Multiple Partitions with Boot Camp = Teh No

iBunny said:

I am not sure if there is anything I can do, but here is my situation.

Boot Camp will not install if my main hard drive which contains OSX has more than 1 partition on it. I have previously successfully installed boot camp before but recently have reformated and repartitioned my drive into multiple sections, One for the OSX and one for Multimedia, Movies Music and pics.

Now Boot camp is telling me, Boot Camp cannot install because your primary drive is partitioned.

So My prediciment is this. I want boot camp, because I need windows for games... no problem. However I need an extra OSX Journaled Partition for my Music and stuff, because I do not want this on my OSX partition. what can I do? before I reformat again:

Am I able to Partition my Hard drive, into Multiple OSX Journaled Partitons after I Install Boot camp? I know I can partition Before I install any OS with Disk utility. Any other options I might have?

I need 3 Partitions. OSX Journaled - For OS 10.4, Multimedia (that is OSX Journaled), and Boot Camp.

Thanks

Click to expand...

My suggestion would be to put all of the media on an external hd. It's not exactly what you were looking for, but it will solve your problem and improve performance.

As long as you have the drivers CD burnt, and your firmware upgraded, you should be good to go, regardless of what BootCamp says.

How does having a media partition help? If the HDD is gonna crash, Its gonna crash.

I vote for Mojo's solution, I keep my media files on 3 different drives for my G5 and share to the other Macs at home - one internal and 2 external FW drives - I lost all my photos once, never again.

6 years USN, last 3 a Gator Freighter(LPH-3) '76-'82
I used to teach the Marine Techs electronics while we were on float, because the Corps didn't...
Oooo-rah

Install BootCamp with multiple partitions

Just as a note to others who were dismayed by the inability to have multiple partitions and to use BootCamp at the same time, here are instructions for how to do so. I gathered these from various sources, and it worked great for me, so hopefully you'll have success with it too.

1. Install the BootCamp software on your computer. BUT DON'T RUN IT.

2. Using the Finder, find the BootCamp executable under your /Applications directory. Use the option to "Show Package Contents", and browse into the Contents/Resources directory. There you should find a .dmg file, a disk image.

3. Run Disk Utility and drag this .dmg file into the pane on the left-hand side.

4. Select the image in Disk Utility, and click on the Burn icon. Burn it to a CD and then keep this CD handy.

5. Now boot your machine with the OS/X installation disc. Press "c" so that
it boots from the install Disc.

6. Under the Utilities menu, pick Disk Utility.

7. Now, select your "Macintosh HD" volume, and then click on "New Image". You'll need an external hard drive for this point, because it's going
to take a lot of space to backup your machine.

8. Save the image to your external drive, and then go get some coffee. This is going to take some time.

9. Once you have your external image, I highly recommend rebooting your machine and then mounting (and thus verifying) and browsing around in that new image to make sure everything looks right.

10. Now that you're certain you have your data nicely backed up, reboot back to the installation disc (holding down "c" at the chime again), and again run the Disk Utility.

11. Now pick your main hard drive (not just the Macintosh HD volume), and click on the Partition tab.

12. Click on your single partition and choose to split it into 3 parts. Allocate the parts how you like. I used 25G for the system and applications, 90G for User data, and 31G for Windows. This was on a 160G drive.

13. MAKE SURE THE WINDOWS PARTITION IS LAST. You should have the System first, then your second partition, then Windows. I read that this is a requirement, although I never tested anything different.

14. Name the first partition "Macintosh HD". If you don't there is a small error you'll get while trying to restore (although it's nothing serious, but it's a bit of a shock).

15. Go ahead and format the third partition as MSDOS File System too.

16. Now click Partition. This will wipe out your data and repartition the disc.

17. Now select your new Macintosh HD volume, and click on the Restore tab. In the "Where to restore from", click on "Image..." and pick the disk image from your external drive that you made earlier. Then, drag the "Macintosh HD" volume onto the "Volume to restore to" textbox. Then click restore. This will take a serious amount of time, so be prepared to do something else.

18. When all is done, reboot your machine and make sure you can get back to OS/X. Everything should function identically to before, except that you now have three volumes mounted when you boot up.

19. Now put in your Windows XP SP2 install CD and reboot, holding down the "c" key. It will boot the setup process, and ultimately show you a list of partitions. DO NOT CHANGE THE PARTITION TABLE FROM SETUP. If you do, you will have to start this whole process over again. (This happened to me).

20. Anyway, ignore the inexplicable Unpartitioned space that you'll see in this table, and pick the "C:" drive to install to. This should be your 31G Windows partition that you made before.

21. I ended up formatting this partition as a FAT volume, so that I could view it from OS/X. You can use NTFS, but then you'll have to use CDs or external media to transfer files between the two systems. Up to you.

22. Follow through the install procedure and install Windows. Whenever Windows restarts, you'll have to hold down the OPTION key so that you can pick your Windows drive to reboot from.

23. When Windows is all done installing, and has booted up, put in your BootCamp disk and let it go through its installation procedure. Once that's done, you can reboot Windows and have nice graphics and sound and fancy trackpad input, etc.

24. That's it! You now have three partitions and Windows running nicely. Just hold down Option on boot whenever you want to startup Windows.

I use Windows via BootCamp just for games, since it offers Direct3D support. For most other windows stuff, I find that Parallels is very quick and extremely handy. I don't like leaving OS/X for very long.

John Wiegley

awesome, just awesome ^^ I'll have to give this a go this weekend. Thanks for the tut!

JWiegley said:

17. Now select your new Macintosh HD volume, and click on the Restore tab. In the "Where to restore from", click on "Image..." and pick the disk image from your external drive that you made earlier. Then, drag the "Macintosh HD" volume onto the "Volume to restore to" textbox. Then click restore. This will take a serious amount of time, so be prepared to do something else.

John Wiegley

Click to expand...

Hi John,
Thanks for your write up! I having an issue at this step. I backed up my Mac partition to a USB 2.0 drive and it mounts correctly when I bring up Disk Utility. I'll click on the main partition that will hold the OS, and then click on the restore tab. under source I'll choose the DMG on the USB drive, but I cannot drag any Partitions into the Destination field. I'll click and hold the mouse over "mac HD" and try to drag it to the field, but when I move down it'll just select all the drives on the left the farther i go down (i hope that makes sense). Any ideas?

Thanks, Timmay

bigredgpk said:

Hi John,
Thanks for your write up! I having an issue at this step. I backed up my Mac partition to a USB 2.0 drive and it mounts correctly when I bring up Disk Utility. I'll click on the main partition that will hold the OS, and then click on the restore tab. under source I'll choose the DMG on the USB drive, but I cannot drag any Partitions into the Destination field. I'll click and hold the mouse over "mac HD" and try to drag it to the field, but when I move down it'll just select all the drives on the left the farther i go down (i hope that makes sense). Any ideas?

Thanks, Timmay

Click to expand...

i never did that step, but it sounds familiar... hopefully this helps

when you drag, you need to click on the name of the file/folder/whatever then drag, clicking on the empty space beside the name of the file/folder/whatever and drag will select that thing and whatever you dragged across

hopefully i understood you question correctly. and well, answered your question

bearbo said:

i never did that step, but it sounds familiar... hopefully this helps

when you drag, you need to click on the name of the file/folder/whatever then drag, clicking on the empty space beside the name of the file/folder/whatever and drag will select that thing and whatever you dragged across

hopefully i understood you question correctly. and well, answered your question

Click to expand...

Hi Bearbo,
Thnx for the reply but that didn't work No Matter where I clicked I had the same issue... I'm on the phone now with Apple and I hope that they can help me with my issue. I'll let everyone know if I find a solution.

Timmay

-------------
Nice to know i'm not the only one....
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2663532&#2663532

Thanks to John’s post I think that I have found a faster way to achieve this....after about 1 day of stuffing around.

I just purchased a new Mac Book and want to run Windows for all my Windows stuff and Mac for all my Mac stuff and like having a phone and organiser in one now have just 1 laptop. I love Apple!

Right then this is what I did,

1. Install new 250GB HDD (I wanted more HDD storage space)
2. Install Mac OS X from DVDs to HDD with 1 partition (standard Mac partition)
3. Run Boot Camp and setup partition for Windows Installation I used 40GB
4. Boot Mac Installer CD
5. Run Disk Utility
6. Click on Mac partition
7. Click +
8. Add another Partition
9. Drive layout |Mac OS 60GB | Data 140GB | Windows
10. Install Windows (MAKE SURE YOU USE WINDOWS TO FORMAT THE INSTALLATION PARTITION)
11. Boot Mac Installer CD
12. Reformat Data Partition with Fat
13. JOB DONE

I hope that this helps ;-)

Jason Hall

PS. My Mac was new and there was no valuable data on it before I began, as with best practice I would recommend you back up all important data before you begin.

jasonhall said:

Thanks to John’s post I think that I have found a faster way to achieve this....after about 1 day of stuffing around.

I just purchased a new Mac Book and want to run Windows for all my Windows stuff and Mac for all my Mac stuff and like having a phone and organiser in one now have just 1 laptop. I love Apple!

Right then this is what I did,

1. Install new 250GB HDD (I wanted more HDD storage space)
2. Install Mac OS X from DVDs to HDD with 1 partition (standard Mac partition)
3. Run Boot Camp and setup partition for Windows Installation I used 40GB
4. Boot Mac Installer CD
5. Run Disk Utility
6. Click on Mac partition
7. Click +
8. Add another Partition
9. Drive layout |Mac OS 60GB | Data 140GB | Windows
10. Install Windows (MAKE SURE YOU USE WINDOWS TO FORMAT THE INSTALLATION PARTITION)
11. Boot Mac Installer CD
12. Reformat Data Partition with Fat
13. JOB DONE

I hope that this helps ;-)

Jason Hall

PS. My Mac was new and there was no valuable data on it before I began, as with best practice I would recommend you back up all important data before you begin.

Click to expand...

Hi,

In your case you just needed 2 Mac OS partition and 1 windows. (total 3)

In my case I wanted to have more than 2 Mac OS partition and then a windows partition as well.

Adding in my steps, so that it would help others in such case. I spent nearly one whole day, reformatting again and again , still i got it correct and working. I had read through various post on google , but nothing was as simple as this turned out to be.

So this is the scenario , in my case.

My requirement was to have

1. Mac OS (SnowLeopard or Leopard)
2. Mac partition for ITunes
3. Mac partition for Data1 ( to store data on a daily basis, editing movies, etc.)
4. Mac partition for Data2 (to store personal, confidential data)

5. and finally WINDOWS partition ( or bootcamp partition)

NOTE: Boot camp will ONLY ONLY work if you one single partition of Mac OSX Journaled.
So if you multiple partition prior to starting bootcamp. You NEED to backup your disc, and the remove all the other partition and have single partition of Mac OSX Journaled.

The fun starts NOW.

1. Run Boot Camp and setup partition for Windows Installation. Remember to give enough space for your WINDOWS partition.
ONLY create the partition, but DON'T start the installation of windows. Leave the bootcamp assistant window as it is,
and procede further.

2. RUN DiskUtility.

3. Now you will see one MAC partition and one BOOTCAMP partition (that is windows partition)
BOOTCAMP is of FAT32 format.

4. Click +
5. Add another MAC Partition.
6. So you now have two MAC partition on the top and the last one as BOOTCAMP.

But we still need two more partition , so further split the newly created MAC partition into two.
So you would have now One MAC OS partition + 3 other MAC partition and then BOOTCAMP partition.

IMPORTANT IMPORTANT part. DON'T click on apply yet.

BOOTCAMP which is of FAT32 format has to be the third partition , so that it can be recognised as a bootable at startup (option key pressed)

SO that means in the above we need to set the third partition as FAT32.

So in my case as said above, I needed

MacOSX partition + Itunes partition + Data1 partition + Data2 partition ===== all these to be MAC format.
and BOOTCAMP for WINDOWS.

As per the important requirement that third partition has to be FAT32 so that it can recognised, so I created my partition layout as follows.

Sequence is important.

1. Mac OSX SnowLeopard - Mac OSX Journaled
2. Mac ITunes - Mac OSX Journaled

3. Created a new partition and named it BOOTCAMP to the size I need for windows and the format as FAT32
NOTE: name it BOOTCAMP, don't know why, but seems it is required for windows installation.

4 Create one more partition as OSX Journaled and named it as MacData1.

5. and finally we can see the already created windows partition by bootcamp assistant program. So leave it as it is.

NOTE: what we are missing so far is the MAC Data2 (OSX Journaled) partition that I required. hold your breath.

6. Now click on Apply.

Disc Utility will create the partitions.

So the view would be

1. MacOS_SnowLeopard - OSX Journaled = 100GB
2. Mac_ITunes - OSX Journaled = 50GB
3. BOOTCAMP - FAT32 = 100GB
4. MacOS_Data1 - OSX Journaled = 120 GB
5. BOOTCAMP - FAT32 = 100GB

So in all we have 5 partitions.

NOW click on the "start installation" in the bootcamp assistant window to continue with Windows installation.

The computer will reboot and start with you windows installation disc in your CD/DVD drive.

NOTE: when it ask to choose the partition to installation. BE CAREFUL and choose the FAT32 partition of BOOTCAMP of 3rd 100GB. and not the last partition.
If you choose the last partition of FAT32, then next time at startup you won't be able to see the windows partition to boot in.

Continue with the windows installation. It will reboot multiple times to finish windows installation ( that is how windows is structured for installation … I love MAC therefore)

Once windows installation is finished . At startup , keep the OPTION key pressed and you will see boot disc, one for your MAC OS and one for Windows.

So now startup your MAC OS and login.

Run Disc Utility .
Now click on the last partition - name BOOTCAMP (FAT32) and you may format it to OSX Journaled and rename the name as well.

So finally you will have

1. MacOS_SnowLeopard - OSX Journaled = 100GB
2. Mac_ITunes - OSX Journaled = 50GB
3. BOOTCAMP - NTFS = 100GB ( it would have got converted to NTFS when you installed Windows XP or Vista)
4. MacOS_Data1 - OSX Journaled = 120 GB
5. MacOS_Data2 - OSX Journaled = 100 GB

so we end with 4 MacOS partition and one Windows partition.

SO the key here is to have the BOOTCAMP partition as the third partition.

and you can have as many partition you want after that.

Have fun.

Finally this is what worked for me after hours of work. I could not find these steps anywhere.

HOWTO: Creating (dual boot) Bootcamp configuration with multiple partitions

Here is one more method, hopefully simple to do for everyone


You will optionally need the following third party (free) tools:

• NTFS-3g for Mac (only if you need to write/format/create NTFS partitions)
• Winclone (only needed if backing up existing windows partition for recovery later)
• Your Windows install CD/DVD

How to:

1. Back up your Windows partition if it exists using Winclone, save the image somewhere safe
2. Go to Disk Utility and delete the windows partition
3. Decide the eventual size of your Mac and Windows Boot partitions. Say the sizes are A and B Gigabytes respectively. Make sure you have space left on your disk for your additional partitions
   - We will create more partitions later.. but for now this is all that is needed at this step
4. Resize your Mac Boot partition to a new size equal to A+B
5. Now load Bootcamp Assistant and 'Create a new Windows partition'
6. Create the Windows boot partition of size B and Install Windows as instructed by BootCamp Assistant
   - This will require a reboot and the windows install process will ensue
7. After Windows has installed, make sure you can boot into Windows from Bootcamp boot menu
8. Reboot into the Mac OS partition now and load up Disk Utility
9. Create your additional partitions sequentially after the windows boot partition
10. You can restore your windows boot partition from the backed up Winclone Image if you want
    
    Your final configuration will look like this:
    • Mac OS boot partition (A Gigabytes)
    • Windows boot partition (B Gigabytes)
    • Additional Partition 1
    • Additional Partition 2
    • Additional Partition 3
    • ...
    
    That's it! It worked for me, I hope it works for you.
    

This looks more simpler than the rest. The way I understand your approach is that, you are basically having a single MacOS partition that does not span the entire disk, but instead a MacOS partition large enough for MacOS and Windows (BOOTCAMP) which satisifies the BootCamp requirement of "single MacOS partition". Simple and Clever
Thanks
!shiva

nole361 said:

Here is one more method, hopefully simple to do for everyone


You will optionally need the following third party (free) tools:

• NTFS-3g for Mac (only if you need to write/format/create NTFS partitions)
• Winclone (only needed if backing up existing windows partition for recovery later)
• Your Windows install CD/DVD

How to:

1. Back up your Windows partition if it exists using Winclone, save the image somewhere safe
2. Go to Disk Utility and delete the windows partition
3. Decide the eventual size of your Mac and Windows Boot partitions. Say the sizes are A and B Gigabytes respectively. Make sure you have space left on your disk for your additional partitions
   - We will create more partitions later.. but for now this is all that is needed at this step
4. Resize your Mac Boot partition to a new size equal to A+B
5. Now load Bootcamp Assistant and 'Create a new Windows partition'
6. Create the Windows boot partition of size B and Install Windows as instructed by BootCamp Assistant
   - This will require a reboot and the windows install process will ensue
7. After Windows has installed, make sure you can boot into Windows from Bootcamp boot menu
8. Reboot into the Mac OS partition now and load up Disk Utility
9. Create your additional partitions sequentially after the windows boot partition
10. You can restore your windows boot partition from the backed up Winclone Image if you want
    
    Your final configuration will look like this:
    • Mac OS boot partition (A Gigabytes)
    • Windows boot partition (B Gigabytes)
    • Additional Partition 1
    • Additional Partition 2
    • Additional Partition 3
    • ...
    
    That's it! It worked for me, I hope it works for you.
    

Click to expand...

I tried resizing the MacOS system partition to A+B (where A is the size of the MacOS partition and B is the size of the Windows/Bootcamp partition) using Disk Utility. Then using BCA (BootCamp Assistant) created a bootcamp partition of B size, but BCA did not honour the B size and took the remaining size of the disk (There is a valid reason for that, as you can see below). You can get to that configuration indirectly using Disk Utility and install Windows and boot OK, but you cannot add new MacOS partitions. The reasoning is as follows.

- MacOS uses EFI and GPT (GUID Parition Table) to boot
- Windows uses BIOS and MBR partition table to boot.
- DiskUtility provides a GPT/MBR hybrid model, by updating the MBR part of the partition table for the first four partitions.

So bootcamp partition can be the 3rd partition (provided the fourth partition entry is empty, basically the last non-empty partition as far as MBR is concerned). This is the configuration that BCA supports. Hence the rationale for not allowing any free-space after the resize of A+B (Again, this is my interpretation of why it is this way, I have not seen the code or talked to any developer).

I was able to successfully install on 3 rd partition (followed by free-space) by doing this
1) Use BCA to create partitions
2) Without starting the installation of windows, I go to disk utility and add a new partition on the MacOS system partition, called it BOOTCAMP and made it FAT32.
3) The config would look like MacOS,BOOTCAMP,BOOTCAMP (created by BCA)
4) Then I deleted the BOOTCAMP created by BCA. Now you would have MacOS,BOOTCAMP(created by Disk Utility),Free space
5) Then I start the install from BCA and choose the BOOTCAMP that I created from the windows installer.
6) Installs goes through fine, and I can boot fine using the option key
7) When I add a new MacOS partition using Disk utility in the free space. I see that MBR is modified with the 4th partition I created.
8) When I then tried to boot using the Option key, MBR tries to boot from the fourth partition (the MacOS HFS+) and fails saying it cannot find system dll.

That is the reason why BOOTCAMP has to be in the 4th partition for new MacOS partitions to be added later. Since Diskutility will only update the first four partitions in the MBR, any partitions added after the 4th are not reflected in the MBR. That is the reason why people in the earlier posts say to create a partition between MacOS system partition and the BOOTCAMP partition.

Again the config can be
1. EFI partition
2. Mac OS partition
3. BOOTCAMP
4. <empty>

(or)

1. EFI partition
2. Mac OS partition
3. <some partition>
4. BOOTCAMP
5.
6.
..
16 HFS+

Bootcamp mac X2 and windows

Ive glanced through the thread, and im looking to do something a bit different.

Im currently running Snow Leopard and bootcamped windows xp. Due to software issues i need to run nikon software off leopard. any ideas how to do this.

Ive tried creating a partition and installing it, as bootcamp isnt letting me create another partition

Cheers!

rav187 said:

Ive tried creating a partition and installing it, as bootcamp isnt letting me create another partition

Click to expand...

You should not be using Boot Camp Assistant for this. Use Disk Utility to shrink your Snow Leopard partition to make room for Leopard create a new HFS+ partition in the free space and install Leopard to that. You might conceivably need to install rEFIt to make it all boot.

B

Mac X2

Is there a way of installing leopard on a snow leopard and xp bootcamped on a macbook pro as a serperate os? ie in a simalar way to bootcamp?

rav187 said:

Is there a way of installing leopard on a snow leopard and xp bootcamped on a macbook pro as a serperate os? ie in a simalar way to bootcamp?

Click to expand...

That's what I described. Though it would be best if someone who actually tried it could chime in. Note also that Leopard can boot just fine from an external USB drive so you could just leave your internal alone and install to an external drive.

B

balamw said:

You should not be using Boot Camp Assistant for this. Use Disk Utility to shrink your Snow Leopard partition to make room for Leopard create a new HFS+ partition in the free space and install Leopard to that. You might conceivably need to install rEFIt to make it all boot.

B

Click to expand...

Ive created a new partition and rebooted in to the install utility but it says leopard cannot be installed. any ideas?

R

Just partition your disk manually using disk utility.

Boot camp is just a way to partition the disk, for those who don't know how.

rav187 said:

Ive created a new partition and rebooted in to the install utility but it says leopard cannot be installed. any ideas?

R

Click to expand...

Your computer can only install OS later than the ones it comes with.

Consultant said:

Just partition your disk manually using disk utility.

Boot camp is just a way to partition the disk, for those who don't know how.



Your computer can only install OS later than the ones it comes with.

Click to expand...

Ive done that. Its installing it thats the issue

rav187 said:

Ive done that. Its installing it thats the issue

Click to expand...

Consultant's point was that machines that shipped with Snow Leopard can't install Leopard. Did your Mac ship with Snow Leopard, or was it Leopard and you upgraded to Snow Leopard. Are you installing from a retail Leopard disc, one that was shipped with your Mac or one that came with a different Mac?

We're really beyond the scope of the Windows on Mac forum now...

B

balamw said:

Consultant's point was that machines that shipped with Snow Leopard can't install Leopard. Did your Mac ship with Snow Leopard, or was it Leopard and you upgraded to Snow Leopard. Are you installing from a retail Leopard disc, one that was shipped with your Mac or one that came with a different Mac?

We're really beyond the scope of the Windows on Mac forum now...

B

Click to expand...

My mac is a 2.66 macbook pro 2009 model. it was shipped with snow leopard. Im trying to install leopard on to an external drive from an older machine and ghosting the image. has anyone tried this?

rav187 said:

My mac is a 2.66 macbook pro 2009 model. it was shipped with snow leopard. Im trying to install leopard on to an external drive from an older machine and ghosting the image. has anyone tried this?

Click to expand...

Do you still have the old machine? Can you install Leopard on the external from the old machine and just try booting from it on your MBP?

B