The guide to bootcamp assistant states that bootcamp can only be installed on a drive with a single partition. New Macs with Lion preinstalled have two partitions - the second is a recovery partition. How do I install Bootcamp?

Question

Late in August 2011 I took delivery of a new 27" iMac with Lion preinstalled.  I need to run Windows as well. Following Apple's written suggestion, I printed off the then current 12 pages of the document "Bootcamp Installation & Setup Guide" which clearly stated that the hard drive you were going to install on had to have on it, before install, a maximum of one partition.  Using finder and disk utility I determined that there was only one partition.  Unbeknownst to me, there was (is) an additional hidden (from those two pieces of software) partition on the disk.  As of machines delivered new with Lion preinstalled, Apple has begun to include a "recovery partition".  In that partition there is a copy of the software necessary to reinstall Lion via a download from the Apple App Store.  Not knowing the partition was there, I cranked up  "Bootcamp Assistant" which nicely offered to repartition my hard drive creating a "Bootcamp Partition" in addition to the existing.  I told it how big to make each and hit the do it button, subsequently destroying my operating system.  Oh, it very nicely told me, after the damage was done, how many partitions were REALLY on the disk and that I could not install Bootcamp cause there were too many partitions.
Luckily the the Recovery Partition, which at that point I knew existed, was not harmed and after doing some research on another compter, I used it to once again download Lion from the App Store and reinstall. So, I have recovered but am still stuck with the problem:  how do I install Bootcamp in this new environment?

Answer 1

First you need to seriously back up your Mac.
A clone is an exact duplicate of your existing Mac HDD. Merely copying and pasting a drive will not make a bootable backup. In case of problems you can boot from an Ext HDD clone and use the utilities to repair, reformat, or clone the Ext HDD back to the internal Mac HDD.  While Time machine back ups are easy you can not boot from it. The best thing to have for any kind of problem is a bootable clone backup on an external drive. Some even have two external backup drives in case one fails. There are two good apps for cloning named SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner.
In dealing with the recovery partition a simple approach is to clone the Mac partition to an external disk then re-partition the Mac to a single partition (GUID partition table) . Then clone the external disk clone back to the Mac. You will now have only one Partition and Boot Camp assistant sould not object.
Some have recommended getting rid of the recovery partition while others have advised not to do this. If you have the Lion USB Thumb Drive you do not need a recovery partition so can discard it without concern. There is another way to get rid of the recovery partition if you decide to do it but first be sure to have a backup of your Mac ( I know I sound like a nagging mom but many dead computers have been saved by this simple precaution).
Use Disk Utility.
1) Make the Recovery visible in Disk Utility by using a program like Secrets:http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/27025/secrets or MacPilot:http://www.koingosw.com/products/macpilot.php (15 day free trial).
2) Highlite the Recovery partition and Control click it and select Mount the partition.
3) With the Recovery partition highlited, erase the partition, you'll get an error message, ignore it.
4) Now highlite the top identity of the hard drive and select the partition tab.
5) Highlite the Recovery partition and press the minus sign.
6) Click and hold on the bottom edge of the partition above and drag it to the bottom, if it doesn't go there automatically, the press apply.