How to recover Bootcamp NTFS Partition?

[-lupo-]

Thanks, I didn't notice that difference I am just wondering what caused this mess in the first place...

I am going the ntfsresize route, I am d/l fedora 18 "as we speak". I have not purchased a copy of winclone, I used a free/trial/old version that just worked without purchasing it.

[murphychris]

Originally Posted by -lupo-

Thanks, I didn't notice that difference I am just wondering what caused this mess in the first place...

I am going the ntfsresize route, I am d/l fedora 18 "as we speak". I have not purchased a copy of winclone, I used a free/trial/old version that just worked without purchasing it.

I could be wrong but I think that old free version is deprecated. In any case it appears to have not worked.

So for the Fedora bit, you can either burn the LiveCD ISO to a CD or DVD or you can dd it to a USB stick. If you dd it to a USB stick, it will nuke anything on the USB stick. If you burn to a cd/dvd, there's a boot bug you have to get around by typing some stuff into the boot loader. So lemme know which method you're using. And what Macbook Pro model is this?

[-lupo-]

I just checked, when I downloaded winclone the person who made it said he wasn't supporting winclone anymore, I guess someone else took over since then.

I wanted to go the USB stick route, I just happen to have a new, unused one here. Could be that my next answer will come in around 20 hours, it's time for bed and I'll get back at this after work just so you know why I'm not anwering

Thanks for your help!

[murphychris]

Originally Posted by -lupo-

I wanted to go the USB stick route, I just happen to have a new, unused one here.

sudo dd if=[dragLiveCDISOhere] of=/dev/rdiskX bs=128k

no space after= and no brackets. To get the proper number for X, do a diskutil list after you've plugged the USB stick in. Reboot with the option key and you'll see either a Fedora Media option, or an EFI Boot option with a USB logo. Choose that. And then just wait til you get a Live User login screen hopefully.

[-lupo-]

Here I am again;

I couldn't get ntfsresize to work; this is what I typed first of all:

ntfsresize -c /dev/sda4

to check the situation, but it gave me an "access denied" error, and I can't do a sudo as a "fedora live user". I didn't try any other options, I think it would have been kind of pointless at this point.

I have another question: I reat the help for ntfsresize and it seems I can resize the partition by inserting a size, but it seems I can't give a start and an end cluster.

[murphychris]

Originally Posted by -lupo-

Here I am again;

I couldn't get ntfsresize to work; this is what I typed first of all:

ntfsresize -c /dev/sda4

to check the situation, but it gave me an "access denied" error, and I can't do a sudo as a "fedora live user". I didn't try any other options, I think it would have been kind of pointless at this point.

I have another question: I reat the help for ntfsresize and it seems I can resize the partition by inserting a size, but it seems I can't give a start and an end cluster.

You need to be root, do that with su, then the following commands.

su
ntfsresize -i /dev/sda4
ntfsresize -n /dev/sda4

[-lupo-]

Ok,
here are the results:

[root@localhost liveuser]# ntfsresize -i /dev/sda4

ntfsresize v2012.1.15 (libntfs-3g)
Device name        : /dev/sda4
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size       : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 150761107968 bytes (150762 MB)
Current device size: 150763216384 bytes (150764 MB)
Checking filesystem consistency ...
100.00 percent completed
Accounting clusters ...
Space in use       : 52418 MB (34.8%)
Collecting resizing constraints ...
You might resize at 52417830912 bytes or 52418 MB (freeing 98344 MB).
Please make a test run using both the -n and -s options before real resizing!

[root@localhost liveuser]# ntfsresize -n /dev/sda4

ntfsresize v2012.1.15 (libntfs-3g)
Device name        : /dev/sda4
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size       : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 150761107968 bytes (150762 MB)
Current device size: 150763216384 bytes (150764 MB)
New volume size    : 150763209216 bytes (150764 MB)
Checking filesystem consistency ...
100.00 percent completed
Accounting clusters ...
Space in use       : 52418 MB (34.8%)
Collecting resizing constraints ...
Schedule chkdsk for NTFS consistency check at Windows boot time ...
Resetting $LogFile ... (this might take a while)
Updating $BadClust file ...
Updating $Bitmap file ...
Updating Boot record ...
The read-only test run ended successfully.

[murphychris]

Originally Posted by -lupo-

The read-only test run ended successfully.

OK good. So now just repeat without -n.

ntfsresize -n /dev/sda4

It will report the same thing, but that it actually did the resize, and I think it tells you to reboot Windows twice. So do that and report back any problems.

[-lupo-]

You have no Idea how much I want to hug you right now Thank you a lot for the walkthrough. It seems to have worked. Rebooted Windows 2 times more than the ones ntfsresize wanted and there seems to be no problem.

Then I booted OS X and NTFS-3G gave me a problem; something about not recieving a signal from the bootcamp partition in 15 seconds time. The partition is visible in finder though, and I can browse it. Is it something to be afraid of?

[murphychris]

Originally Posted by -lupo-

Then I booted OS X and NTFS-3G gave me a problem; something about not recieving a signal from the bootcamp partition in 15 seconds time. The partition is visible in finder though, and I can browse it. Is it something to be afraid of?

No idea what that is. This is the Tuxera NTFS software for OS X? The latest version is only a few months old so I'd make sure you have the latest version. And then if it still happens, email Tuxera, as I think the only option for OS X is a pay for license. So if you paid, you get support. If you didn't pay it should have expired in 15 days or something.

[-lupo-]

No, here again I was cheap and used the free version... I think I'm going to aks in the surceforge forums and then I'll see.

Thanks again for everything. If we ever meet, I owe you one.

[murphychris]

Originally Posted by -lupo-

No, here again I was cheap and used the free version... I think I'm going to aks in the surceforge forums and then I'll see.

So for whatever ntfs tools you have at the command line, ntfs<tab><tab>, find one of them maybe ntfsfix, and do a -V to see if you get a version. I'm finding only old versions for precompiled binaries for OS X.

[murphychris]

Originally Posted by murphychris

I'm finding only old versions for precompiled binaries for OS X.

Yeah the only current binary I'm finding for OS X is from Tuxera. Paragon has a competing package. Free means old and risky, or you need to install XCode and Macports, download the current 2012.1.15 version (same as brand spanking new Fedora 18, which is bleeding edge linux distro) source code and compile it yourself.

[-lupo-]

NTFSFIX gives me this:

ntfsfix v1.13.1

Attempt to fix an NTFS partition.

Copyright (c) 2000-2006 Anton Altaparmakov.
Copyright (c) 2002-2006 Szabolcs Szakacsits.

This program is free software, released under the GNU General Public License
and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.  It comes with
ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details read the GNU General Public License to be
found in the file "COPYING" distributed with this program, or online at:
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Developers' email address: linux-ntfs-dev@lists.sf.net
Linux NTFS homepage: http://www.linux-ntfs.org

I just purchased Paragon. I guess I wanted to try first and then, as it was working okay, it stayed that way... LEsson learned, I guess.

[murphychris]

Originally Posted by -lupo-

ntfsfix v1.13.1

It's old. I'd only use that if it were maintained with important patches backported into it, which is really only done for enterprise distributions like Red Hat and such. Not applicable on OS X. So for the closest to current upstream version it would come from Macports.

I just purchased Paragon. I guess I wanted to try first and then, as it was working okay, it stayed that way... LEsson learned, I guess.

I'm not sure what code base Paragon is using, but I don't think it's based on the ntfs-3g stuff. So just make sure you uninstall what you have before moving to Paragon NTFS.

[-lupo-]

Originally Posted by murphychris

It's old. I'd only use that if it were maintained with important patches backported into it, which is really only done for enterprise distributions like Red Hat and such. Not applicable on OS X. So for the closest to current upstream version it would come from Macports.



I'm not sure what code base Paragon is using, but I don't think it's based on the ntfs-3g stuff. So just make sure you uninstall what you have before moving to Paragon NTFS.

That's exactly what I did. Uninstalled NTFS-3G thoroughly, rebooted and then installed Paragon. No problems or strange messages anymore and it's faster. I'm happy

[Jyakomo]

Not sure where this occurred (whether the last Windows 7 update or Lion update); however, I am no longer able to boot my Windows 7 via BootCamp. I get a blank screen. I have a Mac-Mini with a 750 GB Internal Drive, the 2 partitions split between Mac OS Lion and Windows NTFS.
I can still see the various windows folders/files from Bootcamp, but simply cannot boot into Windows. I tried both from the OPTION key and from the Mac OS Windows boot menu item.

I've followed some of this thread and have since downloaded both GPT fdisk and TestDisk and got some screen captures, but not sure what I should expect to see from the screen captures. Help would be appreciated. regards, Jack

[murphychris]

@Jyakomo

I need to see the results from this first:

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
sudo gpt -r -v show disk0

[Jyakomo]

Here are the results from fdisk and got the following. Thanks

----- fdisk ------
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 409639] <Unknown ID>
2: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 409640 - 730468736] HFS+
3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 730878376 - 1269536] Darwin Boot
*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 732149760 - 732997632] HPFS/QNX/AUX

------ gpt ------
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=750156374016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1465149168
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
start size index contents
0 1 MBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
409640 730468736 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
730878376 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
732147912 1848
732149760 732997632 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
1465147392 1743
1465149135 32 Sec GPT table
1465149167 1 Sec GPT header

[murphychris]

@Jyakomo

The MBR and GPT are in sync. The problem isn't with either partition map.

I can still see the various windows folders/files from Bootcamp

I don't know what "from Bootcamp" means. When booted with OS X, you can see the files on the BOOTCAMP volume?

If files can be read from OS X, but you can't boot Windows from that same volume, the problem is bootloader related. You'll need to boot the Windows install media, and run Startup Repair. If the automated version can't fix the problem, you'll need to dig into it manually. First I'd run a chkdsk /f from the command line (while booted from the Windows install media). Then check out this support document.

Follow the first 7 steps. Then do:
/FixMbr
/FixBoot
/RebuildBcd

See if you can now boot Windows. If not, you'll need to go back and check out the bullet list above /FixMbr in the support document, and rebuild the BCD manually.

[Jyakomo]

The MBR and GPT are in sync. The problem isn't with either partition map.

Thanks for looking into this

I can still see the various windows folders/files from Bootcamp
I don't know what "from Bootcamp" means.

I probably didn't state this correctly. When looking at the various Devices under FINDER, the Windows volume is labeled as BOOT CAMP.

When booted with OS X, you can see the files on the BOOTCAMP volume?

Yes

If files can be read from OS X, but you can't boot Windows from that same volume, the problem is bootloader related. You'll need to boot the Windows install media, and run Startup Repair.

I tried to re-boot [using the OPTION key] Windows using the Windows CD in the superdrive. The Windows CD icon was displayed; however, I got a blank screen when I selected it.
Is there an alternative way to boot from the Windows Install CD?

See if you can now boot Windows. If not, you'll need to go back and check out the bullet list above /FixMbr in the support document, and rebuild the BCD manually.

Is this what I should try next? Again, thanks.

[murphychris]

Originally Posted by Jyakomo

The Windows CD icon was displayed; however, I got a blank screen when I selected it. Is there an alternative way to boot from the Windows Install CD?

Newer Macs support USB booting of Windows, Boot Camp Assistant creates the USB stick for you. Before trying that, you should zap PRAM and see if you can get the DVD media to boot, obviously it worked for you once before so it should work again.

[Jyakomo]

Newer Macs support USB booting of Windows, Boot Camp Assistant creates the USB stick for you. Before trying that, you should zap PRAM and see if you can get the DVD media to boot, obviously it worked for you once before so it should work again.

Here's the latest status:
I followed the steps to reset NVRAM / PRAM http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379; however, I still was not able to get Windows 7 to boot from the CD. I even created a USB Windows 7 and still am not able to boot Windows, getting the same symptom, a blank screen. Since I had a dual-display, I even removed the 2nd display, by removing the respective cable. Granted, I may not be following the steps on resetting the PRAM, but that's the only thing I can think of.

There is another thing that I did to ensure it wasn't a bad Windows CD. I inserted the Windows CD on my wife's Mac Mini (running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard) and it booted Windows 7 with no problem.

Suggestions?

[murphychris]

Originally Posted by Jyakomo

however, I still was not able to get Windows 7 to boot from the CD

Disconnect everything from the computer except the basics needed to control it and see what you're doing. No 2nd display. Make sure the PRAM is zapped, you should hear two startup chimes. Hold down the C key to boot the DVD.

Is this an original Windows 7 DVD or a burned one? If it's burned, burn a new one with this particular DVD drive.

There are other possibilities that are going to be way more tedious.

[Jyakomo]

Post by murphychris
Disconnect everything from the computer except the basics needed to control it and see what you're doing.

Awesome! Unbelievable!

Summary
I disconnected all of my devices except for the power cord, keyboard via USB and 1st display via HDMI. And Windows 7 booted up from the Mac HD from initial startup/settings. I didn’t have to do anything else, zapping the PRAM was not necessary.

Details
If interested, here are the details. I had the following devices disconnected/reconnected:

• Superdrive via USB
• 2 external hard drives connected via Firewire
• Ethernet cable
• 2nd display via display port
• printer and another external (Seagate) drive connected via 4-port USB

Root cause – process of elimination
The problem was with the recently purchased Seagate Backup Plus 3TB (STCA3000101), even if I connected the Seagate directly to the Mac-Mini (I wanted to eliminate the possibility of the 4-port USB as well as too many devices connected to the MAC-MINI). The Seagate was reformatted for the MAC OS to use as a backup drive for the other 2 external drives, using CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner). I am able to recreate this at will.

Now I need to surf the forums again or else contact Seagate to see if they are aware of the problem.

I was very close to simply reinstalling Windows 7 on my Mac Mini, which would not have solved this problem. Again, thanks very much.