Using Disk Utility for Boot Camp to work

I'm trying to install Windows 7, but Boot Camp gave me the old error message about having unmovable data and needed to use Disk Utility to format it as a Single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Volume. So I backed everything up and am ready to go, but when I open Disk Utility and select my hard drive/disk, all the options under "erase" are grayed out. Any ideas?
Thanks!

You can't format what you are using.
If you cloned your drive you would be able to boot from that; if you used another method and you don't have OS X installed on another hard drive, you have to use your DVD.

Similar Messages

Cannot repair disk errors for OSX boot volume using Disk Utility while booted from different disk

I have tried three times to repair my boot volume (OSX 10.6.8 Snow Leopard) permissions using Disk Utility while booted up on a different volume (running Snow Leopard 10.6.4). After hours of Disk Utility reporting that it HAD fixed the problems, an immediate click of "Verify permissions" immediately results in the apparently same continuous stream of permission errors.

Then better luck next time around. Here are some ideas for then:
How to Install Lion Successfully - You must have Snow Leopard 10.6.7 or 10.6.8 Installed
A. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions:
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. Then select Disk Utility from the Utilities. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.3.) if DW cannot fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall Snow Leopard.
B. Make a Bootable Backup Using Restore Option of Disk Utility:
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the backup volume. Source means the internal startup volume.
C. Important: Please read before installing:
If you have a FireWire hard drive connected, disconnect it before installing the update unless you will boot from this drive and install the update on it. Reconnect it and turn it back on after installation is complete and you've restarted.
You may experience unexpected results if you have installed third-party system software modifications, or if you have modified the operating system through other means. (This does not apply to normal application software installation.)
The installation process should not be interrupted. If a power outage or other interruption occurs during installation, use the standalone installer (see below) from Apple Downloads to update. While the installation is in progress do not use the computer.
D. To upgrade to Lion:
Purchase the Lion Installer from the Mac App Store. The download will start quickly. Lion is nearly 4 GBs so a fast internet connection is essential. Download time could run upwards of 4 hours depending upon network conditions and server demands at the time.
Boot From The Lion Installer which is located in your Applications folder.
Follow instructions for installation.

My Macbook aliminium unibody from late 2008 will not boot. I reach the grey screen with the apple icon and the spinning grey gear. I used disk utility to boot it but it said integrity test failed. I don't know what to do can anyone please help?

My Macbook aliminium unibody from late 2008 will not boot. I reach the grey screen with the apple icon and the spinning grey gear. I used disk utility to boot it but it said integrity test failed. I don't know what to do can anyone please help?

Sounds like you may have a harddrive issue. You are probably going to need to get that changed out and then install the OS X again to get it going.

Using Disk Utility for backup - target drive must be same size as source?

Hello. I have a 250 GB data drive that I need to back up to an external drive using Disk Utility (restore) so that I can create a RAID-1 set using the 250GB drive. The files take up only 100 GB on the drive.
Does the target external drive need to be 250 GB or just 100+ GB in size for the Disk Utility to work?
Thanks
David

I you want to make a non mirrored drive into a mirrored one you can do that with diskutil. Copying it first is not needed.
man diskutil:
enableRAID mirror|concat device
Convert single filesystem disk or volume into a unpaired mir-
ror RAID set or concat set. Ownership of the affected disk is
required.
repairMirror raidDisk newDisk
Repair a failed mirror. Supply the existing RAID as the raid-
Disk parameter. Supply the new disk as the last parameter of
the request. newDisk and raidDisk are only Device Nodes or
Disk Identifiers. Ownership of the affected disk is required.
The second disk in the mirror set needs to be as big or bigger as the first disk.
Do this booted from another disk or DVD.

"Resource Busy" error during image creation,using disk utility when booting up from installation DVD

Hi all, first post to this community, wish all well
I have a MBP which is more than three years old, installed with OSX Leopard 10.6. Recently the MBP failed to to start and I tried to follow some articles online, including some from this community, to repair my disk, and more importantly, to backup data on the startup disk. But it does not work quite well so I try to seek some help here.
What I have done is to bootup with the installation DVD, try to verify and repair the disk using disk utility, which tells me it can't repair and recommend to backup, erase and reinstall. Am fine with this recommendation but now the problem is on the backup part. There are two partitons on this 500GB hitachi SATA disk. One is 300G which is for OSX itself, and the other 200G was partitioned for Time Machine. The repair failure is on the OSX partition which contains most of the recent data that I want to backup/restore. And unfortunately the Time Machine backup was stopped about two month ago, for some stupid decision I have made , while I am hoping to recover some data for the past month.
Currently the SMART status of the whole disk is verified, the OSX partition is unmounted with no details in the Available, Used, Number of Files, etc. From what I have researched (correct me if I am wrong), I highlight the OSX partition from the list on the left, click 'New Image' button on top, and select the destination to try to create an image of the current partition. But regardless of my desintation (Time Machine partition, or external USB drive), the imaging process always failed with Resource Busy error. Some online search suggest that the partition must be in unmount status but seems it does not apply to this case.
Would be really appreciated if anyone can give me some advice on what's the 'resource busy' error mean, how to backup the OSX partition, or what are the other possible alternatives.

Very poor idea to keep the Time Machine backup file on the internal hard drive. They should always be put on an external drive. As when the internal fails you lose everything. Which is what I suspect has happened.
More then likely your internal drive is failing. the only options to get a new internal drive and a SATA to USB adapter. Install the new drive inside the system abd install OS X on it. Then once that is finished and you are booting from it connect the old drive to the system with the SATA to USB adapter and copy your files off the old drive. That is if you can.

What do I do? Please help me. (Mountian Lion, Disk Utility, Partition, Boot Camp)

I was trying to upgrade my snow leopard to mountian lion on my macbook pro 13". I didn't fully understand how to do it so I googled and found out i had to make a partition with a specific format. Prior, I did a bootcamp so I can install window 7. I partitioned my macbook with window 7 and osx. When i went to disk utility i didn't have enough space so i deleted my window 7 partition. ( i think i did it unproperly hence i have the problem). When i deleted it, it gave a random partition disk, my apple partition and the empty space i deleted for my window 7. I basically gave up on my mountian lion installation and restarted my computer. When my computer boots up it comes up with "Non-System disk" "Press any key to reboot".
What i tried was to stick in the mac ox cd in, and the application cd. Both doesn't work. Im trying to find where my window 7 cd is to see if i can restore the partition i deleted. I thats not the solution please help me
UPDATE: Also i was thinking about buying the Macbook Pro 15". With the current condition i have on my macbook pro 13" am i able to recycle it and get some store credit for it?

Once you back into OS X, reboot holding the command option r keys down, or command r keys and use that Disk Utility to repair your drive or MacintoshHD partition.
Then reboot normally and use that Disk Utiltiy to grab the little corner resizer of your MacintoshHD partition and drag it over the gray space at the bottom to reclaim the deleted Windows BootCamp partition.
If you want to try Mountain Lion, I suggest you do so on a extenral powered drive.
1: Format a external powered drive in Disk Utility Partition 1, Option: GUID Format OS X Extended Journaled and give it name like Mountain Lion (formatting a drive erases all data on it)
2: Download to Snow Leopard, Carbon Copy Cloner and use it's default settings to clone your MacintoshHD partition to the external drive.
3: Reboot the machine holding the option/alt key held down, boot from the clone.
4: Use that clone of Snow Leopard to upgrade to Mountain Lion via AppStore.
5: If and when your ready, you can boot from the 10.8 clone and reverse clone or clone Snow Leopard to another drive or whatever you need.
Most commonly used backup methods

Option Key for Boot Camp not working with New iMac Keyboard

Hi, I own a early 2006 Intel iMac. Recently, my wife complained that the keyboard was getting dirty. Basically I think she liked the new keyboard on the new Aluminum iMac better. We purchased it back in August and everything worked great. Oh I also had the beta version of Boot Camp installed. Everything worked great, hold Option down on boot and could choose which OS to go into.
Fast forward to now, purchased Leopard and love it! Decided to wipe the system and do a fresh install. Everything is installed (Leopard, Boot Camp, Windows XP) and working great, that is except when I press and hold the Option key at start up. If I have the new keyboard installed, the Option key does not bring up the boot manager. However if I plug the original keyboard in and hold Option, it works!!!
Ok I could see a problem if the new keyboard was NOT an Apple product. But it is and frustraiting as I can use the control panel to choose. This is a long round about method and does not make a happy wife with me. HELP!
Jhan Jensen

Thanks for the info! I was about to call myself and I may still do so. I am hoping if Apple gets enough of these calls then maybe it will spur them on to get it done sooner. (Apple are you listening) I will do the same with the KB swapping, she will be happy at least she can still use the new keyboard. She types a lot and has be really happy with the new keyboard and its response.
Thanks again for the help!!!
Jhan

Warning signs when using disk utility for my power mac g5

I have a dual 2GHz PowerPC G5. I just upgraded to the latest Leopard & installed FCP2. I noticed when I use Repair Disk Permissions, there are so many warning signs & I'm not sure what to make of it. I do notice that my computer freezes a lot, can someone help interpret these warning signs for me? And, how do I fix it? Here are some samples of those warning signs during repair disk permissions:
Warning: SUID file "sbin/mount-nfs' has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "sbin/unmount" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "sbin/ping' has been modified and will not be repaired
Warning: SUID file "sbin/ping6" has been modified and will not be repaired
Warning: SUID file "sbin/route" has been modified and will not be repaired
The list goes on and on, please help.
many thanks in advance.

The catalog is the index for all the files on disk. It is useless without the related disk files so cloning just the catalog isn't really an option. You would need to clone the entire drive (SuperDuper!, Carbon Copy Cloner and even Disk Utility will do this).
Disk Warrior is a utility to clean up the catalog, make it into an order that should speed up file operations. It has potential to loose files because of the nature of it's job, but it is pretty reliable in my opinion. The catalog is like a telephone directory for files
The repairing of permissions involves the system keeping receipts of all the things that are installed & updated (with the appropriate permission values) and then the repair permissions utility resets the files to what the receipts say. The recieots are kept in the /Library/Receipts folder. You haven't deleted anything from there have you? if you have you would need to replace them with copies from a similar system, not an easy task.
I believe the items contained in /sbin/ are system binaries that come from the BSD package when installing Mac OSX. I would consider doing software updates then try repairing the permissions again.

HELP :( Unable to repair HD and needs to know a way to back up using disk utility via boot up.

I currently require assistance as I was thinking about sending my Macbook to the repair centre tomorrow but I decided to apporach here first before I send it over.
Anyway, my Macbook suddenly hanged one day and I switched it off. When I switched it on , it gave me an icon file with a ? in the centre icon. I do not have the CD for the OS or anything. I am currently assessing safari via command + R when I booted up my computer. I tried to repair my Macintosh HD but it failed and I am afraid of losing my data when I send it over to the repair centre. How do I back up my HD when it's corrupted? Please also tell me how to restore my data when I receive it from the repair centre (most likely scenario) as well! If you know how to fix this problem as well without losing my data (and no CD) as well , I would really appreciate it!

Sorry to say this but it is a little late now to start thinking about backing up your files. Should of done that all along for just this type of situation.
About the only thing you can do now is connect an external drive and use the Command + r boot system to install a copy of OS X on the external. then once that is done try to access the internal drive and copy your files over to the external

I tried to burn windows 7 Iso using disk utility for more than 3 time with the minimum speed, but all the three times I got error saying "disk burn failed unable to verify"?

I have tried with three different blank DVDs but all got the same error message. But after I got the error message when I reinsert the DVD I can see the ISO in the DVD. So I went a head with the installation but the installation stops just after it starts. I have even tried burning the disk at 2X speed.

It sounds like your optical drive may be dirty. The lens probably needs a cleaning. You can go to somewhere like Best Buy and pick up a cleaning kit.

Using Disk Utility for RAID setup?

I just purchased 2 1TB Seagate Hard Drives 32mb cache 7200prm that I want to setup a RAID 0 (striping I believe) for Final Cut Pro for rendering. Well I also have a 3rd drive that is identical, question is does more drives in that RAID setup mean faster performance? 2 drives vs 3 or 4, etc.? Also what do you think that actual difference in reading and writing would be approximately?

You can find the max sustained, the average I/O, and minimum. From reviews and Seagate product spec details. There is some overhead for each drive as you seek and assemble the parts of a file.
The burst rate of the drive is likely around 135MB and average of the outer half a solid 100MB/sec.
The bandwidth in the Mac Pro totals 1GB for all drives, even though each is supposed to have 3Gbps.
SSDs are fast catching on for speed and fast system drives, even in stripe raid.
Don't mix 7200.12 with .11s or even different model/series/firmware. And Seagate has had its hands full with firmware issues for years, going back to the intro of SATA actually.
If you want one large volume and if having 200MB/sec matters or helps, you might want to RAID, even partition each drive first to 3/4 level and stripe that 3/4 together to guarantee 200MB/sec range.
But experiment for a couple weeks first.

Reformat external hard drive for Windows machine using disk utility

I have a Maxtor 160GB dual-interface external HD. I used it for my Mac OS X. I erased and reformated the hard drive on my Mac to MS-DOS using Disk Utility for use on my fathers Windows XP. I hooked the hard drive up to the Windows machine and the hard drive was visible in both Windows Explorer and on the task bar. I right clicked on the hard drive and selected Format. The formatting takes a while but at the end an error appears indicating the hard drive was not formattable. How can I get a MS-DOS formatted hard drive (from a Mac) to be used on a Windows XP machine with a NTFS format?

Turns out it is possible:
Maxtor Support..
I would use your Disk Management utility within Windows to repartition and reformat the drive. To access Disk Management, right click on My Computer, go to Manage, and then choose Disk Management. Within Disk Management the drive should show in your list of disks (Disk 0,1,2 etc etc). I would delete any partitions that are on the drive. To delete a partition, just right-click on the partition and choose delete. Make sure you’re deleting the correct drive. Once the entire drive says unallocated then the drive should be ready to partition and format. Just right click within the Unallocated Space on the drive and choose the New Partition or New Volume option to set up the drive.
I followed the instructions and everything worked.

When using disk utility to copy one drive to another is it common for the screen to go black

I have a G5 and the main HD is making a little noise. I installed a new HD and was using disk utilities to copy the old to the new. The message came up that it would take 5 hours to copy. The screen went black ... is this common? How do I know it's doing it's thing?

I always set the Energy Saver settings to "never" whenever I do things like volume cloning, software (especially OS) downloading and installing, or using Disk Utility for most anything.

Partition hard drive for boot camp

Hi everyone,
I was wondering if someone could help me out. My wife has a Macbook and had the hard drive partitioned so that she could run Bootcamp. She has both Windows7 Pro on the Bootcamp side and OSX on the MAc side. When she originally did the partition, she thought that 100GB should do the trick. She is now running out of space on the Windows side and needs more. Is there any "easy" way to partition the part of the drive on the Mac side to allocate another 100GB to the WIndows side without deleting anything or screwing up any programs. Or is there a way to partition the mac side and make a new drive altogether, and make it a drive to store files (pics, documents, etc.). Any information you could provide would be very helpful. Thanks for all your help.

Others have reported success with it. I don't use Windows so I have not used it myself. It's either that or repartitioning your entire drive with Disk Utility then Boot Camp Assistant. You really have nothing to lose than you would lose were you to go the alternative way.
It's a good idea to have backups, however, regardless of what you do.

Using Disk Utility to clone one FW Drive to another FW Drive

can I use Disk Utility to clone one external firewire drive to another external firewire drive? How would I go about this? I am using a PowerBook G4, 1.67 Ghz, 17 in, 2 gig ram with Mac OS 10.3.9
I have both firewire drives connected to the PowerBook.

Yes, you can use Disk Utility for this purpose.
1) Open Disk Utility.
2) In the left hand column, click on one of your Volumes (if your disks are partitioned, this will be one of your named volumes).
3) In the right hand box, you will now see three buttons: First Aid, Erase, Restore. Click on Restore.
4) Drag the volume name of the partition that you want to copy to the "Source" box. Its name should appear in the box. Drag the volume name of the partition that you want to overwrite to the "Destination" box. Its name should appear.
5) Click "Restore" in the lower right corner. You might want to also check the box "Erase destination".
6) Wait patiently, if all goes well you should have a bootable clone. Be sure to test the clone for bootablity before relying on it. Also, do a "Get Info" in the Finder after cloning to make sure the "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" box is not checked, and then use Disk Utility to repair permissions on the volume.
Good Luck!

Using Disk Utility for Boot Camp to work

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