[SOLVED] HELP: Can't partition drives

I'm doing a fresh install of my machine. I was running fakeRAID before and now I want to switch software RAID. But everytime I try to run cfdisk /dev/sda I get an error saying "FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 2: Partition ends after end-of-disk. press any key exit cfdisk". How do I remove the old RAID or deactivate it. I turned it of in the BIOS.
Last edited by fettouhi (2011-08-04 06:20:52)

gregor wrote:
fettouhi wrote:my installation is messed now with software raid. I have a pv named /dev/md127 inside my vg0 that I can't remove. I try to
pvremove /dev/md127 but I keep getting the error PV belongs to Volume Group vg0. How do I remove /dev/md127?
i advice an re-install ,it's not worth the trouble...
Yep, did that an usd the installer to delete all lvm and raid. Then I reooted and everything was back to normal.

Similar Messages

Boot Camp Assistant: Can't Partition Drive

I've been trying to partition my hard drive using the Boot Camp Assistant so I can install Windows XP. However, whenever I try to partition the drive, I get an error message saying that my hard drive needs to be a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. I opened up Disk Utility to see what was wrong, and it said that my only hard drive, Macintosh HD, was formatted as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. I tried bumping the partition size down from 15 gigs to 12 gigs; the progress bar was a little under 25% full when I got the error message again. I'm planning on arranging to get support at an Apple Store, but I wanted to see if anybody on here knew what to do first. Any ideas?

JadeH wrote:
okay so i did what you said and i selected restart under superduper clone so i could test to make sure the clone worked...but now i can't get it to restart under my Macintosh HD. the clone works fine but it is on my external hard drive. i need y internal hard drive to be my start up disk so i can use boot camp assistant. i went to system preferences->startup disk but it only shows my clone on my external hard drive. any suggestions?
When you tested the clone, did you change the default boot to the clone? You should have simply booted by holding down the Option key.
I don't know what happened to your HD or original OS, but if you reboot and hold down the option key, your original OS should show up in the selection menu.
If not, boot into the Leopard DVD (press "C" key during boot) and after the language screen, in the menu, top left under Utilities select disk utility and run it, repairing HD and permissions. Then see if you can reboot into the original OS. You may have to hold down Option key again until you boot it and change the default back to the original OS.

[SOLVED] Help, can't get my X-Fi to work :(

Hi all. I recently decided to try out Arch. I'm currently running Gentoo on my boxes, but I set up arch on a new drive and I'm giving it a go. However, the time I have saved by not having to compile anything or troubleshoot emerge issues has now been completely taken up by trying to get my sound working. Works fine in Gentoo, so I have made sure to compare kernel configurations and they both seem the same in relevant areas. ALSA is enabled, and OSS is disabled The XFI driver is built-in, and no other drivers are enabled:
[root@server2k linux]# grep -i snd .config
CONFIG_SND=y
CONFIG_SND_TIMER=y
CONFIG_SND_PCM=y
CONFIG_SND_RAWMIDI=m
CONFIG_SND_SEQUENCER=y
# CONFIG_SND_SEQ_DUMMY is not set
CONFIG_SND_OSSEMUL=y
CONFIG_SND_MIXER_OSS=y
CONFIG_SND_PCM_OSS=y
CONFIG_SND_PCM_OSS_PLUGINS=y
# CONFIG_SND_SEQUENCER_OSS is not set
CONFIG_SND_HRTIMER=y
CONFIG_SND_SEQ_HRTIMER_DEFAULT=y
CONFIG_SND_DYNAMIC_MINORS=y
# CONFIG_SND_SUPPORT_OLD_API is not set
# CONFIG_SND_VERBOSE_PROCFS is not set
# CONFIG_SND_VERBOSE_PRINTK is not set
# CONFIG_SND_DEBUG is not set
CONFIG_SND_VMASTER=y
CONFIG_SND_DMA_SGBUF=y
CONFIG_SND_RAWMIDI_SEQ=m
# CONFIG_SND_OPL3_LIB_SEQ is not set
# CONFIG_SND_OPL4_LIB_SEQ is not set
# CONFIG_SND_SBAWE_SEQ is not set
# CONFIG_SND_EMU10K1_SEQ is not set
CONFIG_SND_AC97_CODEC=y
CONFIG_SND_DRIVERS=y
# CONFIG_SND_PCSP is not set
# CONFIG_SND_DUMMY is not set
# CONFIG_SND_VIRMIDI is not set
# CONFIG_SND_MTPAV is not set
# CONFIG_SND_MTS64 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_SERIAL_U16550 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_MPU401 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_PORTMAN2X4 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_AC97_POWER_SAVE is not set
CONFIG_SND_PCI=y
CONFIG_SND_AD1889=y
# CONFIG_SND_ALS300 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ALS4000 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ALI5451 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ATIIXP is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ATIIXP_MODEM is not set
# CONFIG_SND_AU8810 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_AU8820 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_AU8830 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_AW2 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_AZT3328 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_BT87X is not set
# CONFIG_SND_CA0106 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_CMIPCI is not set
# CONFIG_SND_OXYGEN is not set
# CONFIG_SND_CS4281 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_CS46XX is not set
# CONFIG_SND_CS5530 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_CS5535AUDIO is not set
CONFIG_SND_CTXFI=y
# CONFIG_SND_DARLA20 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_GINA20 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_LAYLA20 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_DARLA24 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_GINA24 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_LAYLA24 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_MONA is not set
# CONFIG_SND_MIA is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ECHO3G is not set
# CONFIG_SND_INDIGO is not set
# CONFIG_SND_INDIGOIO is not set
# CONFIG_SND_INDIGODJ is not set
# CONFIG_SND_INDIGOIOX is not set
# CONFIG_SND_INDIGODJX is not set
# CONFIG_SND_EMU10K1 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_EMU10K1X is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ENS1370 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ENS1371 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ES1938 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ES1968 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_FM801 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_HDA_INTEL is not set
# CONFIG_SND_HDSP is not set
# CONFIG_SND_HDSPM is not set
# CONFIG_SND_HIFIER is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ICE1712 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_ICE1724 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_INTEL8X0 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_INTEL8X0M is not set
# CONFIG_SND_KORG1212 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_LX6464ES is not set
# CONFIG_SND_MAESTRO3 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_MIXART is not set
# CONFIG_SND_NM256 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_PCXHR is not set
# CONFIG_SND_RIPTIDE is not set
# CONFIG_SND_RME32 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_RME96 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_RME9652 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_SONICVIBES is not set
# CONFIG_SND_TRIDENT is not set
# CONFIG_SND_VIA82XX is not set
# CONFIG_SND_VIA82XX_MODEM is not set
# CONFIG_SND_VIRTUOSO is not set
# CONFIG_SND_VX222 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_YMFPCI is not set
CONFIG_SND_SPI=y
CONFIG_SND_USB=y
# CONFIG_SND_USB_AUDIO is not set
# CONFIG_SND_USB_UA101 is not set
# CONFIG_SND_USB_USX2Y is not set
# CONFIG_SND_USB_CAIAQ is not set
# CONFIG_SND_USB_US122L is not set
# CONFIG_SND_PCMCIA is not set
# CONFIG_SND_SOC is not set
[root@server2k linux]#
I've been all over the net and I have seen people mention similar problems with the ctxfi driver. But no solutions that have worked for me. The physical card is seen:
[root@server2k linux]# lspci | grep -i creative
00:0e.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB X-Fi
however alsa doesn't see it:
[root@server2k linux]# cat /proc/asound/cards
--- no soundcards ---
I tend to not use modules for stuff I know I need (e.g. sound card drivers...) , but the module is there..in the kernel. I was trying with a separate module before, and I made that lsmod told me it was loaded. However nothing seems to make a difference. I'm pretty sure alsa is configured correctly because I was seeing my onboard sound before I disabled it. I also took out all of the alsa-related stuff I had put in rc.conf and modules.conf because nothing seemed to make a difference. it was all related to getting the ctxfi crd to show up as card0 to override the onboard, but since it's not even being detected that seems sort of pointless right now.
If anyone has any ideas of what to try next I would really appreciate it. These are the versions I am running:
kernel 2.6.34.1
alsa-lib-1.0.23-1
alsa-utils-1.0.23-2
Oh, the otehr weird part is if I look in the dmesg output, the driver claims that "Something's wrong!!!" Yeah...really useful. In the source for the driver there are like 16 places where that error message is printed, and I'm not about to go hacking some module code. I did put some print statements in there to see where it was failing, and it looks like it's failing at this call:
err = atc_create_hw_devs(atc);
Don't know if that helps, is anyone familiar with the actual driver?
Last edited by Fox2k (2010-07-11 23:58:57)

Thanks, all. No luck, I ended up scouring the gentoo forums some more and found somebody who ran in to the exact same problem last year which I am having now. Here's the solution. It worked for me. Not ideal, but all else failed:
Today I tried again to get my soundcard working, this time with:
linux kernel 2.6.31 and the alsa ctxfi driver in it
linux kernel 2.6.31 and alsa-driver-9999 from portage
both led to the same results as before (see my postings above)
So I finally hacked the official creative xfi-driver to compile against 2.6.31. And now sound is working again for me...
If anyone else runs into the same trouble as I did, here are the changes i made:
Code:
$ diff XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00 XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00-new
diff XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00/ctatc.h XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00-new/ctatc.h
25d24
< #include <sound/driver.h>
diff XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00/cthw20k1.c XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00-new/cthw20k1.c
23a24
> #include <linux/delay.h>
diff XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00/cthw20k2.c XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00-new/cthw20k2.c
23a24
> #include <linux/delay.h>
diff XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00/xfi.c XFiDrv_Linux_Public_US_1.00-new/xfi.c
14d13
< #include <sound/driver.h>
55,59c54,57
< card = snd_card_new(index[dev], id[dev], THIS_MODULE, 0);
< if (card == NULL) {
< return -ENOMEM;
< }
<
> err = snd_card_create(index[dev], id[dev], THIS_MODULE, 0, &card);
> if (err < 0)
> return err;
>
(reference: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-63 … l#6348361)
Last edited by Fox2k (2010-07-11 22:32:40)

[SOLVED] wine. can't change drive C mapping

hi! i use winecfg to change the mapping of the C drive, but i realized that i cant change it because, if i change it with winecfg, when i close winecfg and open it again, it revert all my mappings to the defaults:
C -> /mnt/cdrom
D -> /mnt/cdrom
when i start winecfg give me some errors:
[aleyscha@aleyscha ~]$ winecfg
Warning: the specified Windows directory L"c:\\windows" is not accessible.
Warning: the specified System directory L"c:\\windows\\system32" is not accessible.
Warning: could not find DOS drive for current working directory '/home/aleyscha', starting in the Windows directory.
ALSA lib conf.c:3949:(snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters 0
ALSA lib control.c:909:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default:0
Warning: the specified Windows directory L"c:\\windows" is not accessible.
Warning: the specified System directory L"c:\\windows\\system32" is not accessible.
Warning: could not find DOS drive for current working directory '/', starting in the Windows directory.
when i start a game:
[aleyscha@aleyscha ~]$ wine "/sda1/bin/drive_c/Program Files/FlatOut2/FlatOut2.exe"
Warning: the specified Windows directory L"c:\\windows" is not accessible.
Warning: the specified System directory L"c:\\windows\\system32" is not accessible.
Warning: could not find DOS drive for current working directory '/home/aleyscha', starting in the Windows directory.
wine: cannot find '/sda1/bin/drive_c/Program Files/FlatOut2/FlatOut2.exe'
[aleyscha@aleyscha ~]$
so i cant change my mappings :S i try, i put a "config" file in my ~/.wine with:
[Drive C]
"Path" = "/sda1/bin/drive_c"
"Type" = "hd"
"Label" = "Drive_C"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
[Drive D]
"Path" = "/mnt/cdrom"
"Type" = "cdrom"
"Label" = "CD-Rom"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
; make sure that device is correct and has proper permissions !
"Device" = "/dev/cdrom"
[Drive E]
"Path" = "/downloads/New"
"Type" = "hd"
"Label" = "Downloads"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
with no sucess... i dont know how everybody plays so easy with wine... the frustration here is killing me softly :'(
Last edited by leo2501 (2007-10-23 11:41:20)

a friend tells me to delete my ~/.wine dir, and NOW WORKS must be some trouble because my /home partition is from another arch installation, cause i change my computer a month ago, in the dir i map to C IS a windows structure
im playing flatout 2 and prey perfectly... better than in windows in a window coz i like it to view other things in my desktop and with a 22" lcd there's no problem with space :D:D:D:D:D

Can ARD Partition Drives Remotely?

I have a lab of 30+ Mac's and I'm looking to Partition the HD's & I was wondering if there is a ARD command to do this remotely rather than going to each Mac.
We will be having a group coming in that will be using a lab full of Mac's and they will have their own image to put on the computers but as we still have students in the labs during the day we are thinking of putting the image on a second partition the day before.
Tks,


ARD has no such command itself. However, you may be able to do this by sending a UNIX command, though I think this is only possible for Intel-based Macs. Look up the man page for:
diskutil
and read up on the
resizeVolume
flag. There's also an article on it here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/55274/2007/02/marchgeekfactor.html
I have not tried this nor even contemplated doing this remotely, so I don't know if any problems might arise nor even if it will work. It's probably worth trying on a test system, though.
Hope this helps. Good luck.

I've just bought a new iMac with 2 TB hard drive. Can I partition the startup drive?

I've just bought a new iMac with 2 TB hard drive. Can I partition the startup drive?

Glenfern wrote:
The reason I'm considering partitioning is - I'm going to transfer about 50 GB of family photos & music to the iMac. Over time the photos & music library is going to grow. My idea was to point the iphoto & itunes library to the new partition so that the application programs (that will will reside in partition 1), will not get congested with photos & music over time & degrade performance. Also, I dabble a little bit with the music editing program LOGIC & Sound Track Pro, which creates lots of little music files in the process.
In your case I would strongly recommend against partitioning, as dwb mentions a drive loaded with data on an
O SX system doesn't equate to performance loss. However partitioning does. If you were going to tell me you were partitioning to load different OS's on the computer then you would have a good reason to think about partitioning. My suggestion is do not partition.
What I would also recommend is getting some high quality high speed external HD's to store your photo and music libraries on. This helps keept the 2GB drive available while maintaining performance. I have 3 external HD's attached to my iMac, two are backup drives (1 Time Machine & 1 Bootable Clone) the third drive is for storing my my music, photo & movie libraries on. If you go this route the 3 drives I'd recommend are:
http://g-technology.com/products/g-drive.cfm
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10330
Personally I use the Lacie's however OWC or G-Tech would also be welcome on my desk.
Again if you want to take this path Apple has instructions for how to move the libraries to EHDs, if you want those links let me know.

Can I install windows xp or windows 7 on a partitioned drive?

I have Windows 8.1 installed on my Toshiba Satellite C55-A laptop. I have 418GB free of 453GB total. Can I partition the drive and install an earlier version? I have a piece of hardware (M-Audio Pre-USB interface) that will work with Windows 7 or XP, but
it does not work with 8.1. It would be nice to have an OS that accommodates some of the older stuff. Thanks - Dave

Hi，
As T. Kujala said, you can install Windows 7 on your Windows 8.1.
Here are a couple of things to be aware of during the installation process.
1.Disbale the fast boot.
2.If you finished the installation for Windows 7,you need to modify the BCD file on Windows 8.1 system.
On Windows 8.1 system，please perform the following steps:
1).Press Win+x, and click Command Prompt(admin)
2).Type "cmd",and press enter.
3).Type "bcdboot D:\windows /s c: /l en-us" in the CMD.(D=Windows 7 system folder)
4).Reboot the system.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Kelvin hsu
TechNet Community Support

Can I partition a hard drive and keep files on separate partition?

That is, can I partition a hard drive and have the system software on one drive, and everything else on the other? That is, have the system software on one drive, and on the other have pictures, music, documents, and all other files other than the system software? Thanks. David

Hi GK1951, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Great question, as a matter of fact it does... or would, but the Devil is in the Details as they say.
IME, OSX works best with 100+GB free disk space, so if that partition scheme cuts that down then you'll lose speed, but ony a few would notice the diff until you get down to 30 GB free space.
I can't say much, but my VM at the moment is 143.55 GB, I've been told that isn't a real number, but hey, it means something!
But there are so many factors affecting this that really, the only rule that seems to hold is Give OSX as much HD Free Space as you can & it'll be happy.
I imagine on the MacPro you could say use the outer Partition of several Disks... one for the OS, one for VM, one for APPs, etc. and gain the most!
Maybe these will help...
iMac/24"/2.4 GHz/4GB RAM/320 GB SATA drive, You can see that Cached values account for more than the Zone on the HD really.
Little 4K Random R&Ws suffer greatly no matter what...

Help me!!! I can't partition my new HDD!

Hi,
I bought a new 360GB HDD (internal), i ghosted the data from my old HDD to my new one THROUGH A PC it seemed to work, but also copied my 120GB of partitions, now i can't access the other 200GB!!!! now I can't partition it (even with ipartition, disk genius etc). i think ive ruined the disk utility.
any ideas???
Cheers in advance.
Tim

ok, this is what it says, does this help?
Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH8-M AHCI
Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported
Hitachi HTS545032B9A300:
Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: Hitachi HTS545032B9A300
Revision: PB3OC64G
Serial Number: 090627PB*DPG
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
macbook:
Capacity: 33.88 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /
My Documents:
Capacity: 77.47 GB
Available: 21.04 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s3
Mount Point: /Volumes/My Documents
<Edited by Host>

Reformatting a partitioned drive back into a single drive....need help!

Hi all,
I'm wanting to reformat the 60 gig hard drive on my Power book (10.3.9)
back into a single drive. A friend installed and partitioned this 60 gig a few years ago and the first portion is only six gigs and contains the OS.Apps and other guts. I constantly run into problems of running out of space on that drive. What I would like to do is listed below. I'm hoping someone can point me to a tutorial or other concise written directions for how to accomplish this. I'm looking for some fairly concise steps as doing this type of work is not my strength and I don't want to mess it up.
1) Back up data from all three partitioned drives on to a single external drive of some sort.
2) Reformat the 60 gig back onto a single drive.
3) Successfully reinstall all data back on to the 60 gig and have it function as
exactly as before.
Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Vance

Hi, wvd. If the data on your three partitions now totals about 50 GB as your post indicates, then after it has all been copied back onto the repartitioned, single-volume hard drive (whose formatted capacity is about 56.8 GB) there will be about 6-7 GB of free space available on that drive. That is only 1-2 GB more than the bare minimum amount of free space that should be maintained on the drive at all times. So if you anticipate a continuing accumulation of additional data in the future, you will very soon run out of space that can prudently be used, and not long after that you will begin to risk unreliable operation of your computer and the possible corruption or loss of data due to insufficient and dwindling free space on the drive.
Therefore, it would probably be a better idea to replace the present drive with a larger one than to repartition and reuse the present drive, unless there is a significant amount of data on it now that you could conveniently store somewhere else instead. In fact if you replace the current drive with a larger one and put the old one into an external FireWire enclosure, that drive can become a secondary data storage location for data that doesn't need to be kept on your new primary drive, or it can be used to back up some or all of the data on the primary drive.

Do I need to use all the hard drive for time machine or can I partition it

Do I need to use all the hard drive for time machine or can I partition it

You cannot partition a TC disk.
See pondini about mixing data and backups.. but remember this.. the TC has no way to back itself up and TM cannot backup files on the TC. Anything not backed up on the TC will be lost at some future point.
http://pondini.org/TM/TCQ3.html

Can I partition a hard drive so that one partition is for windows files and the other is for time machine backups?

I have a 1TB WD passport that currently contains windows files e.g photos, documents, etc. Can I partition it so that one partition contains these files and the other partition is used for time machine backups? Also, how do I change the partition system on the hard drive so that it uses the GUID partition system?
Thanks in advance.

Yes, you can, though you need to format and partition the drive from the scratch.
1) back up your PC data on other drive.
2) partitioning your drive into 2 partitions with Disk Utility.
3) format one partition by Mac OS extended (journaling) for Time Machine, the other by exFAT for PC data.
4) restore PC data on exFAT partitioned drive.

Can I partition an external drive into MSDO and MACOS extended and use under bootcamp ?

I am interested in using Windows 8 alongside my OSX MAVERICK with the Bootcamp 5 solution.
However, I am trying to save the space on my internal SSD . Can I partition my 4TB WD external drive into 3 parts like this :
1.5 TB dedicated for Time Machine in MAC OS Extended Format
1,5 TB MAC for general purpose in MAC OS Extended Format
1.0 TB Windows for my PC games and other stuff in exFAT for files larger than 4GB
Is this possible at all or what would be better ?
Thanks

To resize the drive do the following:
1. Open Disk Utility and click on the Continue button. Select the hard drive's main entry then click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
2. You should see the graphical sizing window showing the existing partitions. A portion may appear as a blue rectangle representing the used space on a partition.
3. In the lower right corner of the sizing rectangle for each partition is a resizing gadget. Select it with the mouse and move the bottom of the rectangle upwards until you have reduced the existing partition enough to create the desired new volume's size. The space below the resized partition will appear gray. Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed. (Note: You can only make a partition smaller in order to create new free space.)
4. Click on the [+] button below the sizing window to add a new partition in the gray space you freed up. Give the new volume a name, if you wish, then click on the Apply button. Wait until the process has completed.
You should now have a new volume on the drive.
It would be wise to have a backup of your current system as resizing is not necessarily free of risk for data loss. Your drive must have sufficient contiguous free space for this process to work.

Can I partition an external drive and install 10.6.8 so I can run some older software?

I have older software that won't run on my 21.5 iMac. Can I partition a 3TB Lacie external drive, then install 10.6.8 on it so I can use the older software?

The computer that I purchased did come with Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac, but I thought that was only for running some Windows software. Not a clue how to use it.
I actually asked a similar question about installing the older system on the external drive when I talked to Apple yesterday. They guy said go ahead and try it! Huh?

Can I partition my hard drive to hold Windows 8 (Beta), instead of Windows 7, and can I do this with an external CD drive?

I have a late 2008 Macbook Pro with Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion installed, but my CD drive inside my computer is damaged*, and it's far cheaper to buy an external CD drive than to repair it entirely. Before I do either, I would like some grasp of whether or not it's worth my time and money, as I've yet to order the external drive or make a genius bar appointment.
Also, the reason I'm choosing Windows 8 (Beta) is because it's free.
*I dropped my computer once two years ago. I haven't even used my CD drive until recently when trying to install Windows 8. I assume the drop was the issue. I've used compressed air to remove dirt/dust as well as resetting the PRAM multiple times and nothing seems to work, but I'm not worried about it.
Thank you.

Can I partition my hard drive to hold Windows 8 (Beta), instead of Windows 7, and can I do this with an external CD drive?
No and No.
1: Apple only supports Windows 7 at this time in BootCamp (direct install into a bootable partition) because Win 8 is in Beta and no Mac hardware drivers are available yet from Apple for Windows 8.
2: You can't install Windows from a external cd drive into BootCamp, it has to be a internal one far as I know, perhaps a USB will work I don't know.
Yes:
1: You can download and install Windows 8 Beta into a the free virtual machine software called VirtualBox, which Windows 8 will run in a window in OS X. This is better as it's still in Beta and Windows Beta releases will expire. Plus Windows 8 is a pain in the behind and you will want to be able to have VirtualBox or OS X be able to regain control over the computer.
http://osxdaily.com/2012/03/03/try-windows-8-consumer-preview-virtualbox/
Windows in BootCamp or Virtual Machine?

[SOLVED] HELP: Can't partition drives

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