters both partition tables."
    The reference to TWO partition tables refers to a partition table contained within  the protective MBR as well as the GPT partition tables???
    Even without a "hybrid MBR" there are still two partition tables are there not??
    If I understand the above correctly:
    hybrid MBR refers to the fact that the four partition entries in the protective MBR now point to the same space as the first four GPT partitions. (There is     no longer an entry in the protective MBR of type 0xEE that covers the entire area of the GPT partitioned disk . . .)
    If anyone can point point to any other source for info like this I would appreciate it.  My curiosity is now peaked.  I have read the stuff on www.rodsbooks.com, which as a lot of good info but still does not answer the questions I pose above . . .

    RCCharles:
    Thanks very much for your prompt reply.
    In waiting for responses to my question concerning backing up Windows 7 on Hybrid MBR GPT, I just happen to do a test run this morning on a couple of test drives using clonezilla Live.
    I had two identical drives with two partitions. One with windows and a blank partition for osx. I was only really concerned with the Windows 7 test partition at the moment. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for all of my osx partitions which works flawlessly.
    I cloned the bootloader mbr from one drive to the other, and Clonezilla indicated it was a successful clone. I then cloned the Windows 7 system partition, to the other like partition of my test drive ,and again, Clonezilla indicated it was a successful clone.
    When I tried to boot from the cloned drive it wouldn't boot. Being very familiar now with repairing Windows 7 boot loaders, I used the repair disk thinking all I have to do is repair the boot loader. I went to the command prompt in the repair disk, and executed "Bootsect /nt60 All /Force" which always repairs the boot loader when I restore the windows system image with Windows backup and restore utility. A very quick and easy fix.
    I then use the Gdisk tool to repair the partitions back to a GPT drive which is a very quick and simple procedure that gets my GPT disk fully functioning again in osx. Thank you very much Rod Smith!, author of the gdisk tool and expert authority on Hybrid MBRs!
    So far, this is the only backup and restore method I have been able to use that will consistently and successfully backup and restore my Windows 7 Hybrid MBR on a Yosemite Quadboot GPT UEFI Hackintosh.
    I am very open to any other softwares out there that you think will work on my system.
    I am also curious as to what platform you had success with using Clonezilla.
    If you use Bootcamp, that is not an option for my Windows 7 osx platform.
    Thanks very much for your suggestion. If you have any others I would greatly appreciate hearing them.
    Regards,
    Michael Breskin
    (miche bre)

  • Bootcamp partition resize problems

    Hi everyone,
    In first words i need to admit im a total noob at this terminal tricks, but thuought past 3 days im trying to make that up as i have caused some major malufunction in disk tables :< I have recently needed some extra space on my bootcamp partition, i did this by shrinking Macintosh HD main partition by couple of GB, than i booted Windows and used some user friendly application to extend bootcamp partiton. It worked till the reboot. Next time when i wanted to boot windows the screen was black. I used the advices found here:
    - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4144252
    nothing changed.
    So i used advices in this site:
    - http://jonsview.com/fixing-mbr-tables-on-imac-or-mbp-triple-boot-setups
    and matched partitons start LBA and size so that GPT would match MBR, now when i try to boot windows it tries to boot but a message saying "missing operating system" appears. I tried to understand this whole MBR, GPT and GRUB magic but 3 days is just not enough.
    1) This is what Partition inspector prints:
    *** Report for internal hard disk ***
    Current GPT partition table:
    #      Start LBA      End LBA  Type
    1             40       409639  EFI System (FAT)
    2         409640    828534639  Mac OS X HFS+
    3      828534640    829804175  Mac OS X Boot
    4      888399872    976773119  Basic Data
    Current MBR partition table:
    # A    Start LBA      End LBA  Type
    1              1    888399871  ee  EFI Protective
    2 *    888399872    897233119  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+
    Partition at LBA 828534640:
    Boot Code: None
    File System: HFS Extended (HFS+)
    Listed in GPT as partition 3, type Mac OS X Boot
    Partition at LBA 888399872:
    Boot Code: None
    File System: Unknown
    Listed in GPT as partition 4, type Basic Data
    Listed in MBR as partition 2, type 07  NTFS/HPFS, active
    2) This is what sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0 prints
    MacBook-Pro-Czika:~ Czika$ sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0
    Password:
    fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory
    Enter 'help' for information
    fdisk: 1> print
    Disk: /dev/disk0          geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]
    Offset: 0          Signature: 0xAA55
             Starting       Ending
    #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
    1: EE    0   0   2 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  888399871] <Unknown ID>
    *2: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 888399872 -    8833248] HPFS/QNX/AUX
    3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused     
    4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused     
    fdisk: 1>
    3) This is what sudo gdisk print shows:
    Command (? for help): print
    Disk /dev/disk0: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
    Logical sector size: 512 bytes
    Disk identifier (GUID): 09A12291-5410-41FA-B651-D0C0F041C8A8
    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 58595717 sectors (27.9 GiB)
    Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
       1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
       2          409640       828534639   394.9 GiB   AF00  bez nazwy
       3       828534640       829804175   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
       4       888399872       976773119   42.1 GiB    0700  BOOTCAMP
    Now that is odd for me and i suspect it could have a big role in this malufanction is a fact, that my BOOTCAMP is no longer 42.1GB as i added to this value some between 16-18 GB. Also start sector and end sector of BOOTCAMP were changed as i used site mntioned above to calculate the (as i think) proper value (used - http://jonsview.com/fixing-mbr-tables-on-imac-or-mbp-triple-boot-setups)
    Im stuck in this strange situation, im really determined to fix that as i regard formating as a last resort.
    Any help welcomed

    You can not resize partitions on a drive containing a Boot Camp partition, except by using Camp Tune. If you modified the partitions without using Camp Tune you will have to erase and reformat your drive to a single OSX partition. Then you will need to run Boot Camp Assistant and reinstall Windows.

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