Created second partition in bootcamp Windows and converted whole disk from basic to dynamic

Question

Hi everyone. I don't post here often however I hope the following helps someone else down the road.
I currently user ML and have bootcamp installed. I needed more space on my ML partition so decided to free up space from bootcamp. Going about this completely the wrong way I booted into my bootcamp partition, ran the computer management app and shrank my boot camp partition by 8 GB. This created free unused space which I decided to format over to NTFS with a view to booting back into ML, deleting and adding to my ML partition (how wrong was I).
Prior to completing the format of the newly created free space in bootcamp I was presented with the usual 'yes' / 'no' warning dialogue saying something along the lines of 'formatting this disk from basic to dynamic will prevent any installed operating systems from booting'. I made three monumental blunders at this stage: a) not reading the dialoge box b) completely disregarding the severity of the warning in the diaglogue box c) (you guessed it) pressing 'yes'.
The moment I pressed yes it was the start of a four hour feeling of grief as I thought of the last 6 years of my life wiped from below my nose with no time machine backup.
Upon rebooting bootcamp to get into ML the reality of the situation hit home as no OSX boot, no apple logo, no boot sound, my mac is trying to boot into windows without the option key being held in or warning to present me with a BSOD.
One thought in my mind: "oh Sh*t!!!"
3.5 hours passes and much reading online, learning of linux commands, downloading of linux distros, finding out how to install software and successfully setup a bootable linux usb and I'm typing this up on my mac while I time machine my data away to a freshly formatted external drive. Many lessons learned.
This is what I did amongst the vacating of my bowels and absorption of much nicotine.
There are two pointers to this guide. I was lucky enough to have another computer at hand to conduct the research and create a bootable usb. It a windows 7 toshiba z930. So you're going to need at a minimum: another computer (windows for the guide), a usb stick 2~4GB should be ok.
1) download a linux iso, I downloaded ubuntu, you can download what ever you like, but you're going to need linux (the rest of my mini guide will use ubuntu 13.10 during examples) http://www.ubuntu.com/start-download?distro=desktop&bits=64&release=latest
2) download Universal USB Stick Installer 1.9.5.1 (from now on as UUSI) http://www.pendrivelinux.com/downloads/Universal-USB-Installer/Universal-USB-Ins taller-1.9.5.1.exe
3) plug in your usb drive. make sure there is nothing on it that you need to keep as it will be formatted and lost. also plug your mac into a router connected to the internet. this will help prevent any issues with wireless drivers when booting into ubuntu later on.
4) once the downloads are complete, run UUSI, get past the prompts until you get to the 'setup your selections page'
5) (A) select 'ubuntu' from step 1. (B) browse to your freshly downloaded ubuntu iso in step 2. (C) tick show all drives. (D) select the drive letter of your usb in step 3. tick we will format *drive letter here*. (E) depending on the size of your usb set some persistent storage - I had an 8gb usb to hand so I set 1GB, less will probably do. (F) double check your settings and click create then let the program do it's thing, it can take some time depending on the speed of your usb drive, mine took 10 mins.
6) safely remove the usb and plug it into your mac, turn the mac on and hold the option key, once the usb drive is found hit enter and select ‘try ubuntu without installing’
7) wait for the ubuntu os to load and click the settings icon from the left tool bar
8) under settings click user accounts
9) click the + symbol in the bottom left hand corner
10) select administrator from the account type box and type a name for your account then click add
11) select the account and change the password, then confirm it and click change
12) go back to the desktop and select the power off symbol in the top right hand corner and select your name from the list, this will log you out of your current session and ask you to log in under your newly created login
13) once logged in click the settings icon again from the left hand menu and under settings go to software and updates
14) in software & updates under the ubuntu software tab tick ‘community maintained free and open source software (universe)’ and ‘software restricted by copyright or legal issues (maintained)’ then click close and close the settings window. Also check at the bottom of this window under ‘installable from cd-rom/dvd’ for two entries ‘cdrom with ubuntu 13.10 ‘saucy salamander’ - uncheck on of these entries if both are the same. Not sure if this was just me or a common problem. I found that trying to do the apt-get update would run into errors at the end if one of the entries wasn't deselected.
15) hold ctrl + alt + T to bring up the terminal
16) in the terminal window type sudo passwd root then enter a password for the account
17) in the same terminal window type sudo -i and enter the password given from step 16 if requested
18) in the same terminal window type apt-get update and wait for the update to finish without errors
19) in the same terminal windows type apt-get install testdisk and wait for the installation to finish without errors
20) in the same terminal window type testdisk
21) select create log and then the drive you want to work on e.g. your main apple OS hard disk then select proceed
22) select your file system type - for my ML installation I had to select ‘EFI GPT’ I don’t know if this will be the same throughout all macs / macbooks
23) select analyse, the step should take less than a few seconds and testdisk may report back errors with the partitions or it may proceed to the ‘current partition structure’ screen. If errors are displayed proceed past them until the next screen.
24) at the ‘current partition screen’ select quick search, you will have an opportunity to backup your drive here. I won’t go through this step (never learn) as I did not complete it myself
25) after the searching has completed all the partitions on the disk should be shown. Find your OSX partition using the size reference at the bottom by pressing the up and down keys. Once you have found the partition that relates to the OSX partition that is failing to start hit the right key to make it a primary partition a ‘P’ should show to the left of the partition data. I had to make sure my EFI System and Mac HFS (155GB) partitions were marked as primary.
26) hit the enter key to continue to the next screen and use the right arrow key to select ‘write’
27) the program will warn you it will write the partition table so hit ‘Y’ and a confirmation should be displayed that this has been successful.
28) reboot the computer and remove the USB stick (i removed it at the white loading screen after the reboot, not sure if it makes any difference)
29) allow the computer longer to boot, mine took about 35 seconds to show the apple symbol whereas it normally took between 3~7 seconds before I destroyed it.
30) get into OSX and backup everything to time machine or whatever you use then it probably a good idea to kill off your bootcamp install and refresh your mac from the fresh backup.
Hope this helps someone. I couldn’t find anything conclusive on the net when I ran into problems (all my own fault really for not reading the dialogues correctly) however I used bits from multiple forums and found out parts myself especially the linux parts as I don't know the os at all . Certainly won’t be making this mistake again anytime soon.
Well I’ve had an awful night and have work in two hours but at least the last 6 years of my (now backed up) life is intact and in my hands. I’d rather lose a night of sleep than lose all my data.
Sorry if some of the stuff above is wrong as I don't do this thing on osx / linux at all really. At least it might point you in the right direction.

Answer 1

Hi everyone. I don't post here often however I hope the following helps someone else down the road.
I currently user ML and have bootcamp installed. I needed more space on my ML partition so decided to free up space from bootcamp. Going about this completely the wrong way I booted into my bootcamp partition, ran the computer management app and shrank my boot camp partition by 8 GB. This created free unused space which I decided to format over to NTFS with a view to booting back into ML, deleting and adding to my ML partition (how wrong was I).
Prior to completing the format of the newly created free space in bootcamp I was presented with the usual 'yes' / 'no' warning dialogue saying something along the lines of 'formatting this disk from basic to dynamic will prevent any installed operating systems from booting'. I made three monumental blunders at this stage: a) not reading the dialoge box b) completely disregarding the severity of the warning in the diaglogue box c) (you guessed it) pressing 'yes'.
The moment I pressed yes it was the start of a four hour feeling of grief as I thought of the last 6 years of my life wiped from below my nose with no time machine backup.
Upon rebooting bootcamp to get into ML the reality of the situation hit home as no OSX boot, no apple logo, no boot sound, my mac is trying to boot into windows without the option key being held in or warning to present me with a BSOD.
One thought in my mind: "oh Sh*t!!!"
3.5 hours passes and much reading online, learning of linux commands, downloading of linux distros, finding out how to install software and successfully setup a bootable linux usb and I'm typing this up on my mac while I time machine my data away to a freshly formatted external drive. Many lessons learned.
This is what I did amongst the vacating of my bowels and absorption of much nicotine.
There are two pointers to this guide. I was lucky enough to have another computer at hand to conduct the research and create a bootable usb. It a windows 7 toshiba z930. So you're going to need at a minimum: another computer (windows for the guide), a usb stick 2~4GB should be ok.
1) download a linux iso, I downloaded ubuntu, you can download what ever you like, but you're going to need linux (the rest of my mini guide will use ubuntu 13.10 during examples) http://www.ubuntu.com/start-download?distro=desktop&bits=64&release=latest
2) download Universal USB Stick Installer 1.9.5.1 (from now on as UUSI) http://www.pendrivelinux.com/downloads/Universal-USB-Installer/Universal-USB-Ins taller-1.9.5.1.exe
3) plug in your usb drive. make sure there is nothing on it that you need to keep as it will be formatted and lost. also plug your mac into a router connected to the internet. this will help prevent any issues with wireless drivers when booting into ubuntu later on.
4) once the downloads are complete, run UUSI, get past the prompts until you get to the 'setup your selections page'
5) (A) select 'ubuntu' from step 1. (B) browse to your freshly downloaded ubuntu iso in step 2. (C) tick show all drives. (D) select the drive letter of your usb in step 3. tick we will format *drive letter here*. (E) depending on the size of your usb set some persistent storage - I had an 8gb usb to hand so I set 1GB, less will probably do. (F) double check your settings and click create then let the program do it's thing, it can take some time depending on the speed of your usb drive, mine took 10 mins.
6) safely remove the usb and plug it into your mac, turn the mac on and hold the option key, once the usb drive is found hit enter and select ‘try ubuntu without installing’
7) wait for the ubuntu os to load and click the settings icon from the left tool bar
8) under settings click user accounts
9) click the + symbol in the bottom left hand corner
10) select administrator from the account type box and type a name for your account then click add
11) select the account and change the password, then confirm it and click change
12) go back to the desktop and select the power off symbol in the top right hand corner and select your name from the list, this will log you out of your current session and ask you to log in under your newly created login
13) once logged in click the settings icon again from the left hand menu and under settings go to software and updates
14) in software & updates under the ubuntu software tab tick ‘community maintained free and open source software (universe)’ and ‘software restricted by copyright or legal issues (maintained)’ then click close and close the settings window. Also check at the bottom of this window under ‘installable from cd-rom/dvd’ for two entries ‘cdrom with ubuntu 13.10 ‘saucy salamander’ - uncheck on of these entries if both are the same. Not sure if this was just me or a common problem. I found that trying to do the apt-get update would run into errors at the end if one of the entries wasn't deselected.
15) hold ctrl + alt + T to bring up the terminal
16) in the terminal window type sudo passwd root then enter a password for the account
17) in the same terminal window type sudo -i and enter the password given from step 16 if requested
18) in the same terminal window type apt-get update and wait for the update to finish without errors
19) in the same terminal windows type apt-get install testdisk and wait for the installation to finish without errors
20) in the same terminal window type testdisk
21) select create log and then the drive you want to work on e.g. your main apple OS hard disk then select proceed
22) select your file system type - for my ML installation I had to select ‘EFI GPT’ I don’t know if this will be the same throughout all macs / macbooks
23) select analyse, the step should take less than a few seconds and testdisk may report back errors with the partitions or it may proceed to the ‘current partition structure’ screen. If errors are displayed proceed past them until the next screen.
24) at the ‘current partition screen’ select quick search, you will have an opportunity to backup your drive here. I won’t go through this step (never learn) as I did not complete it myself
25) after the searching has completed all the partitions on the disk should be shown. Find your OSX partition using the size reference at the bottom by pressing the up and down keys. Once you have found the partition that relates to the OSX partition that is failing to start hit the right key to make it a primary partition a ‘P’ should show to the left of the partition data. I had to make sure my EFI System and Mac HFS (155GB) partitions were marked as primary.
26) hit the enter key to continue to the next screen and use the right arrow key to select ‘write’
27) the program will warn you it will write the partition table so hit ‘Y’ and a confirmation should be displayed that this has been successful.
28) reboot the computer and remove the USB stick (i removed it at the white loading screen after the reboot, not sure if it makes any difference)
29) allow the computer longer to boot, mine took about 35 seconds to show the apple symbol whereas it normally took between 3~7 seconds before I destroyed it.
30) get into OSX and backup everything to time machine or whatever you use then it probably a good idea to kill off your bootcamp install and refresh your mac from the fresh backup.
Hope this helps someone. I couldn’t find anything conclusive on the net when I ran into problems (all my own fault really for not reading the dialogues correctly) however I used bits from multiple forums and found out parts myself especially the linux parts as I don't know the os at all . Certainly won’t be making this mistake again anytime soon.
Well I’ve had an awful night and have work in two hours but at least the last 6 years of my (now backed up) life is intact and in my hands. I’d rather lose a night of sleep than lose all my data.
Sorry if some of the stuff above is wrong as I don't do this thing on osx / linux at all really. At least it might point you in the right direction.