The Invisible Boot Camp Partition

Basically, my Windows partition does not show up on my Mac side of things.
It shows up in Disk Utility as "disk0s3" but is not mountable. It cannot be mounted if I use the MacFuse and NTFS-3G solution. It cannot be mounted with Paragon's NTFS for Mac OSX. If I open up VMWare Fusion it detects a Boot Camp partition but cannot run it saying instead there is not mountable device. Also, in System Profiler, the partition does not show up under the Serial-ATA section where my OS X partition does.
That being said, Windows runs fine with no issues that I've found.
The way I had to install it was via a work-around since I'm another one of those people who could not format my partition during the installation process. Instead I partitioned via Boot Camp, then used an Ubuntu disk to format the volume to NTFS and install Windows, which worked perfectly sans the OS X side of trouble.
Does anyone know what I can do to fix this problem be it either reinstalling Windows another way or may figuring out why OS X can't see it?

Solution: Remove the volume and reinstall windows via another method. Hopefully 10.5.2 will fix the Boot Camp issues...

Similar Messages

Could I reinstall OS X partition keeping the windows boot camp partition?

II have a OS x partition that need reinstall. In the same hd I have a Windows Boot camp partition. The question is, could I reinstall OS X partition without affect the Windows partition?
Thanks,
Jorge.

Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
Of course you should backup both.
Q: why do you think OS X needs to be reinstalled or something?
Disk directory trouble?
Because 3rd party disk utility can do better, as well as maybe clone Mac volume so you can boot and do more repairs.
Or maybe the partition table is shot. Or bad sectors. And bad sectors can require a full format.
In a perfect world, but disk drives and systems aren't

How do I back up my Boot Camp partition to external firewire drive?

I have a 15 GB Windows XP Boot Camp partition (FAT32). I want to back it up to a 120 GB external Firewire drive. (I know the backup won't be bootable). In OX X Disk Utility, I formatted the external drive as MS-DOS (FAT). I planned to do the backup using the Windows Backup utility.
However, when booted into WinXP, Windows will not recognize the external hard drive. I thought I might need to create a FAT32 partion of 32 GB or less on the external drive, but I apparently can't do this in OS X or Windows (since Windows doesn't recognize the drive).
Any suggestions on how to backup the Boot Camp partition will be appreciated. I'm mainly interested in preserving all programs and data. Ideally, a clone could be created that could be restored back to the original partition in bootable form, but from studying this and other forums, it dosn't seem to be easy to do this for a FAT32-formatted volume.

My goal was to create a bootable clone of my FAT32 Boot Camp partition, while at the same time increasing the size of the partition from 15 GB to 32 GB if possible. This is what I did:
1. As suggested in this thread, I used Disk Utility to create a disk image. I formatted it as MS-DOS (FAT), and made it 32 GB in size.
2. Used the Finder to copy all files from my 15 GB Windows XP partition to the new disk image.
The following steps were only to determine if the disk image is a viable backup:
3. Removed the internal hard drive with my original Win XP partition, and installed a new internal hard drive.
4. Used Boot Camp Assistant to create a 32 GB Boot Camp partition on the new internal drive.
5. Inserted my Win XP installation disk and started the Windows installation. Formatted the new partition as FAT32. (I used the long rather than the quick format method--not sure if this was necessary.)
6. Continued the Windows installation to the point of restarting the computer, at which time I used the Option key to boot back into OS X.
7. Used the Finder to copy all the files from the 32 GB disk image to the new Boot Camp partition. (This overwrote a few Windows files installed by the aborted Win XP installation.)
8. Restarted and used the Option key to select the new 32 GB Boot Camp Partition. Windows booted as usual with all files, programs, etc. from the original 15 GB partition. Windows did complain about "new hardware" and required a restart, but all appears normal.
This indicates that the disk image containing all the files from my original Boot Camp partition is a viable backup, and can be used to restore the partition if necessary. I'm not sure if formatting the disk image as MS-DOS (rather than Mac OS extended) was necessary, or not.

How do I restore data to a new mac with windows boot camp partition?

Hi
I have a new iMac and an old MBP, I'd like to copy all of the data of my old MBP to the iMac.Would doing that affect the windows boot camp partition?
and how do I do it?
right now im backing everything up on my MBP using super duper
both the MBP and the iMac are running on Lion

I am assuming the Boot Camp partition is on the old MBP and that the SuperDuper clone is on an external drive and is bootable. The Super Duper clone does not include the Boot Camp Partition.
To get the Mac Data moved you can use Migration Assistant and if you want to transfer the Boot Camp partition you would need Winclone to move/copy it to a newly created Boot Camp partition on the iMac. The SD Clone ( and a Winclone backup) is your insurance policy if some kind of difficulty arises.
Links to more detailed info.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6025
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11275
http://pondini.org/OSX/MigrateLion.html
http://twocanoes.com/support/winclone/migrating-a-bootcamp-partition-with-winclo ne
http://twocanoes.com/support/winclone/using-sysprep-when-migrating-boot-camp

Daily Backup for Boot Camp partition

I'm looking for a Windows software to perform daily incremental backups from my Boot Camp partition to an external USB drive. It should also be possible to restore the COMPLETE Boot Camp partition from that backup in case of a hard drive failure. (It's NOT necessary that various versions of files are kept around-the-clock like Time Machine does. It's also not necessary that the backup itself is bootable.)
I've tried Genie TimelIne, but unfortunately it wasn't able to manage a complete restore. The taskbar was missing, no applications were installed (only present), settings were missing after the restore..., so I had to manually install nearly everything.
I've heard "Macrium Reflect" should be better. Is this true or does anyone have another good tip?
BTW I'm not looking for a solution to backup from the Boot Camp partition to the OS X partition and I don't want to create a complete clone every day.
Thanks for your help!

coxorange wrote:
A bit difficult to test such a software including worst case recovery if you can't dispense with the concerned computer temporarily. And VERY time-consuming!! Hence I asked for personal experiences.
Well, Anyone elses personal experience won't mean much to you unless they have the same setup as you, so asking others for personal experience is as much of a crap shoot for you as doing it yourself. I went through lots of testing several years ago on my first MacBook Pro, but almost none of that testing is valid for my current machine. With the variations in machines, and machine configurations, what works for someone else might not work for you, and what might work for you might not work for someone else. I learned this when I was testing Colnexzilla as a possible backup/cloning tool. It worked fine on my MacBook Pro, but wouldn't work properly for a number of other users.
coxorange wrote:
What do you mean I'm confusing?
I always wrote about the Boot Camp partition.
I agree that what you are asking for seems rather confusing. You talk about backing up your data on your Windows partition, and you talk about performing incremental backups. The WIndows 7 Data backup utility it perfect for tasks like that. It's when you start wanting to perform disk image backups, and then ontop of that perform incremental image backups of your Windows partition that things get challenging and confusing. Since you aren't clear about what scheme you want to use, it is hard to answer with a "clear answer" and not get confused by what you seem to be asking.
coxorange wrote:
As far as I know that's not enough to perform incremental backups including EVERYTHING on the Boot Camp partition.
If you use the Windows 7 data backup and perform incremental backups, you will have a backiup of all your data from the Windows partition. Isn't that want you want? If you want to perform a restore, it will not restore you back to a bootable drive, but it will have all your data and files backed up. If you want to perform a partition backup image, and make those backups incremental nightly, it might be possible. Since you are talking about a Boot Camp partition on a Mac here, you also need to clarify if you want this backup to run when teh system is booted into Windows, or when teh system is runnign MacOS, or ifit is acceptable to boot from yet another media for the backup purposes.
At this time, I'm not sure that any software exists which can make backup image of your Boot Camp/Windows partition when runnign MacOS that will make a backup image that cna restore to a bootable volume and can do incremental backups. There are few, if any backup tools that will run runder native Windows on your Boot Camp partition that will make an image file backup that can do incremental backups, and also allow you to restore to a bootable partition. I beleive that the Paragon software is one of the very few that can do this. I have tried and successfully made backupns and restores from backup disk images using custom boot drives for CloneZilla, and the Paragon Drive Backup tool. I don't believe that CloneZilla will do inremental backups, and I'm not sure about the Paragon software as I stopped using Boot Camp about 1.5 years ago when I upgraded to my current MacBook Pro. Now with this system, I don't run native Windows, I only run it virtualized using Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion. For both of those, I get a full system backup with each MacOS backup I take, since the Windows File System is virtualized and stored entirely in files on my MacOS partition.

Snow Leopard and Boot Camp partition

hello all.
can i keep my Boot Camp partition intact when performing a clean install of SL?
does it allow me to format only the Mac partition of the HD, keeping the Windows (Boot Camp) partition untouched and fully functional?

I would move to SL if, and only if, I had an external drive with a bootable clone of my internal on it and had my files backed up separately on a second partition of the external. I think that there is enough risk in going to SL that such conservatism is warranted. I would not use time machine. Without getting into detail, it can be highly problematic. You will be able to extract your settings, files, and programs from your clone if you do the current version of an erase and install.
To erase and install, start up to your DVD and stop after selecting your language. Use the menus to start Disk Utility and erase you drive. Quit Disk Utility and proceed with your installation. At the end, you will be able to choose to reclaim your settings, files, and apps from the clone (leave the external drive plugged in during the installation).
If you do not like SL, then you can restore your internal using the clone. I would do all cloning and related restoration with SuperDuper. This app is up to date.
Message was edited by: donv (The Ghost)

Boot Camp Partition shows up Smaller in Windows 7 Setup

I just installed a new Seagate 1TB hybrid drive (STBD1000400) in my mid-2009 15" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo, 8 GB of RAM, with OS X 10.9.2 and Boot Camp (and all other Software up to date). Everything went fine with the installation of the new Drive and is showing up as 1TB in the system in OS X.
When I go to setup my partition in Boot Camp I set it so OSX has 600GB and Boot Camp has 400GB. After it completes the partition it automatically goes into installing Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium. But when I go to pick which partition to install it on, the 400GB Boot Camp partition I created only shows up as 372GB, not 400GB. And I can see my 600GB partition in the list only showing up around 540GB. After the Windows 7 install it still shows the drive as 372GB.
After the install and started back up in OS X and I checked the drive and it shows them correctly as 600GB and 400GB. So restarted back in Windows 7 and it still shows the Boot Camp partition as 372GB instead of 400. I even went into Disk Management and it doesn't show any unpartitioned drive space available either.
So I started back up in OS X and deleted the Boot Camp partition and started over trying to go with the 600 and 400GB partitions, but it still shows the 400GB partition as only 372GB again during the Windows 7 setup.
Anyone know what can be causing Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium to not recognize the full 400GB partition?
Anyone ever come across a similar problem?
Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions offered.
Thank you,
Nick

Capacity of the drive or size of the volume. In windows 7 it says 931.32GB. Rebooting into Mavericks, DU shows the volume as
1,000,204,886,016 Bytes
So....at least one of them must be wrong I would consider Windows 7 using some 1024 based number and the mac showing raw bytes. I bet all your space is accounted for.

Time Machine or Disk Utlilty to back up Mac and Boot Camp partition

Since I am experiencing slow speeds I'm planning to format my HD and restore it. I wanted to know if it would be better to restore it from a TM back up or a disk utility image of the HD?
Also, which one will work better with the XP Boot camp partition? a TM backup restore or a disk utility image and restore?
Neerav

AceNeerav wrote:
I'm performing a restore now. lets see if this fixes the issue. the method i'm using is restoring the entire HD from a time machine backup.
Please keep us informed on the outcome.
i still dont understand the difference between the three methods i learnt...
time machine restore
Full restore of your whole OSX volume (operating system; applications and user files) at the time of the last Time Machine backup (or an earlier one if you want to)
disk utility back up and restore
Prior to OSX 10.5 Leopard there was no Time Machine and that was the prefered way for a full backup
Still useful in some situations
reinstall SL and restore from TM
Clean fresh install of the operating system and restore from Time Machine backup of third-party apps and user files
Stefan
Message was edited by: Fortuny

Boot Camp partition added to VMWare Fusion...can't see original partition

I originally installed Windows XP Pro using Boot Camp. The partition was available using the OPTION-startup to select that partition.
Then I installed VMWare Fusion and had it "use" that Boot Camp partition so I could access it while running Leopard. Now when I use the OPTION-startup I don't see the original Boot Camp partition.
I check the information on my internal hard drive and it shows a total of 290Gb available when the hard drive is actually 320Gb (30Gb for the Boot Camp partition).
I'm wondering my options:
A. Can I use a Windows XP disc to install another Boot Camp partition or will it deny me because there is one still detectable?
B. Can I restore the ability to see the apparent Boot Camp partition on the hard drive from the OPTION-startup screen?
C. Is the simplest solution to reinstall Leopard and then reinstall the Boot Camp partition?
Thanks for any help.

UPDATE: So I tried to reinstall Windows XP using the Boot Camp Assistant but after choosing to create a new 32 Gig partition, the Utility failed, said it could not be created and suggested I try running repairs on the disc using the Disk Utility.
After running the repair disk feature in the Disk Utility here's the results:
Verifying volume “XXXXXXXX”
Performing live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume file count
(It should be 933882 instead of 933883)
Invalid volume directory count
(It should be 211965 instead of 211964)
The volume "XXXXXXXX" needs to be repaired.
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
If anyone would like to expand on this that would be great.
Thanks again.

How do I make a clone of the Boot camp partition?

My MacBook Air (10.6.8) is having problems and I need to send it away for repairs. Before I do that I want to make a clone of everything and put it on my new MacBook Pro (10.7.2)
I am making a clone of the Mac partition using Carbon Copy Cloner. That has worked well as a backup for me.
The only problem is I need to make a clone of the Boot camp partition (Windows partition) and I don't know how.
I want to make an exact clone so it has all the operating system, files and everything.
The other question is when should I make a Bootcamp partition?
Should I migrate the clone to the new mac using Migration Assistant, and then make a boot camp partition? And then what are the exact steps putting the clone onto the boot camp partition?
Thanks for any help.

Here are some previous coments made on this forun regarding backup of a Boot Camp partition. I use Paragon HDMSuite 2011.
Casper 6 does seem to work;
WinClone was handy for XP users but doesn't for instance check for errors during the backup only during restore. Winclone was discontinued at 2.2, all 2.3 versions are hacks (removal of the OS check seems to be the main thing) There has been no deveoplment or support for a while now.
Acronis 2011 w/ plus pak, didn't work well previously
Ghost 15 - probably not
Casper 6 works for Windows on Boot Camp only
CopyCatX is more lengthy and sector copy so takes the longest.
Paragon Hard Drive Suite 2011 because it works great
and they have CampTune
Windows 7 system backup and restore - Apple's goofy HFS read-only interferes with system and file backup.
I have also used Casper, Clonezilla and Paragon but less regularly, Casper failed a few times, I stopped using it, Clonezilla worked but took forever (for me) Paragon (which I have only used twice) was the best but my sample is limited.
I have restored from DU, CCC, SuperDuper and TM, they all worked, TM was slower but not a lot, you can boot from the others, which I prefer.
HDM 2011 can do either offline or online backups, the difference is that with an offline backup, the entire partition (or disk) is unallocated. In an online backup, the backup utility is running against a partition that may be making changes to itself. When you run CCC or SD! in OS X, you're running an online backup. However, I would recommend (at least for the first backup) that you boot from the HDM recovery CD to do an offline backup. This will ensure that you have an *exact* copy of the parition/disk.
Since this is you first time backing up your partition, I would suggest using one of the Backup Wizards. They'll guide you through the backup process and keep you from doing something wrong Similarly, use the Restore Wizard to restore your partition/drive.
HDMS 2011- back up a dual-boot Mac to an external USB drive, do:
1) Boot from the Recovery Disk (I'm assuming that the backup hard drive is attached before you reboot)
2) Select Paragon Hard Disk Manager
3) Launch the Backup Wizard by selecting Wizards > Backup Wizard
4) Select the Mac hard disk (not the partition) where it asks "what to backup"
5) On the Backup Destination page, select "Save data to any local drive or a network share"
6) Hit the radio button for the "Save to local drive option" (unless you got a boatload of DVD's )
7) Select the external USB drive as the backup destination
8) Look over and correct the name and comments
9) Hit Next to start the backup
When it's done, you have an entire copy of your Mac's HD saved to external media.
If you need to recover your HD, just run the Recovery Wizard and reverse the process.

I have recently purchased a hybred 750GbHDD as an upgrade for my MAC Book Pro (Intell Version) I have a boot camp partition to the original 500GB HDD. How can I expand both partitions to fit the new drive?

I have recently purchased a hybred 750GbHDD as an upgrade for my MAC Book Pro (Intell Version) I have a boot camp partition to the original 500GB HDD. How can I expand both partitions to fit the new drive?
I have tried bootcamp and have had no luck due to the fact that boot camp doesn't see the additional HDD space of 250Gb. What am I not doing?

Ouch, well there is a problem.
This is the stack of partitions on your old drive
EFI (hidden)
Lion (50GB say)
Bootcamp (50GB say)
Lion Recovery Partiton (hidden)
This is the same stack on your new drive imaged from the old one.
EFI (hidden)
Lion (50GB say)
Bootcamp (50GB say)
Lion Recovery Partiton (hidden)
Emtpy Space (100GB say)
This is what you want
EFI (hidden)
Lion (100GB say)
Bootcamp (100GB say)
Lion Recovery Partiton (hidden)
EFI has to be at the top of the drive and Lion Recovery has to be at the bottom of the drive.
And you only have four partitions.
You can't move the Lion Recovery Partition or Bootcamp partiton, however you can expand the Lion Partition into empty space below it. (but can't delete or move the Lion Recovery partition)
Your Duplicator duplicated perfectly, too perfectly Likely would work with same sized drives/partitions.
This is what your going to need to do.
You need to move the Bootcamp partition to a blank external drive using WinClone and disconnect. This is so you have two backups of it. (one on your old 500GB drive)
You will need a drive enclousre or IDE/SATA to USB adapter cable for the older 500GB drive and option key boot from it. (some enclosures can't be booted from so check first Other World Computing is good place to ask)
Download the free Carbon Copy Cloner, grab any new files off the new 750GB internal drive to the old 500GB your booted from.
Open Apple's Disk Utility and Erase with Zero option the entire internal 750GB drive and let it rip, this will map off as many bad sectors and improve reliability.
Now use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the 500GB Lion + Lion Recovery Partitions to the internal 750GB, it will "fix" things and place Lion Recovery at the bottom of the drive where it belongs, give all the extra space to OS X Lion.
Next your going to have to follow WinClones instructions to restore your Bootcamp, likely you will have to recreate the Bootcamp partition first (in Bootcamp) to the size you want and then clone. Likely Winclone may "fix" Windows to recognize it's in a new larger partition now. I don't know you'll have to check as I haven't used it.
When Bootcamp creates the partition it will place it near the bottom next to the Lion Recovery Partition.
As you know you will have to re-validate Windows with Lord Redmond or it expires as you changed the hardware.

Can't install windows it says the boot camp partition is not formatted as a NTFS file structure

Using boot camp assistant it gets to the point of installing windows 7 and it won't because the boot camp partition is not a NTFS file structure. It also seems strange to me that there are 5 partitions would have expect ether 2 or 3. Please help this is very frustrating.
Thanks in advance

Open, if not so already, the Windows formatter. Identify the BC Windows partition. It will be the one listed with the proper size you created and/or will be labeled as a C: drive. Be careful you select the right one or you may be corrupting the entire drive.
Format the partition as NTFS.

Windows 8 installer doesn't want to format the boot camp partition

Hello,
I followed this instructions : http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/45898/how-to-install-windows-8-on-a-mac
All works but the installer doesn't want to format the boot camp partition, i click on "option" > "format", i wait like 3-4 seconds (so not enought to format 100Go) and then same error "Windows can't be installed on this partition".
Any idea ?
I have :
Macbook Pro 15'' 2,4 GHz Intel Core i5
Mac OS X v10.7.5
1 Drive : 320Go
1 USB KEY that i used to install osx lion, so i think it's not the problem.
1 Windows8 64 downloaded from my university, and it works on a PC.

I have the same issue. Dec. 2013 13" macbook pro with 1tb ssd. Windows 8 Pro (have the box/cd).
Why is it that I can find every computer problem I ever have in a thread somewhere where someone else had the same problem too....but the threads never have solutions. There should be a name for this phenomenon.

Windows 7 Boot Camp partition doesn't show in the System Preferences.

Hi,
I'm running an up to date 10.6.2 on my OS X partition and Windows 7 x64 on my boot camp partition. When I looked at the start up disk preference pane the windows 7 installation didn't show. Is this normal? 32bit XP always showed in the past. If not, what should I do to fix it? I know that I can boot into windows by holding down the alt key on boot but I would like to know this is working correctly.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Steve Bunt
Message was edited by: SteveBunt

Make sure that you have a good install of the Apple drivers (boot camp 3.x) in Windows and that Boot Camp Control Panel there works so that you can set the default OS to either, and that it works.
But yes, someone else mentioned the same problem or bug.
The only cause I've seen in the past was where Mac OS X had an NTFS driver and control panel (Paragon, MacFUSE, etc) and you had to use their control panel in OS X.

Can I erase the boot camp partition and dual boot snow leopard and mountain lion instead

Can I erase the boot camp partition and dual boot snow leopard and mountain lion instead

Please don't double post. Look at your other thread.
If you want to get rid of Windows and the BC partition use the Boot Camp assistant program to remove the Win/BC partition. Don't do it manually with Disk Utility Use the BC A program.

The Invisible Boot Camp Partition

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