DIsk Problems - Boot camp Disk Erase

Ok.
I installed windows xp a while back, and had no problems with it running on mac os x. Recently I wanted to install the Windows 7 RC, and I didn't have enough space left on the disk. I went back to Mac OS X, and erased the data on the boot camp partition, so I would have room to install Windows 7. However, since I erased the data on the boot camp partition, the partition has gone, I cannot view it in Finder on Disk utility. So now I have 20 GB less space on my Main Hard Drive and can't get it back.
Any Solutions/Ideas?
Much Appreciated,
Jo Rock.

In the Disk Utility, select the drive in the sidebar, click on the Partition tab, drag the slider as far down as it will go, and click Apply.
(43351)

Similar Messages

  • Very strange hard disk problem - Boot Camp/Windows related?

    On my first gen 1.83 GHz MacBook Pro (now at 10.5.2 with all System Updates applied), I've had Win XP Home installed under Boot Camp (from the very first beta, updated to the release Boot Camp assistant now) for well over a year. At one time about 14 months ago I tried using Parallels, but that used too much battery power, so I deleted Parallels. I don't know whether that left any traces of itself behind.
    More recently I've been amazed at how well VMWare Fusion works on my Mac Pro, so I decided to try it on my laptop. I installed the Fusion application and tried to "adopt" my Boot Camp partition installation of Win XP. I think I goofed and didn't install VMWare tools at the proper moment, because Windows went on a self-directed hunt for drivers after installation, and when I tried to start the virtual machine inside Fusion, Windows told me it needed to be activated by Microsoft and wouldn't even allow me to log in to do the activation.
    Wondering whether there might be some residual of the Parallels "hooks" to Windows contaminating things, I decided just to reinstall Windows.
    I used Boot Camp Assistant to remove the Windows partition. The first clue that something was now amiss was that I decided to reboot the laptop after reclaiming the Windows partition, and when I did so I encountered a black screen with a decidedly "microsoft pre-start up" text message on my screen, something like "press any key to start up from the removable media drive", then "press any key to start up", neither of which would work (even with a bootable disk in the optical drive).
    So, I rebooted holding down the option key and was able to start up Mac OS X 10.5.2. Only one volume was shown now in "About this Mac" and on my desktop, so I ran Boot Camp Assistant again to re-create a Boot Camp partition. UNFORTUNATELY, in the midst of this, I encountered my first ever kernal panic ("windowshade" effect descending down the screen and multiple-language dialog telling me I needed to reboot).
    I rebooted and ran Disk Utility, which told me my partition map was wrong and that I was missing about the amount of disk space I'd allocated to Windows in my previous Boot Camp partition. I thought at THAT point I'd solved my problem - I could just run disk utility from my Leopard startup disk. HOWEVER, the Leopard installation disk will no longer reboot the laptop!
    I confirmed that the problem is not the Leopard installation DVD, because it will boot my Mac Pro and it mounts on the desktop and Disk Utility says it's fine.
    So, I tried to repair my laptop's drive using DiskWarrior 4. That worked (at least it made a new directory, and after it did so, when I boot into the Mac OS, Disk Utility run from the hard drive also says the disk is fine). HOWEVER, the Leopard DVD still won't boot the MacBook Pro. I made one more attempt to create a Windows partition using Boot Camp assistant, and once again generated a kernal panic in the midst of partitioning.
    It seems that I've done something to the stuff on the hard drive that's needed at boot time or partitioning time. I can't erase and reformat the drive, because the Leopard install DVD won't start up the machine. Even though DiskWarrior creates a directory that Disk Utility says is fine, I cannot recreate a Windows partition.
    Any advice what I can or should do next? I can try using the System Install DVD that came with the laptop, or perhaps the system restore DVD, but my bet is they won't start the machine either.
    Please feel free to ask any questions, send me to any other resources, or contact me via email if you have ideas. I have a 10 day business trip beginning Sunday March 30, and I desperately need a working laptop by then.
    Thanks so much.

    "Responding" to my own post: the Install DVD that came with my MacBook Pro will boot it!
    So, I'll try running the earlier version of Disk Utility that came on IT (10.5.4, current Leopard version is 11.0) to repair the MacBook Pro's internal hard drive, THEN see if I can boot from the Leopard install disk (the notion being that I can (groan) recreate a virgin Leopard environment on the laptop with no traces of prior disk formatting nightmares.
    (a few minutes later): the Leopard Installer DVD will now boot the MacBook Pro. As one last attempt to avoid the whole reinstall nightmare, I'll try running Disk Utility from the Leopard Install DVD, and if it passes, make one more attempt to create a boot camp partition on my hard drive. If that doesn't work, next step is to wipe the internal drive and do a clean install of Leopard and all my other necessary stuff.
    Any other ideas?

  • Boot Camp Error - Erased Partition?

    I erased windows partition as instructed, finished my work and restarted the computer... it opens up in windows. I search, and discover my OSX partition has been erased. All my files were on there, university work, music, photographs! Is there any way of getting that back? Preferably for free/cheeply.

    I backed up the section I was supposed to be deleting, and followed the instructions provided using Boot Camp and Disk utility to erase the windows partition. Thanks for the info.
    Edit: I also need something that will work on Windows to recover a Mac OS drive.
    Message was edited by: Kittykat123123

  • Windows 8 reports compatibility problems boot camp 4

    Good evening.
    My problem is that every time I boot up my Boot Camp Windows 8 partition, I get the dialog box stating that there are compatibility problems with Boot Camp 4. I am given the option to use the partition anyway, but I'm puzzled why this just began to appear, when I have been using Boot Camp 4 with a 32-but install of Windows 8 for several months now,,,
    Any help would be appreciated.
    Thanks!

    Having the exact same issue on my MBPr 15!

  • How do I install Lion on an MBP with Snow Leopard 10.6.8, Boot Camp'd XP and a Master Boot Record?

    I think this is called "a pickle."
    The machine is a 13" MacBook Pro, 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo w/ 4 GB RAM and a 500 GB HDD.
    The HDD has a Snow Leopard 10.6.8 partition, and a Windows XP partition, via Boot Camp.  Its Partition Map Scheme, sadly, is a Master Boot Record. I need to reformat it to a GUID Partition Table scheme to install Lion, but when I attempt to boot it from the Snow Leopard 10.6.0 DVD to wipe the drive, it grey-screens.  Dead end.
    From what I can gather on the forums, I can't boot a 10.6.8 machine using a Snow Leopard 10.6.0 DVD.  I can't find my grey DVDs for this machine – still looking for those – but I expect those won't work either, being Leopard-generation?
    The machine works fine, for the most part, including the optical drive.  Has occassional display and wake glitches.  Its HDD is backed up on a Drobo via Time Machine.  I also have a 15" MBP Core i7 (with the exact same problem: 10.6.8, XP, MBR) which I can use for Target Disk Mode via FireWire.  If I try to wipe the HDD on the 13", using Disk Utility on the 15" via Target Disk Mode, will the 13" then boot successfully from the Snow Leopard 10.6.0 DVD?
    I just want to wipe the 13" machine, reinstall a fresh copy of Snow Leopard, then update it to Lion and restore from Time Machine, and never touch anything Windows-related ever again. (And then do the same for my 15", for which I've found my 10.6.3 grey disc. Not sure if that's any more promising.)
    Any help appreciated!

    Sounds like something is wrong with your disk. Have you tried cleaning it?
    The Snow Leopard 10.6.0 DVD is fine – it mounts on both my 13" and 15", and I successfully created an image of it on my 15".  I also tried my wife's Snow Leopard 10.6.0 DVD, also clean, which produced the same grey screen result.
    Have you tried to use boot camp to erase the Windows partition?
    Yep, this is supposed to be the proper way to remove a Windows XP partition from Boot Camp, so this was the first thing I tried.  I get the same error as everyone with a Master Boot Record scheme appears to get:
    The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.
    Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) volume.  Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again.
    So, if I can't launch the Disk Utility from the Snow Leopard DVD, my next best guess is wiping it from my 15" over Target Disk Mode.  However, if I try that, and still can't get it to boot from the Snow Leopard 10.6.0 DVD, then I'm stuck with an MBP without an OS.
    My conclusion – that 10.6.0 DVDs can't boot to 10.6.8 machines – was based on forum posts about downgrading from Lion.  I was wondering if there's a way to create a "10.6.8 restore DVD," and try booting from that.  Shot in the dark perhaps.

  • Trying to install vista 64 on a separate internal drive with boot camp

    running into a wall here,
    I'm able to install vista x64 when I divide an internal OS X drive that works fine, but I want to load Vista on it's own entire internal disk (bay 4). Bays 1,2, and 3 I use for OS X they are all 1TB drives. When I go through the boot camp assistant and divide a disk 50/50 between OSX and Windows and then boot to the vista install disk, the vista setup screen shows a PARTITION as "disk x partition x BOOT CAMP" and it works to select that partition, format and load windows... No problem. However when you choose the option in Boot Camp to erase an entire extra disk (in my case bay 4) and create a single partition for Windows and then boot to the Vista install disk the disk that was erased of the mac formatting, it doesn't show up with "BOOT CAMP" in the name inside the Vista setup screen, nor will it let you install vista to it, even if you pick the right one and format it inside Vista setup.
    I've tried removing all internal disks except the one I want to load vista on and booting directly to the vista set up disc, and formatting with windows command line diskpart inside setup too, unsuccessfully. It simply keeps giving me messages that windows cannot be installed on the volume... I changed it from a GPU type disc using the "clean" command in diskpart but it still won't work! Man!!!
    How can I get vista loaded on a separate disk on my mac, boot camp or not? It seems silly that a disk must have an OS X partiton on it before windows will load on it... Is there a way to load Vista x64 on it's own dedicated internal disk? Gratitude for any real help, I'm positive I'm not the first guy to want to load vista on it's own disk LOL!

    So I figured this out myself, there was some kind of glitch in boot camp, i bypassed it and formatted the disk with the os x disk utility as a fat 32. pulled all the other drives out, and booted to vista setup. it formatted the disk to NTFS and lets me install vista 64 yahhhooooooooooooo!!!!!

  • HT4818 after installing boot camp 4 on mountain lion " Missing operating system"

    Hello
    I hade a small Windows 7 partition , so after updating to mountain lion , I wanted resize win partition .
    I made an image of it , then deleted win partition from utility disk , ( wrong idea )
    I didn’t notice that boot camp  could erase win partition , anyway I have tried several times , and always after reboot boot camp
    I get the same
    Missing operating system .
    If I boot from dvd install win or if i boot from the boot win partition.
    hd and partitions looks OK to utility disk
    Any idea to fix the problem ?

    I presume that you've followed the instructions for sideloading the iMac Windows drivers into your install via USB stick? (wasn't aware the EFI recognized the SD slot as storage on boot. Now i know)
    I always found more success in just slipstreaming the drivers and install.xml file onto a custom Win7 DVD rather than the USB approach when trying with my Late 2009 27" iMac. The Win7 installer needs that enclosed .xml file in the driver package to tell it where to find the drivers so that they be loaded when the Win7 image extracts itself.
    If you're using mountain lion, then you should be receiving the proper Win7 driver set. If you wanted to create a custom image, then you can use an ISO file, the driver package and disk utility to make something you can use. Either that or you learn what edits your install.xml file needs to point the installer properly and check it manually.
    I don't know what links you have so i'll just include everything:
    Installing boot camp on a Late 2009 iMac:
    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3173
    Direct link to Late 2009 iMac-specific Windows drivers.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/DL995
    I'd try a USB stick and the iMac-specific driver set. It should steer your insolent windows installer correctly.
    Hope this helps.

  • Boot Camp Issue

    Hello everyone.
    I have this issue where I am trying to install Windows on my Mac but every time, after about 45 minutes or partitioning I get this message:
    "Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again."
    I have 2 issues:
    1)I don't know how to back up the disc and...
    2)I don't have an extra hard drive to back it up to.
    Here's the real kicker. It is already formatted as a "single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume" and here is the picture of my issue:
    http://img10.imageshack.us/i/picture1lf.png/
    I have tried using Boot Camp once before and it worked just perfectly, but I had to back out in the middle of the process of installing Windows, but I reopened Boot Camp and erased that partition, so it should be perfect.
    Thank you all for help. This has been driving me crazy. xD

    When I was in the Windows world I had seen this type
    of problem with some cd's before. So I just decided
    to try it in this case.
    Well, I'm very, very grateful. You saved my bacon. I delivered the MacBook Pro on time today because of your tip. Very much obliged.
    I also installed MacAffee's Virus package (2006) and struggled to get it upgraded until I finally realized that my Airport Base station and Express units needed an upgrade. After I upgraded and rebooted all of them, my the MacBook Pro was able to join the wireless network just fine.
    Do you have any recommendations for a great cloning utility for the PC partition? I'm assuming that my fave, SuperDuper! will not make a FAT32 partition and then clone that drive, so I'm wondering what to do. On the PC side I believe they call this making a "disk image" that one can restore a system with. What's your experience with this kind of thing? I really loathe incremental back-ups that one cannot boot with, and I'm wondering how best to support this computer in the future. I went to PC World and liked the program: Acronis True Image 9.0 Home I'm going to try it out.
    The last thing I'm curious about is what the best way to protect the Mac side of the computer from PC viruses and worms. I'm not really up to date on that. Can a PC virus wreck havoc to files on the Mac side if I've used the FAT32 formatting? I thought that would be beneficial format because it would allow me to move files (at least) from the Mac side to the PC side.
    Any other good threads I should be following here?
    Thanks again for your help, Bill. If I could give you another blue dot next to your name (for ranking) I would.
    cheers,
    Mick
    MacBook Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

  • General Boot Camp Question

    Hello everyone.
    I have this issue where I am trying to install Windows on my Mac but every time, after about 45 minutes or partitioning I get this message:
    "Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again."
    I have 2 issues:
    1)I don't know how to back up the disc and...
    2)I don't have an extra hard drive to back it up to.
    Here's the real kicker. It is already formatted as a "single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume" and here is the pic of my issue:
    http://img10.imageshack.us/i/picture1lf.png/
    I have tried using Boot Camp once before and it worked just perfectly, but I had to back out in the middle of the process of installing Windows, but I reopened Boot Camp and erased that partition, so it should be perfect.
    Thank you all for help. This has been driving me crazy. xD
    Message was edited by: KenCochran

    General Boot Camp Question
    Try the Boot Camp forums: http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=237

  • Can I use an old Windows hard drive with Boot Camp?

    I have an old windows desktop that has FL Studio files I want to transfer to Logic Pro. I'm working on a Mac Pro with 4 hard drive bays and only 3 hard drives.
    I understand that Boot Camp lets you boot Wndows, but can I install Boot Camp without erasing the hard drive? I just want to be able to plug my PC drive in, hold the option key, and choose to boot the Windows drive from time to time.
    Alternately, could I make a disc image of my PC hard drive, reformat it to FAT and reattach the disc image?
    Thanks,
    Jon

    You can, but it's illegal. A OEM version is designed to be installed on a new computer, not on a computer with an existing operating system, so you can install Windows from there but you should know that's illegal, so Apple doesn't support it. To do this legally, you have to get a full Windows 7 disc version and use it to install Windows.
    If you need the steps to install Windows on the MacBook, read > http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/boot_camp_install-setup_10.8.pdf

  • Boot Camp - External DVD Reader (Mac Compatible)

    To all,
    I am not able to get Boot Camp to load vista from the external CD-ROM since the internal one is totaly disconnected. It does nothing. It spins the CD when it restarts then continues on to loading the login screen.
    Bare with me - this is the fun part -
    I got a 24" white iMac. CD-ROM was stuck and refused to take in new CD's. Took it to Apple, they replaced it. I bring it back home 2 days later and the screen is dented. They fix that in 4 days. Now I am finally able to start installing Vista.
    Put the CD in - nothing happens - it kicks it out!!!! Well - its brand new - its even a different brand than what was in there before.
    I take it back to apple, i give the lady all the **** in the world because this is not supposed to happen, etc.
    They decide to give me a new iMac. While I am waiting, the manager approaches me and give me the 13 cents which were found in the cd-rom drive (thanks to my kids)
    So I appologize - totaly ignored her wanting $450 to replace it, so I went and bought a Sony external DVD reader, burner.
    -- Problem --
    Boot Camp, Front Row + the DVD player software won't work off the external drive.
    I took the mac appart - disconnected the dvd-drive from the motherboard thinking that if its not there, then boot camp will attempt to run off the external drive.
    Put it back together - and rebooted - everything came up fine until using front row or the dvd player.
    Boot Camp still won't read the external drive - no errors nothing - it attempts then quits and moves to the login screen.
    Guys - I need help - i make my living off Windows so not having access to it - its killing me.
    Please do not recommend parallels or anything else like it.
    I am willing to try anything at this point. Before I go and spend $450 i will rather buy a new machine.
    HELP!!! Anyone Please!!!!

    I doubt there is any way to get the external to work with the Windows install. It's magic that the internal works! However, since you are not afraid to rip the iMac apart, a Google of 'imac internal dvd drive' shows that you can get a replacement for well under $450.

  • "Ghostly Partition" after un-installing Boot Camp

    I used Boot Camp Assistant to delete the Boot Camp partition in which I had Window 7. I did it after re-installing Windows 7 in a Virtual Machine in Parallels. Although Boot Camp Assistant erased the partition, it couldn't return the Mac HD to a single full-size drive ---If fact, it couldn't finish the job; it got stuck, so I had to force quit---. Now my Mac HD size is equal to the physical HDD capacity less the size of the partition in which Boot Camp was. In Drive Utilities, a rectangle shows in grey the area used by Mac HDD, which is considerably lower than the full rectangle. The differece is in white. I seems like a "ghostly partition".  Any advise?

    Thanks Mende1, Probably I misread the chart, but definetively my Mac HD size has shrunk after unistalling Boot Camp. Here is the image I mentioned in my first post:

  • Help boot camping Windows XP!!!

    So I'm having major problems boot camping Windows XP onto my Macbook. I have tried unsuccessfully about 5 times now and every time have to fix my computer by rebooting from the OSX Disc, writing to zero my hard drive and then reinstalling the OSX.
    So, my problem seems to be the partitioning of the hard drive. I use Bootcamp manager to partition 15GB for Windows. Then I insert my Windows XP disc. My first problem was that the partition that was available was "C: Parition 1 Unknown" and not "C: Partition 3 <BOOTCAMP>[FAT 32]". But I carried on anyway. Then my second problem was that I could only format to NTFS and not FAT even though my partition was not larger than 32GB. Then lastly, even after I ignored all that, formatted the partition to NTFS and tried to keep installing, I encountered upon a page telling me that there was already an operating system on the partition. This is where I always abort my attempts.
    Then I had another problem when I tried again. The size of the partition that came up was 130570MB which is around 130GB. How could this be? Is my computer assuming the main OSX partition is the Windows partition and is trying to let me install Windows onto that? I have no idea what is wrong with my computer and I am going crazy (tear my hair out crazy). Please help anyone Thanks in advance.

    Hey HairLikeSnow and welcome to the forum -
    I have never setup BootCamp on my machine but I've set it up for others a couple times and each time I had the [*Boot Camp Installation & Setup Guide*|http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/bootcampinstall-setup.pdf] handy. I can't believe I just got lucky. Perhaps you should take a look by clicking the link I provided and see if there's a flaw in your procedure.
    I hope this helps -GDF

  • Help-Erasing a Boot Camp Partition Caused 32 GB of Disk Space to Vanish

    Hi
    I'm a new mac user I'd I have been really happy so far, expect for this problem:
    -I created a 32 gb partition with boot camp.
    -I tried installing windows xp without knowing I had to format the system to NTFS during the install
    The installation didnt work, and I erased the bootcamp partition.
    -When I tried to create a new boot camp partition, it said my Mac HD size hard drive is 227 gb, ie the *32 gb allocated to the partition had vanished*. In addition, I could not recreate a partition because of an error message.
    -I ran the snow leopard CD's disk utility and thought that I had fixed the problem.
    -However in boot camp, the mac drive is still only 227 gb (missing 32 gb). I can create partitions now, and deleting these partitions does cause any additional loss of disk space.
    -I tried erasing empty disk space with no luck.
    Does anyone know how to recover space lost by Boot Camp?
    Thanks

    qcpharaoh wrote:
    -When I tried to create a new boot camp partition, it said my Mac HD size hard drive is 227 gb, ie the *32 gb allocated to the partition had vanished*. In addition, I could not recreate a partition because of an error message.
    -I ran the snow leopard CD's disk utility and thought that I had fixed the problem.
    -However in boot camp, the mac drive is still only 227 gb (missing 32 gb). I can create partitions now, and deleting these partitions does cause any additional loss of disk space.
    Let me ask a simple question. What size HD do you have in your Mac? You say you see 227 GB and that 32GB is "missing". If I add those two numbers up I com up with 259 GB. I suspect that your "missing" space is due to the inconsistencies in which Snow Leopard now reports 1 GB. In some places it reports 1 GB as a hard disk manufacturer (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes). In other places it reports 1 GB as a binary number (1 GB = 2^^30 [IIRC] = 1,073,741,824 Bytes). Since I do not know of any drive manufacturer that sells a 259 GB drive, I suspect that this is just due to the differing definitions of 1 GB.

  • I erased my windows partition using disk utility then realized I should have used boot camp, because now I can't resize the original partition and seem to be stuck with a ghost unusable space. Boot Camp now doesn't give me the option to install or re

    I erased my windows partition using disk utility then realized I should have used boot camp, because now I can't resize the original partition and seem to be stuck with a ghost unusable space. Boot Camp now doesn't give me the option to install or remove windows partition.

    Hi, Ralph,
    The problem is that I did erase the partition, using disk utility, but I can't go back to my original disk size pre-partition, as disk utility won't let me do it and gives the message "Couldn’t modify partition map because file system verification failed." When I try to use Boot Camp Assistant it won't let me select the third option to remove windows.

Maybe you are looking for