Under SL, a 2nd disk partition disappears; re-appears if shutdown and start

Background: MacBook Pro, two+ years old. On day one I partitioned the 100GB drive into three sections for MAC OS, DATA and WINDOWS. Never installed Windows.
Just installed SL upgrade. Had some problems; MAC OS space was insufficient. It took SL a while to decide the WINDOWS partition was the wrong format. (I had forgotten the FAT formatting from two years ago.) SL install went into a loop more than once. Finally had to re-install the original MAC OS and then installed SL, which now seems to be working fine. (This is the short version of four+ hours to install SL.)
But now the DATA partition disappears at random times. It will be displayed on the desktop at startup and then, a while later, no longer be displayed. Disk Utility will show it as greyed out but Disk Utility Verify will report it's fine. If I shutdown and restart, it re-appears on the desktop.
I have used Time Machine since it came out. If the DATA partition is visible, Time Machine will include it in the next backup. If it is not visible, Time Machine will not include it.
My first goal is the get the DATA partition stable and permanently visible if there is something obvious that I can correct.
In studying this problem, I've learned that the MAC OS partition, 48.97 GB, is down to 137.3MB of free space. Is this a possible cause of the DATA partition problem? What other operating symptoms might I be seeing due to insufficient free space?
From reading other posts, it seems I have to re-format the entire disk drive to recover the WINDOWS partition, which is 12.75GB. Is that correct?
If I do a re-format and complete SL install, will Time Machine restore all of the working data?
thanks
Ray

Hi Ray;
Yes, running with only 137.3 MB in your system partition can cause all sorts of problems. I would suggest you get rid of enough of your files to get at least 10 GB free.
Since you are not using the Windows partition that might be a good place to move your photos and music to.
Allan

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Waiting for local disks??? problems with fans and starting up

Hello and please help me. My late 03 Mac isn't loading up. It gets past the grey bit and onto the loading part where everythings going fine until it stops on 'waitng for local disks' the fans then start to go nuts and I have to switch it off manually cos nothing is responding and I fear it may blow up. There's no disks in the drive and I've tried pressing the pmu button, disconnecting the wires and rebooting it from the original disk (when I do the latter it simply loads back up and stops at, yep you guessed it...waiting for local disks)
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Hi,
Sorry, I'm new to the community, so apologies if I'm repeating myself.
OK, so I tried to install Windows Vista onto my iMac with the disk partition. Everything was going fine and it wasn't until last minute, when it was installed that an error came up saying that this can only be done with Windows 7. After this error, I couldn't access any errors of my iMac and when I shut down and restarted my computer, it automatically logged into Windows.
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However, now when I shut down my computer and boot it back up, I think my iMac is trying to log into Windows areas that no longer exist. It loads up a black screen and doesn't move from there. To log into my Apple area, I have to do the whole process of holding Alt immediately after I switch the power on and access the Mac drive and log in that way.
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This is Apple's guidance on disk partitioning.
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Hi Ray;
Yes, running with only 137.3 MB in your system partition can cause all sorts of problems. I would suggest you get rid of enough of your files to get at least 10 GB free.
Since you are not using the Windows partition that might be a good place to move your photos and music to.
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The disk space disappears after bootcamp failed in deleting the windows partition.

Hardware: Macbook Pro 700
OS: Lion v10.7
1. I installed Windows 7 in my mac. The space of Windows partition is 80G.
2. Some dlls of Windows will always disappear and at last the Windows cannot be started successfully.
3. Yesterday I updated Lion and started the bootcamp to remove the Windows partition. But bootcamp throwed an error(I forget what the error is).
4. I started bootcamp again to try to remove the Windows partition, but there is only create Windows partition in the options.
5. I started the Disk Utilities and verified the disk. The reported result was that there were some errors in disk.
6. So I restarted the machine and pressed COMMAND+R and entered the Disk Utilities to repair the disk.
7. After repairing the disk, there are no errors in disk now. But 80G space disappears.
Now my whole disk is still 320G, but the mac partition is 238G.
How can I repair it? Please help me.
Some logs in system:
Mar 8 04:54:44 ko-hitoshimatoMacBook-Pro com.apple.kextd[10]: Error reconsidering volume /Volumes/BOOTCAMP.
Mar 8 04:57:25 ko-hitoshimatoMacBook-Pro fseventsd[18]: log dir: /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/.fseventsd getting new uuid: 399DDE3E-37D7-43A8-8BD1-049EF76C803F

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IMac 27" (late 2011), Mountain Lion, Bootcamp, and OSX partition disappearing and refusing to mount

Hey all,
I'm putting this as a question in the discussion forms for bootcamp as I'm not sure where else to put it, but I resolved an issue I was having and having spent all of yesterday and the day before reading through this community and some others looking for answers and mostly seeing "hope you have backups, time to format!" (which to me is not always the best answer), I thought I would put it here for search purposes (with all the key words I had to use) in case anyone else has a similar issue.
My scenario was this:
2011 27" iMac with Mountain Lion installed and Windows 7 installed on a boot camp partition.
1) Haven't been in windows in a while, wanted to play some windows only steam games. Load windows 7. All is well. Have fun. Time to reboot into osx.
2) Reboot using bootcamp toolbar icon.
3) Wander away from computer. Come back to find windows 7 has loaded again. "That's weird", I think. Reboot again, this time hold down option key to select boot device.
4) Discover the only options are the Bootcamp partition and the Recovery partition. OSX "Macintosh HD" partition has disappeared. Huh.
5) Load recovery partition and load disk utility.
6) Review disk utility to discover the Macintosh HD partition shows up in the list, but won't mount. Run verify and repair tools. Errors are as follows: Invalid node structure, invalid key length, invalid record count, etc etc. Running a repair fails - disk utility advises me to back up and erase the drive and that the partition is unrepairable. No offense disk utility, but I think I'll try a few more options first.
7) Purchase DiskWarrior on advice of multiple posters in other threads and general online consensus of it being capable of fixing these sorts of errors. Go through process of loading bootable dvd.
8) Diskwarrior cannot see the Macintosh HD partition. This is bad. Review more threads. Advice is that if diskwarrior can't fix it, hope you have backups and wipe the drive. Likely to be hardware failure. I'm skeptical of hardware failure, because windows is chugging along running fine if I boot into it, and I ran a scan of the windows partition and it came back clean. SMART status is also showing the drive is ok. However, running out of options and starting to lose hope.
9) Follow advice in this support topic: http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1417?viewlocale=de_de Both safe mode and disk utility aren't options (safe mode won't work without it seeing the partition) so sounds like fsck is the final option.
10) Start up in Single User Mode (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492). Run fsck per instructions. It reports back ok.
11) Realize fsck is checking the recovery partition, and not my damaged OSX partition. Realize I don't know anything about unix commands and have no idea how to tell fsck to check a different partition.
12) Learn that I need to find out what the drive id is for the damaged partition. Reboot, load up disk utility, select greyed out "macintosh HD" partition, click info. Write down the id: disk0s2 (likely to be the default for you as well if you have one drive in your imac and a default bootcamp install).
13) Go back into single user mode and type the following (without quotes): "fsck_hfs -fy /dev/disk0s2"
14) (Forgot to copy down exactly what it said at this point, but gist of it was that the drive had errors and isnt repairable). Feel like ****, thinking this is unlikely to resolve itself nicely.
15) With nothing to lose, try to force fsck to rebuild the catalog - "fsck_hfs -rc -d /dev/disk0s2" I found this syntax on some forums and can't find the thread again. I have no idea what the -rc and -d do that -fy don't, but if someone can let me know, that'd be cool. Either way, this resulted in something actually happening. Tells me it is "rebuilding catalogue b-tree". Still, finishes with a bunch of errors about improperly linked files, more node errors, etc etc.
16) Retry "fsck_hfs -fy /dev/disk0s2". It seems to be doing stuff now, even though there are lots of errors. Continue to re-run fsck using this syntax. Probably ran it 10-15 times. Takes over an hour. Finally, minimal errors being reported.
17) Realize that perhaps I should try Diskwarrior again now, since I've managed to do soemthing to the partition with fsck.
18) Run Diskwarrior from bootable DVD. Success! It now sees the damaged partition. Reports that it has a bunch of damaged crtitical files, and needs to be repaired, but hey, at least it can see it.
19) Let Diskwarrior do its thing, and reboot.
20) Boot from repaired OSX partition. Rejoice. Immediately plug back in the timemachine drive you foolishly unplugged to take away over the holidays and neglected to plug back in before you had commenced work on stuff you didnt want to lose through formatting, which is why you are so desperate to recover files rather than wiping and restoring from time machine backups and avoiding this whole mess.
TL;DR - If Disk Utility and DriveWarrior fail you, try running fsck (using different syntax that apple recommends) as many times as it takes to get the partition to a stage where diskwarrior can see it. All advice I saw for similar questions was to erase, reinstall OSX, and restore from time machine backup. For those of you who are foolish like me and had files that werent time machine'd, or those who operate without, maybe try this.
Hope this helps!

What -rc & -d do.
From: The fsck_hfs manual page.
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages /man8/fsck_hfs.8.html
-d      Display debugging information. This option may provide useful information when fsck_hfs cannot repair a damaged file system.
-r      Rebuild the catalog btree. This is synonymous with -Rc.
-R flags Rebuilds the requested btree. The following flags are supported:
                         a       Attribute btree
                         c       Catalog btree
                         e       Extents overflow btree
I had the same problem as you but unfortunately "fsck_hfs -rc -d /dev/disk0s2" is failing saying: "The volume   could not be verified completely." I believe it's supposed to be telling me the partition's name (normally "Macintosh HD") between 'volume' and 'could' because there's 3 spaces in between the words.
"fsck_hfs -fy /dev/disk0s2" is failing with the same error.
I tried "fsck_hfs -r -d /dev/disk0s2" since the c appears redundant with a lowercase R. and it again says it cannot be verified completely and adds "volume check failed with error 7". Which unfortunately is not documented on the fsck_hfs man page!
Unfortunately for me, Diskwarrior still can't see my busted Mac OS partition.

Windows 7 partition disappeared?

So as I was creating a partition for Windows 7 (500 GB, leaving the Mac partition with 100 GB to spare), it gave me some sort of error about files and what-not (I apologize for not remembering). I then proceeded to click okay, and I tried to create a new partition with the same GB space, but this time, as I was using safari, my iMac froze and I decided to turn off the computer and turn it back on again. After that I immediately went back to bootcamp, and tried to make another partition, but this time, I only had 77 GB to add to the already 20 GB Windows 7 partition. Meaning I only have 97 GB left on my iMac. Did my partition disappear with all that storage? Please help me.
iMac version 10.6.8

That program, NTFS 3G, has nothing to do with whether or not you have a Win 7 partition and whether or not it is still on your drive or has disappeared.
Open System Preferences and go to Startup Disk. Is the Win 7 partition listed as a startup drive? If it is then it hasn't disappeared, it still there. Another way to get to it is to hold down the Option/Alt key at startup. That brings up a BOOT Menu screen where you can select which partition to boot from. Is the Win 7 partition listed? If it is then it hasn't disappeared.
But that program you installed has been corrupted in some way and not loading. That program, NTFS 3G, is for Mac OS X to Write to NTFS formatted partitions which natively it Can't Do.

Windows partition disappearing - twice

Is this a common problem?
I installed a Bootcamp partition and put Windows XP on it. No problem installing and using Windows for many months. Then one day, it just disappeared - the Windows disk no longer appeared on the desktop and the option to boot from it disappeared from the startup disk in settings. The hard disk space occupied by Windows still seemed to be there i.e. it wasn't available in Finder. So, I used Bootcamp assistant to delete the Windows partition and started again, re-installed Windows XP and thought I'd sorted it until today when I tried to restart the Mac in Windows but the Mac didn't like it for some reason and hung. A quick switch off/on and the Mac restarted in Mac OS and again the Windows partition disappeared although the space it occupied is still there.
Does this make sense?
Is there anything else I can do before I go through the whole Bootcamp/Installation process again?
Should I give up on Bootcamp and use Parallels instead?
Thanks for any help.

I went to boot into windows Xp last night, I use the option key, and it was missing too. Just my Mac HD showing up. Is it related to SL 10.6.6? Can't think of any other changes. Is there any way that my files have not been erased forever?

Recovery partition disappeared

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I'm using "HP G62x-400 CTO Notebook PC". Yesterday I installed "Powerquest Partition Magic 8.0". As it was incompatitable, uninstalled it. After that, I found my Recovery partition disappeared. I found the partition in Disk Management section of Win7 (My Computer[right click]> Manage> Disk Management) without any drive letter. I tried to set a drive letter it show following message:
After that, I installed "EaseUS Partition Master 9.1.1 Home Edition". This software also shows the partition without any drive letter. It also shows the used and unused percentage of the partition, which means no data was removed. When I tried to set a drive letter it show the following error (Mounting volume failed). I've restart the windows several times and tried but failed.
Any one please help, how to recover the partition and the data.
Thanks,
Siddique

In Windows 7
Start --> All Programs --> HP --> Recovery Manager
If this still exists in you Windows 7 desktop you should be able to perform a Factory Image recovery and return your notebook to its delivered condition. The recovery will recreate the partitions.
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Amy, is there a chance they could both be Syncing to another device that has the data erased?
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Normally repartitioning a drive means erasing everything that's on the drive and starting fresh. To do it, you need the OS disks, either the retail Tiger DVD or the Software Restore discs that came with the computer.
With the OS disc in the drive restart the computer holding the C key. (You can also select the OS disc in the Startup Disc pane of System Preferences before restarting.
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Under SL, a 2nd disk partition disappears; re-appears if shutdown and start

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