Enlarging Partition - worried

Hi I deleted an old partition and I want to enlarge my original Mac HD to take up that space. But after following apples website Im a little worried.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2374
It says I can enlarge without losing data unless it is a Master Boot Record Partition. I have no idea how to find this and the page is very vague, looked all over disk utility.
The partition is my orginal Macintosh HD and I have no other partitions in that harddrive, I know its my start up disk but is it my MBR?
Thanks

Austen Toone wrote:
The partition is my orginal Macintosh HD and I have no other partitions in that harddrive, I know its my start up disk but is it my MBR?
No, it's not formatted MBR. You can't install OSX or updates on an MBR disk.
In DIsk Utility, select the top line for your drive in the sidebar (should have make and size). Down towards the bottom will be the *Partition Map Scheme,* which is certain to be GUID, as you have an Intel Mac. (It would be +Apple Partition Map+ if you had an older PPC Mac, or +Master Boot Record+ if it were an external disk used by Windoze).
So yes, you can expand the top partition by pulling down the lower-right corner, then clicking Apply.
And yes, you should always have backups. All disk drives fail: a few when they're quite new, a few will live for several years, the others, somewhere in between. Other bad things happen, too. When something does happen, you risk losing everything if you have no backups. Everything.

Similar Messages

Boot Camp wont Partition- Worried about reinstalling Leopard from backup

Hello, I have been unable to create a partition through Boot Camp on my HD so that I can install Windows 7. I keep getting the error message: Cannot be partitioned because some of the files cannot be removed. I have ran Disk Utility and verified and repaired permissions, as well as verify and repair disk. I also ran disk utility via booting from the Leopard install disk. I have Onyx and ran all maintenance/cleaning options. So after researching it seems that the only solution is to backup with Time Machine, reinstall the OS and restore from the backup. If I do this, what is going to happen to all of my 3rd party applications/settings? Will the time machine backup save EVERYTHING and bring my MBP back to its identical state before the reinstallation, or will I have to reinstall all of my 3rd party applications (logic studio, Reason, Ableton Live, etc..)???
Thanks for the help!

Try iDefrag (www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php). I was having the same issue and before backing up and restoring I tried defragging the drive (first time ever). It comes with a utility to create a boot disk and after running its process I was able to create a new partition through Boot Camp.
Back up your data first just in case anyway. I had no problems at all but you never know what might happen.
Hope this helps.

Hi, i wanted to resize my windows partion. I was thinking of using the default backup system for windows. Then switching to mac partion, deleting the bootcamp and then restoring a new enlarged partion from the backup. Is this possible?

hi,
i wanted to resize my windows partition. I was thinking of using the default backup system for windows. Then switching to mac partion, deleting the bootcamp and then restoring a new enlarged partition from the backup. Is this possible?

I see youhave gotten recommendatons for using WinClone or CampTune. I have used both and they both work well.
You have asked about using the WIndows 7 utility to backup your drive and restor it onto a larger partition. I will tell you fro experience that this will probably not do what you want, and may do something that you don't want. You can use the Windows 7 native backup tool to make a backup of your Windows 7 partition. It will most liekly end-up making a dive image of the whole drive. When yourestore that backup, it will try to re-create teh partitions of exactly the same size as they were when the backup was taken, so it won't increase your partition size for you. Worse, since Windows doesn't natively know how to read./write HFS+ volumes, the backup will make a partition for your MacOS (replacing any you may have now), except that the copy restored by WIndows will be totally worthless, and you will not be able to boot MacOS from it, or even read it under MacOS.
Now I will tell you that I've also had some fairly good success working with the free tool CloneZilla. Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, and everything else mentioned does cost you money, I thought I would throw it out. CloneZilla is not as easy to use as the tools mentioned, but it has worked for me int hte past, so it is something to consider. I tend to use CampTune myself, but that was because I purchased a bundle deal for them and it was included in that deal.

SL & partition resize - Why not one only?

Hello at all.
I need to enlarge partition of my Time Machine
I have an external 1TB hd, based on GUID map scheme, split into 2 partition:
1st 600GB hfs+ journled (with my TM) - partion A
2nd 400GB ntfs (data) - partition B
By disk utility, I tried to remove the 2nd, but when do that, the alert says me that "partition A will be deleted", "partition B will be deleted".
Why?
It depends by ntfs format on 2nd?
If I initialize the 2nd partition (400GB) into hfs+, and successively try to delete it, I'll have the same alert type?
Thanks

Based on "Clarification request" above, I tested for Partition A too; so I select partion A, type "-" sign, system response with the same message, changing only the partition order: "...Partition A will be deleted, Partition B will be deleted...".
I've all partition B data, saved on other support.
What about my intention to reinitialize partition B in hfs journled and then try to remove it?
It will be the same alert about both deleting partition?

Migrating G5- Intel iMac: smoothing the transition, unusual setup....

I've had a new Intel iMac for literally two months now, to replace my aging revA G5 iMac, and have not yet found the time to get it set up. I'm hoping to get to it this Sunday.
One thing that's been holding me up is the desire to have the transition as smooth as possible and worry that it might not be. This is a production machine (maybe not in the traditional sense, but I run my life on it, so that makes it "production" for me) and I don't like the idea of rocky transitions, particularly in the area of data and app migration.
One of my primary questions, and the primary question of this post, is whether (and if yes, how best) to use Migration Assistant.
So on my current G5 machine, I have the internal HD divided into 2 partitions:
Partition 1 contains:
a) the OS (10.4.11);
b) my admin user account, which I only use for troubleshooting and the occasional admin tasks that are awkward under my standard user or in any event more convenient when running as admin; and
c) a couple of other infrequently-used user accounts (e.g., a couple of guests that very occasionally use the machine)
Partition 2 contains:
a) My primary user account
b) Some data that I prefer to keep outside my main user account, primarily to make my daily backups more manageable, and which I back up manually.
1. So, first question is whether Migration Assistant can handle that kind of setup. I seem to remember using it successfully when migrating from my G4 iMac to my G5. My G4 iMac had four partitions (this was in the early days of OS X when some were recommending putting OS 9 on a separate partition). I don't remember what I did but do seem to remember using Migration Assistant for most of it.
2. Second question: I assume I will have to repartition the HD on the Intel iMac and reinstall OS X from the DVDs if I want more than one partition on my HD. I'll probably do 2 partitions again and leave a bunch of free space (not included in any partition) for other uses later. So my first boot should be directly from the install DVD.
If I do that, can I still use the Migration Assistant? Again, I'm thinking I must have done this when I set up the G5 five years ago. What would my procedure be, if it's not going to be really obvious?
3. I have all my data backed up to multiple external HDs using Retrospect 6. My alternative would be to restore data from the backups. The main issues with this approach are: (a) it might not be quite as "put it back exactly as it was" as Migration Assistant would do things (although Retrospect is *supposed* to do it); and (b) I don't have Retrospect 8 yet, and there continue to be reports of problems with it (although 8.1 or 8.2 or whatever they are up to now) is supposed to have resolved a number of the very significant problems with the 8.0 release.
So the next question: Should Retrospect 6 run under Rosetta under 10.6? Would you trust it to do so when restoring your data? Would you trust the latest Retrospect 8 to do so? Which would you pick?
4. Finally: I have read scattered reports of problems with using Migration Assistant to migrate from a PPC to an Intel Mac. Some of them seem to just involve slow performance in web browsers, possibly caused by PPC plugins or other lurking PPC code that I guess would require Rosetta to run, slowing down performance. (I have the tricked-out i7 machine so I'm not that worried about sluggish performance, although it makes sense to ferret out unneeded PPC code of course.) There may have been other problems reported as well but I don't remember what they are at the moment -- I'll have to look some more.
So: Is the Collective Mind aware of problems with MA in migrating PPC -> Intel, and if so, thoughts on preventing/mitigating the issues?
Thanks so very much. I know this is a ton of questions. I'm grateful to you for helping smooth out this transition.

Joel Siegel wrote:
So Disk Utility in 10.6 lets you "hot"-resize partitions?
That came in with Leopard.
I had considered moving my primary user's home folder to the boot partition, based on advice in this forum (adaptive hot file clustering, etc). But it sounds like in some ways it may be simpler to make the initial setup more or less identical to my current one, and then change it later.
Probably. I haven't tested whether you can restore a second partition to the one you're running from; if not, it would take a couple of extra steps to get the home folders there without screwing up the permissions. And I always try to only make one big change at a time.
Since I have 1 TB to play with on the new machine, and only 250 GB +(edit: 150 GB)+ on the old one, I have plenty of room to create large partitions. My understanding from the links you posted is that I can enlarge a partition as well as shrink it (as long as the enlarged partition doesn't bump into an existing partition, and after backing everything up of course
Mostly. You can expand a partition "down" in the diagram DU shows, but not "up."
I wonder if I can create free space in between partitions in Disk Utility.
Yes, sort of, by making, then deleting a partition. But since you can't move or expand a partition "up," I can't think of a reason to do that. (I understand some other utilities can do that.)
You posted some reasons in this thread about why separate partitions are not recommended (seek times, adaptive hot file clustering), and I understand those. Are there others?
Those are the main ones I'm familiar with. Another (that you probably won't run into for a long time, if ever) is that if you guess wrong, you may either waste a lot of space on the OSX partition, or have too little there, with potentially nasty consequences.
One reason I've persisted in this partitioning scheme has to do with backups and restores, although I may be totally off base in this. I've envisioned some scenario where something on my boot volume gets so badly hosed that an Erase and Install is the best cure. But if my primary user data resides on a separate partition it would seem to make it much easier to get back in business -- I wouldn't have to worry about restoring my primary user data. The other user accounts on the boot volume would of course have to be restored.
There is no +Erase and Install+ anymore. No +Archive and Install,+ either. Just Install. It replaces OSX with a fresh version, without disturbing anything else. It even preserves configuration and settings in /Library, and files installed there by 3rd-party apps. Rather amazing!
Some folks do that, of course (perhaps out of old Windoze habits), but it's rarely required, or does any good on OSX. In some unusual situations, perhaps it would help. A couple of very experienced users here have not done a so-called "clean install" since 10.2!
I assume Setup Assistant will guide me through the steps of hooking up the old machine and booting it. I don't know if it needs to boot in Target Disk Mode for this to work, but I strongly suspect it does.
Yes. If you choose to transfer directly from it, which is probably best. You can also transfer from a clone (and, once you're on SL, a Time Machine backup). All documented in excruciating detail in [Setting up a new Mac from an old one or its backups|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Setup.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Snow Leopard > Installation and Setup+ forum).
Thanks again. I'll post back after the surgery.
Cool. Fingers crossed here.

Pavilion Slimline s3760a: Cloning the Hard drive to replace with larger drive

Product Name:Pavilion Slimline s3760a
OS: Vista
Hi All,
I'm Turina, just joined the forum think I'm posting in the right place but let me know if I'm not please.
So we've had our computer for several years, the hard drive is in the red so am swapping it out before it dies of old age, for a WD 1TB Hard drive.
I am going to use a Sata-usb adapter and the Acronis True Image WD Edition Software to clone the installed hard drive.
It is only used at home, and we are purchasing another one for gaming, so this is just the usual photos, music, documents computer, some website/ftp type stuff, but nothing too consuming.
I don't think I have the original cd that came with the computer, so I don't have a cd of the OS.
Have already backed up the computer several times so should I return to factory setting prior to changing the hard drive? No important stuff on there that I can't retrieve.
Questions are:
The current drive is partitioned, the C: and the D: which is the Factory Image. I want to know if I can clone the factory image separately to the C drive onto different drives. ie the factory image onto one drive and the rest onto another drive. I actually am not sure what a factory image is but after reading about it I asume it is the information used to restore your computer back to factory settings??
If I can't clone separately, when I clone the drive will the computer then be able to recognise the extra 1TB or will it still just recognise the current drives memory of 320GB. I know you can enlarge partitions etc. no idea how or even if I need to do this??
And would a separate SSD or even hard drive for the OS be over kill? I don't actually think I can put the os on a separate drive as I don't have the cd, and don't know if I can do it with the cloning software. But thought I would ask anyway.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your time
Turina
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Your correct, the D is a protected image used to create a factory Recovery. It's less than 15GB.
A prepped/formatted 1TB drive creates about 931GB of useable space.
The clone process will create about 916GB for C. The remaining will be the D.
Hope that helps.
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How to enlarge a partition on an external hard drive

I backup with Time Machine to an external hard drive. It is currently configured into two partitions, one being used to backup and the second used for other purposes. I have maxed out the backup partition and wish to expand its size by eliminating the second partition. Disk Utility allows the elimination of the second partition, but when I attempt to enlarge the backup partition to include the now unused space on the disk I get the following message:
Partition Failed
Partition failed with the error:
Filesystem resize support required, such as HFS+
with journaling enabled.
What does this message mean and how can I accomplish my goal?
Thanks.

I know this issue is 14 months old, but perhaps someone else will read it in the future. I ran into this problem of needing to resize an external drive and discovered that Mac's Disk Utility program, built into the Mac OS, allows you to do this without losing data or needing to buy additional software.
Here's how:
1. Open Disk Utility and select the root diretory of the external disk you want to resize. (If the disk is partitioned, it will have a subdirectory for each partition.)
2. At the top of the dialog box, select Partition.
> You should see five buttons across the top of the dialog box: First Aid, Erase, Partition, RAID, and Restor
> If you select a subdirectory, rather than the root directory, the Partition option is not displayed, because you can't partition a subdirectory.
3. On the screen you should see the disk split into the different partitions. Select the partition you wish to resize.
4. That partition will be highlighed and the lower right part of the box should have a little triangle-like series of lines. Click and hold this triangle, then drag it down to make the partition larger, or drag it up to make the partition smaller.
5. When you get to the size you want, hit apply.
6. Disk Utility should do its thing and your disk will be resized.
Viola. You are finished.
Take a look at http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilitysize_3.htm for pictures of this process.

Fatal error - bad logical partition 8 : enlarged logical partitions

Hi,
I am trying to install Arch after being an Ubuntu user for approximatley two years.
I re-formatted my drive to create an ~20Gb space in an ext4 extended partition since my previous would not allow more than four primary partitions.
I am trying to triple boot: Win XP, Ubuntu, and Arch.
I had read that one swap space would work, however I seem to now have three!
I partitioned ntfs for Win XP, then Ubuntu root, Ubuntu Home, Swap (2Gb), then left ~20Gb for Arch.
However the output from Gparted now states I have three swaps! I cannot install Arch due to the error message:
'Fatal error - bad logical partition 8 : enlarged logical partitions overlap'
Is there a way of resolving this without re-formatting everything again, since I have spend hours setting up Win XP and Ubuntu to how I want them.
I only use Win XP to manage my ipod and use Ubuntu as my primary OS. However, I recently found that by setting up Arch will teach me a hell of a lot about Linux OS which is my goal.
Thanks in advance!
fdisk output:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 112642047 56320000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 112644094 976496639 431926273 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 174086144 931846143 378880000 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 931848192 935944191 2048000 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 935946240 976496639 20275200 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 169897984 174079999 2091008 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda9 112644096 165707775 26531840 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 165709824 169887743 2088960 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Oh, ok then, that makes sense ... I don't know the reason to align partitions to cylinders but there must be a good reason, although even if they are not aligned it shouldn't be a big problem (at least gparted allows you to create unaligned partitions).
Personally gparted is not my first choice when dealing with partitions, it already scared me _big time_ and even if linux doesn't complain about partitions not being in the order they are on disk some programs complain about that (and gparted does make a mess out of that) and even refuse to do anything before they fix that (partition magic for example, and I've never lost any data or even got scared when using it).
Lately I have been doing it like this, create the partitions with cfdisk which leaves everything in a way no program complains, then I format the partitions with mkfs.whatever or I use gparted just to format the partitions, I've never had problems when doing things like that.
The last time I've used gparted to resize partitions things went well but on another occasion it did make a huge mess out of the partition layout (there were ntfs partitions involved when it went wrong, and only ext3 when all went well) leaving me with a problem similar to what you have now, luckily testdisk came to the rescue but I reckon I was just lucky that time.
I've learned my lesson, _always_ make backups or copy things to another disk, besides being probably faster (as gparted does a ton of checks) it is a lot safer and if you have really important stuff on your hard disk you can't afford to be relying on the chance of not loosing it in the process.

Once you delete a second partition on your hard drive and there is only blank space how do you enlarge the original "Macintosh HD" to cover the entire hard drive space?

I just delete a partition on my drive and wanted to 1 either enlarge my original partition to cover the entire space, or 2 create a new partition in the free space. The problem is when I attempt to drag down the Macintosh HD partition and hit apply nothing happens. When i try to partition the free space (80 gigs) I hit apply and the new partition is only 200 mb with the 79 gigs still free space... HELP PLEASE.

Ah...so you've now learned why it's best not to change your mind after partitioning the bootup volume.
As far as I know, there's no "built-in" way to recover the free space after deleting a partition.
You're probably looking at third party software to accomplish what you're looking for. Here's one:
http://www.drivetoolbox.com/volume-manager.php
I can't speak to how well it works....I've never used it. But, according to the site, it will do what you need it to do.
I hope this helps.

Cfdisk enlarged logical partitions overlap

I try to use cfdisk /dev/sda, got the following error message:
FATAL ERROR: Bad logical partition 6: enlarged logical partitions overlap
So, I use fdisk to show, I still don't know how to fix this problem.
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80032038912 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9730 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x90af90af
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2550 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2551 2628 626535 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 2629 8237 45054292+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 8238 9730 11992522+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 8238 8361 995998+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 8362 9064 5646816 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 9065 9730 5349613+ 83 Linux
Command (m for help): v # verify
374 unallocated sectors
Command (m for help): x # enter extend mode
Expert command (m for help): p # print
Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9730 cylinders
Nr AF Hd Sec Cyl Hd Sec Cyl Start Size ID
1 80 1 1 0 254 63 1023 63 40965687 07
2 00 254 63 1023 254 63 1023 40965750 1253070 83
3 00 0 1 1023 254 63 1023 42218820 90108585 07
4 00 0 1 1023 254 63 1023 132327405 23985045 0f
5 00 254 63 1023 254 63 1023 63 1991997 82
6 00 254 63 1023 254 63 1023 1992122 11293632 83
7 00 1 1 1023 254 63 1023 11293758 10699227 83

anybody have know how to contact the cfdisk /fdisk author?

HT3986 how do you enlarge boot camp partition after windows is installed

how do you enlarge boot camp partition after windows is installed

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
You can do it with third-party programs, but I don't recommend it because you can damage the hard drive. The best way to do it is to delete your Windows volume and create it again with the size you need

Can the D recovery partition be hacked, i,m worried.

Hi to all,
I have a HP Pavilion 15 Notebook less than a year old and about 4wks ago it was seriously hacked and the hacker had gained privelage rights to virtually everything, well most of my systems services were taken over, and god knows what else they done, the crazy thing is i have norton antivirus installed and all up to date and malwarebytes trial was running yet they were giving the all clear so i'm not sure how they managed to filter or bypass those, the thing i am worried about is when i looked into the hidden files i noticed a couple of files on the D recovery partition were of the same date it was hacked and was wondering if they might have hacked or modified the recovery partition so that if i done a factory reset it would still allow the hacker access to my laptop, luckily i did make a set of recovery disks as soon as i bought the laptop so using these should remove any sign of a hack or would they have modified the bios or uefi, i,m just really paranoid now and at the time of the hack i had £300 taken from my bank account by someone in bangkok. Also they might have got my windows 8 and office product keys etc, can they use these?.
If doing a full factory reset with the disks i made when bought will this remove everything that the hacker done to my system, any help greatly appreciated.

Normally the files in Recovery partition are 'Read only' and protected. Should be safe to do a reinstall from the partition, but if you are uneasy about it just boot from the Recovery Disks.
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FATAL ERROR: Bad logical partition 6: enlarged logical partitions over

I am trying to install Arch on my second computer, but I get this error in cfdisk:
FATAL ERROR: Bad logical partition 6: enlarged logical partitions overlap.
This is the output of fdisk -l:
$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda -l
Schijf /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 koppen, 63 sectoren/spoor, 60801 cilinders
Eenheid = cilinders van 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Schijf-ID: 0xeaca5f2c
Apparaat Opstart Begin Einde Blokken ID Systeem
/dev/sda1 * 1 8475 68075406 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 8476 56711 387442688+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 57998 60801 22523130 f W95 Uitgeb. (LBA)
Partition 3 does not end on a cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5 58252 60801 20482875 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 57998 58250 2032159+ 82 Linux wisselgeheugen
This is the output of parted:
Model: ATA WDC WD5000AAKS-0 (scsi)
Schijf /dev/sda: 500GB
Sectorgrootte (logisch/fysiek): 512B/512B
Partitietabel: msdos
Nummer Begin Einde Grootte Type Bestandssysteem Vlaggen
1 32,3kB 69,7GB 69,7GB primary ntfs opstartbaar
2 69,7GB 466GB 397GB primary ntfs
3 477GB 500GB 23,1GB extended lba
6 477GB 479GB 2081MB logical linux-swap
5 479GB 500GB 21,0GB logical ext4
I actually got the same error on my other system too, but then I deleted all the partitions, which is not really an option on this system. What is causing this problem?
Last edited by Revelation60 (2009-03-21 17:56:44)

Oh, ok then, that makes sense ... I don't know the reason to align partitions to cylinders but there must be a good reason, although even if they are not aligned it shouldn't be a big problem (at least gparted allows you to create unaligned partitions).
Personally gparted is not my first choice when dealing with partitions, it already scared me _big time_ and even if linux doesn't complain about partitions not being in the order they are on disk some programs complain about that (and gparted does make a mess out of that) and even refuse to do anything before they fix that (partition magic for example, and I've never lost any data or even got scared when using it).
Lately I have been doing it like this, create the partitions with cfdisk which leaves everything in a way no program complains, then I format the partitions with mkfs.whatever or I use gparted just to format the partitions, I've never had problems when doing things like that.
The last time I've used gparted to resize partitions things went well but on another occasion it did make a huge mess out of the partition layout (there were ntfs partitions involved when it went wrong, and only ext3 when all went well) leaving me with a problem similar to what you have now, luckily testdisk came to the rescue but I reckon I was just lucky that time.
I've learned my lesson, _always_ make backups or copy things to another disk, besides being probably faster (as gparted does a ton of checks) it is a lot safer and if you have really important stuff on your hard disk you can't afford to be relying on the chance of not loosing it in the process.

Enlarging Windows partition

I am out of space on my Windows XP (Bootcamp) partition. What is the easiest way to make it bigger?.. I have no PC backup utilities. I want to keep all my settings in Windows. I'm sure I need to use Bootcamp Utility to remove and re-partition it... Any suggestions on how to keep my data?
thanks

Most people use WinClone. Just move it to another disk drive. There are decent smart backup and clone utilities for Windows, just as there is SuperDuper for Mac OS X.
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/backup/index.html#d20oct2008
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/
http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone/details.html
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-professional/ - just added BootCamp support

Recovering bootcamp partition - is there a solution that works?

Dealing with bootcamp issues after a Lion upgrade seems to be a common problem with no agreed solution.
When I upgraded my iMac to Lion, the upgrade process couldn't create a recovery partition so Apple support advised me to use Disk Utility to create a small (5 GB) block of free space on my harddisk for the recovery partition to use and then to use Disk Utility to enlarge the OSX partition again to recover whatever remaining free space was left after the Lion upgrade had completed.
This I duly did. However, after I enlarged the OSX partition using Disk Utility to recover the free space I found that a) the Bootcamp partition had been renamed "disk0s4" and b) when holding down the Option key when booting, the Recovery option was now labelled "EFI Boot" and appeared to boot from the regular OSX partition. Attempting to boot windows in Bootcamp results in a "missing operating system" error message.
I'm not so worried about the recovery partition as I have a bootable DVD and USB flash drive.
What I would like to do is recover some files from the Windows partition. There is a lot of opinions in the Apple suport forums about what works such as, booting Windows from the install disk and running the "fixmbr" and "fixboot" commands or using rEFIt or BootPicker (which doesn't seem to work on Lion).
Is there a reliable approach to fixing this problem so that I can at least read the contents of the partition, even if I can't boot from it? If I can't actualy recover the partition I'm not too fussed, so long as I can get the data off it.
Thanks...Macs

Why do you suggest installing Lion on an external h/disk? Is this because of problems with Lion or just suggested standard procedure?
Some of the options may work although I am unable to mount the partition at all (in OSX or by booting from a Linux live CD and trying to mount it from there) so I'm not sure how far any of them will get.
I haven't tried booting from the Windows DVD as yet.
If I run Verify on Disk Utility I get this:
2012-03-20 22:18:41 +1100: Verifying volume “disk0s4”
2012-03-20 22:18:41 +1100: Starting verification tool:
2012-03-20 22:18:49 +1100: Checking file system2012-03-20 22:18:49 +1100: ** /dev/disk0s4
2012-03-20 22:18:49 +1100: Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: ba9a97
2012-03-20 22:18:49 +1100: Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
2012-03-20 22:18:49 +1100:
2012-03-20 22:18:49 +1100: Disk Utility stopped verifying “disk0s4”: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Repair disk says this:
2012-03-20 22:31:06 +1100: Verify and Repair volume “disk0s4”
2012-03-20 22:31:06 +1100: Starting repair tool:
2012-03-20 22:31:12 +1100: Checking file system2012-03-20 22:31:12 +1100: ** /dev/disk0s4
2012-03-20 22:31:12 +1100: Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: ba9a97
2012-03-20 22:31:12 +1100: Volume repair complete.2012-03-20 22:31:12 +1100: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
2012-03-20 22:31:12 +1100: Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
2012-03-20 22:31:12 +1100:
2012-03-20 22:31:12 +1100: Disk Utility stopped repairing “disk0s4”: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
I wondered whether the entry in the partition table had been completely screwed so I had a look with FDisk and GDisk.
GDisk says this about the partition table:
Disk /dev/disk0: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): FB4FA8FD-D192-4589-93E1-A19A9F0F29D7
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 13 sectors (6.5 KiB)
Number Start (sector)    End (sector) Size       Code Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00 EFI System Partition
   2          409640       869550263   414.4 GiB   AF00 Customer
   3       869550264       870727719   574.9 MiB   AB00 Recovery HD
   4       870727720       976773127   50.6 GiB    0700 Untitled
And this about partition 4:
Partition number (1-4): 4
Partition GUID code: EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 (Microsoft basic data)
Partition unique GUID: 94C06328-9817-4012-9C30-C97592E671C1
First sector: 870727720 (at 415.2 GiB)
Last sector: 976773127 (at 465.8 GiB)
Partition size: 106045408 sectors (50.6 GiB)
Attribute flags: 0000000000000000
Partition name: 'Untitled'
For its part FDisk says:
Disk: /dev/disk0     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 - 869140624] HFS+
3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 869550264 -    1177456] Darwin Boot
*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 870727720 - 106045408] HPFS/QNX/AUX
From looking at the Fdisk and GDisk output I cannot see where the problem is occurring (although I know 2/5ths of stuff all about partition tables). I notice that the Bootcamp partition is now lacking a name although I don't know whether this matters or not and strangely FDisk identifies it as an HPFS filesystem whereas Disk Utility identifies it as MSDOS (FAT).

Enlarging Partition - worried

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