Drive 'Genius' 3 wrecked boot camp, how can I ideally recover?

I do have a DMG backup of the bootcamp partition, which I made before resizing.

Thinking it was a competent application and reading a review saying Drive Genius 3 (DG3) works on bootcamp partitions, I summarily bought DriveGenius to resize my OS X partition and then change bootcamp's.

Resizing OS X's partition was simple, but DG3 said Bootcamp was in an incompatible format and would not be changed (NTFS, for Win7 64-bit).

So, thinking all was well, or at least I could resize Bootcamp via other means, I reboot. Holding down the OPTION key, the boot menu is now different. There's no bootcamp entry and the OS X partition was renamed from "EFI Boot" to "Macintosh HD".

Booting into OS X boot CD and changing the boot volume to bootcamp, guess what's corrupt? Bootcamp, a partition DG3 claimed it did not touch.

Diskwarrior found a few issues with the OS X partition, but nothing seemingly major -- it also renamed the option menu back to "EFI Boot".

I'm about to restore my DMG image and pray, but also owning Parallels 6 and noting how fast many Windows apps run, I might convert bootcamp over -- maybe Bryce and DAZ Studio will run faster. (There are Mac versions, but the Mac versions crash whereas the Win versions - doing the same rendering and processes - do not. )


What is the safest way that I can restore my Bootcamp partition, without having to resort to my DMG image? Can the bootcamp partition be restored? All the data still exists, it just can't boot - so it's probably just the MBR of the Bootacmp partition that was hosed.

Any help would be much appreciated, thank you very much!

balamw said:

You could try to use your Win 7 install disc and use the automatic repair. W764 understands EFI, so it should not stomp on your OS X. If you go that way, make sure you also have a backup of your OS X just in case.

Winclone did a few extra things after restoring from the DMG to make it bootable.

EDIT: It looks like all it was doing was gptrefresh and copying a generic BCD over using ntfscp as described here: http://www.afp548.com/netboot/mactips/dualboot.html (you could probably use gptsync instead of gptrefresh).

EDIT2: In a previous thread it seemed like gdisk might be a good solution. You might want to see if it can do what gptsync/gptrefresh.

B

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Thx for the info!

I do have a DMG backup of my OS X partition (made before using DG3).

I will attempt what you've mentioned tonight when I've had time to fully prepare and feel comfy in attempting. That makes sense, so i will be keeping my fingers crossed...

Additional: I did install winclone, but only just after using DG3. The DMG I made of Bootcamp I made with Apple's Disk Utility. As an alternate form of backup. But winclone's backup is definitely useless (it too would say "no boot device", as I just tried using parallels to convert the existing bootcamp partition and I got the same error.)

balamw said:

You could try to use your Win 7 install disc and use the automatic repair. W764 understands EFI, so it should not stomp on your OS X. If you go that way, make sure you also have a backup of your OS X just in case.

EDIT2: In a previous thread it seemed like gdisk might be a good solution. You might want to see if it can do what gptsync/gptrefresh.

B

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Thanks for the edits/updates!

I will try your first paragraph first, starting with Boot Camp Assistant to boot from the partition - maybe that will work.

I'll track down GPTSYNC... worst case scenario I'll restart from scratch and reactivate all the relevant apps... (*shudder*)

balamw said:

BCA won't be happy. Insert the W7 disc and reboot the Mac holding Alt/Option.

B

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Will do - thanks!

Small update: I bought a new hard drive, thinking I could put the bootcamp partition on it. The DMG I made of the bootcamp partition can't be deployed on its own - I received an error about the partition on the destination drive not being formatted right. (uh-oh... that's because the DMG was made from a NTFS partition... Can winclone make use of the DMG file?)

Assuming booting from the Windows DVD and recovery option works, can I move the bootcamp partition to a completely separate drive? (I should have bit the bullet and bought a separate hard drive in the first place...)

balamw said:

Not directly. It uses DMG as one of its internal image formats, and it's "retired" for good now it seems.


Only if you have a Mac Pro. (You didn't say). The other Macs only have one internal drive and Windows doesn't like being on an external.

B

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Good to know...

Thanks for the info - I did a system repair and it worked. Performance seems on par as it was before.

Should I ask the following in a new thread:

Can I migrate my boot camp partition to a separated hard drive?

And how can I properly back up the partition? Should I immediately make a winclone backup or are there more recent, better tools?

With Parallels 6, should I migrate to it instead? (I've noted CS5 apps work great via Parallels 6 (testing revealed a remarkably fluid response time), but I worry that Bryce, Truespace, and other 3D apps would probably have their performance crippled - I currently cannot afford Mac versions, but in the case of Bryce I noted the Windows version crashes less often so I'm sticking with the Windows version for now.)

?

balamw said:

Only if you have a Mac Pro. (You didn't say). The other Macs only have one internal drive and Windows doesn't like being on an external.

B

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I have a 2009 Mac Pro. I forgot to mention that earlier - sorry about that...

balamw said:

I'm not aware of anything that is really better. Definitely not something that is GPT aware and runs under Mac OS X.

I recommended Acronis in another thread but it didn't work for that person. (Works fine for me and my purposes).

B

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Do your purposes include backing up a Windows partition or drive? If so, I'll buy TrueImage v11 right away...

balamw said:

Yes, but...

Most of the drives I want to image are old MBR drives connected via USB. Or existing Acronis images I want to mount.

In order to work with a GPT disk like on the Mac you need Plus Pack and there are still some operations that you can't do with GPT drives...

B

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I will look further into Acronis with the Plus Pack and see what the limitations are - thanks much! (Meanwhile, I posted a new thread about my attempt to migrate the bootcamp partition...)