Boot Camp drive showing up as Fat, can't mount

[stratking]

Okay so I'm having a few odd issues. I am trying to get my Macbook Pro (15" 2.53 GHz, 4GB) to play nicely with Windows 7. To get a valid copy of Windows I got in on the Ultimate Steal program last year. For those who don't know what it is, basically if you're a student you could get Win7 Pro Upgrade on the cheap. Before this I didn't have any copy of Windows on my laptop. I had to go through a huge pain in the ass process of installing XP 32-bit > Vista 32-bit > Vista 64-bit > and then upgrade that to Win7. I finally had a 75GB partition of Win7 64-bit installed, when booting up holding down Option I got to select either the Macintosh HD or Windows so everything's rosey.

I wanted to do some virtualization so I didn't have to reboot all the time so I grabbed an eval copy of VMWare Fusion. I kept getting an error about not being able to load the BootCamp partition, getting an error of Resource Busy. When I look at the partition in Disk Utililty the name of it is disk0s2 instead of BootCamp like it used to on my old Macbook. Trying to mount the mount fails and for some reason the partition shows as exFt. Going back into Windows show that it is in fact partitioned as NTFS.

Well not wanting to go through the same install hell that I did before I used Windows built-in functionality to create a system image as well as created a system restore disk. I blew away the bootcamp partition and launched Boot Camp Assistant, recreated the partition and stuck in the System Restore disk. Boot Camp Assistant restarted to install the OS and everything seemed to go well. I can no boot into Win7 and Mac but the partition on the Mac side still shows as disk0s2 and exFat. It *is* now mountable but it shows that the drive is completely empty (107 gb free, 1.8mb used). Another weird issue, the partition isn't 107gb, it's 80gb. And there is definitely more than 1.8mb used. Obviously VMWare still doesn't like this and I'm just stuck. Any ideas?

 

[balamw]

Sounds like your partition table is confused. Probably in the GPT/MBR sync I seem to recall a similar post recently, but can't find it quickly.

Can you please post the output of

diskutil list /dev/disk0

from Terminal or a screenshot.

B

 

[stratking]

Sure, as soon as I get home I'll post a screenshot.

 

[stratking]

Here is the output:

 

[balamw]

Looks fine.... If you had a 108 GB Boot Camp partition.

Here's mine:

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS MacBook HD              371.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                128.5 GB   disk0s3

how about

diskutil info /dev/disk0s3

gives more detail on the Boot Camp partition.

B

 

[stratking]

This really makes no sense, I've triple checked in Windows and System Properties is showing that it is formatted as NTFS and the partition is 80 GB. The Mac side is showing something completely different however:

 

[TOGGI3]

Exact same problem, I am shown as follows:

TOGGI3MBP2:dev jeffj$ diskutil list /dev/disk0
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            445.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data                         54.2 GB    disk0s3

TOGGI3MBP2:dev jeffj$ diskutil info /dev/disk0s3
   Device Identifier:        disk0s3
   Device Node:              /dev/disk0s3
   Part Of Whole:            disk0
   Device / Media Name:      BOOTCAMP

   Volume Name:              
   Escaped with Unicode:     

   Mounted:                  No

   File System:              MS-DOS
   Type:                     msdos
   Name:                     MS-DOS (FAT)

   Partition Type:           Microsoft Basic Data
   Bootable:                 Is bootable
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 SATA
   SMART Status:             Verified

   Total Size:               54.2 GB (54159998976 Bytes) (exactly 105781248 512-Byte-Blocks)
   Volume Free Space:        0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Blocks)

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (not mounted)
   Ejectable:                No

   Whole:                    No
   Internal:                 Yes

 

[Grannyville7989]

This is off topic, but after reading what you had to go through to install Windows 7 on your drive, here's a way of doing a clean install of Windows 7 with an upgrade disc on an empty hard drive. (Or one that already had something on it before)

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

I got Windows 7 Pro through the Ultimate Steal and this worked for me install Windows 7 onto my MacBook Pro on an empty Boot Camp partition.

Also, it's correct that the Windows 7 partition is NTFS because Windows Vista onwards cannot be installed on FAT32 drives.

I would recommend going a clean reinstall of Windows 7. Looks like something has gone wrong during all the upgrade installs you made to get to where you are. I wouldn't have recommended such a way. Even as a Windows guy, I'm not that comfortable doing upgrade installs on my PCs.

 

[balamw]

I would recommend going a clean reinstall of Windows 7.

I concur. The clean install from upgrade is much cleaner than doing anything with Vista.

However this seems to be an issue that is becoming more common.

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=10638168
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/975811/

...

I don't assume that all of these folks went though such a convoluted install.

My only guess is that something that doesn't understand GPT was allowed to mess with the partition table and modified the MBR section without updating the GPT copy.

It seems like rEFIt http://refit.sf.net has tools for seeing (showpart) and syncing (gptsync) the GPT (the one we see from Mac OS) and MBR (typically used by Windows) partition table. I don't want rEFIt on my system, otherwise I would play with it a bit ans see if it could help explain what is going on.

Looks like gptsync at least may be available with gparted live, so that may be a further option for debugging.

B

 

[TOGGI3]

After installing refit and looking at the GPT vs the MBR layout, I noticed the MBR has two NTFS partitions in the spot where GPT has one FAT32 partition.

The gptsync utility so far appears to me to only want to sync the MBR with the GPT and not the GPT with the MBR (and I really need the latter in this case)

Does anyone know any ways to alter the GPT manually?

 

[TOGGI3]

I've solved my problem. Specifically my problem was this:

I had two partitions as opposed to the one partition GPT was configured to say that I had. I had a 100 MB partition windows 7 created on install plus the 50.5 GB partition. So heres what I did, I used the data from gptsync, as in where the sectors should start and end for each partition, and I used a utility called gdisk, very similar to fdisk, I removed the table for the bootcamp partition, and I created two new ones with the same beginning and end sectors, partition type 0700 for both.

problem solved!!

If anyone needs help resolving this issue and they look to be having the same issue, feel free to contact me via PM, maybe we could even make a video out of it to help others.

 

[balamw]

I had two partitions as opposed to the one partition GPT was configured to say that I had. I had a 100 MB partition windows 7 created on install plus the 50.5 GB partition.

Hmm. Sounds like W7 put on its own EFI partition. How bizarre.

Please help folks out in he open, so others can learn from it. It's fine to get a request via PM, but it's better in the long run to have everything in the forums where possible.

B

 

[Kharmine]

If anyone needs help resolving this issue and they look to be having the same issue, feel free to contact me via PM, maybe we could even make a video out of it to help others.

Well i've made an account on the forums, but I'm not allowed to send you a PM until i make 5 posts. Can you post more details on how you did it? What command did you use to get the info from gptsync?

 

[Rocky0079]

I've solved my problem. Specifically my problem was this:

I had two partitions as opposed to the one partition GPT was configured to say that I had. I had a 100 MB partition windows 7 created on install plus the 50.5 GB partition. So heres what I did, I used the data from gptsync, as in where the sectors should start and end for each partition, and I used a utility called gdisk, very similar to fdisk, I removed the table for the bootcamp partition, and I created two new ones with the same beginning and end sectors, partition type 0700 for both.

problem solved!!

If anyone needs help resolving this issue and they look to be having the same issue, feel free to contact me via PM, maybe we could even make a video out of it to help others.

I am in the same boat as Kharmine and cannot PM you as well. Would it be possible to post more details on how you did it?

 

[balamw]

TOGGI3 hasn't been back since he posted this and his account is set to not accept e-mail or PMs.

EDIT: This seems to be the gdisk he was referring to. http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/ Posting the output from

gdisk -l

would be helpful. You may need to boot from one of the bootable disk images he links to on the page.

B

 

[Rocky0079]

Thanks Balamw.

 

[bushwakko]

I had the same problem as well, but made a rash decision and used gptsync to sync the two, it synced the wrong way, and now both my EFI _and_ MBR shows it as 1 FAT partition.....

I tried to use gdisk to create a 100mb partition starting from the first available sector and being +100M size and another one being first available to the end. gptsync still says that everything is synced and that I have one big FAT partition on both EFI and MBR.... any ideas? My windows partition won't even boot anymore either

 

[gobeyondgreen]

any other experience with this?

I am also having the exact same issue listed above with boot camp and an instance of Windows 7. I looked at this thread and notice there are some vague references to gptsync and how it solved the problem. Then I see one can accidentally make a mistake and jack up the partitions. Anyone have a success story with the gptsync approach?

 

[bushwakko]

I think GPTSync is used to solve sync errors, but only the other way around, when the MBR is out of sync with GPT. I basically consider my win7 partition lost atm, I know that the partition setup is deterministic though, so if I could have win7 install create the default partitions as before, but not format it I would be back to having GPT out of sync with working MBR again, but frankly I haven't had the time to mess around with this, and also I'm not sure if I can make win7 create the partition table (if you tell win7 to use all available space for 1 partition, it creates 1 100 or 200mb partition and the rest for win7), but not overwrite the data there immediately.

 

[balamw]

I think GPTSync is used to solve sync errors, but only the other way around, when the MBR is out of sync with GPT. I basically consider my win7 partition lost atm, I know that the partition setup is deterministic though, so if I could have win7 install create the default partitions as before, but not format it I would be back to having GPT out of sync with working MBR again, but frankly I haven't had the time to mess around with this, and also I'm not sure if I can make win7 create the partition table (if you tell win7 to use all available space for 1 partition, it creates 1 100 or 200mb partition and the rest for win7), but not overwrite the data there immediately.

Correct. gptsync does the opposite of what you need. it copies the GPT partitions to the MBR partitions.

If you need help download gdisk from the link provided above and post the results of gdisk -l

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/10865958/

B

 

[palyons]

Correct. gptsync does the opposite of what you need. it copies the GPT partitions to the MBR partitions.

If you need help download gdisk from the link provided above and post the results of gdisk -l

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/10865958/

B

Actually in my case, I installed gdisk for Mac OS X, and I had to login as su, type gdisk, followed by /dev/disk0 ; because when I typed gdisk -l I get this:
Problem opening -l for reading! Error is 2.
The specified file does not exist!

This is my output:
Partition table scan:
MBR: hybrid
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present

I would love to know if anyone has figured out the solution to this problem or not, since this is most troublesome.

 

[balamw]

Actually in my case, I installed gdisk for Mac OS X, and I had to login as su, type gdisk, followed by /dev/disk0 ; because when I typed gdisk -l I get this:

Try

sudo gdisk -l /dev/disk0

That will output the partition table(s) similar to:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.6.13

Partition table scan:
  MBR: hybrid
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/disk0: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 85BEF282-8055-4DA0-BF12-E1131EAC452F
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 264173 sectors (129.0 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640       721567783   343.9 GiB   AF00  Customer
   3       721831936       976773119   121.6 GiB   0700  Untitled

B

 

[palyons]

Try

sudo gdisk -l /dev/disk0

That will output the partition table(s) similar to:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.6.13

Partition table scan:
  MBR: hybrid
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/disk0: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 85BEF282-8055-4DA0-BF12-E1131EAC452F
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 264173 sectors (129.0 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640       721567783   343.9 GiB   AF00  Customer
   3       721831936       976773119   121.6 GiB   0700  Untitled

B

Actually, I was able to get Windows 7 properly mounted, without having to edit with gdisk. But the thing is, I nearly lost all my data on my Mac earlier today, long story short I ended up re-doing my partitions and everything, this is how I have everything set up now in case it would help benefit others:

# sudo gdisk -l /dev/disk0 :

And in the Windows 7 Setup, I have the first couple of partitions listed as everybody does, but then before the Windows 7 Partition is a small 128MB unoccupied partition. That partition was not there before, and it seems to have worked fine. Rather than deleting the BOOTCAMP partition, created by BootCamp Assistant I chose to format instead, since deleting that partition would merge the 128MB and the space occupied in BOOTCAMP together.

And here is a screenshot of the Partition Lists in the Windows 7 Ultimate Setup screen:

Hope this information is useful to whoever reads this.

 

[balamw]

And in the Windows 7 Setup, I have the first couple of partitions listed as everybody does, but then before the Windows 7 Partition is a small 128MB unoccupied partition. That partition was not there before, and it seems to have worked fine. Rather than deleting the BOOTCAMP partition, created by BootCamp Assistant I chose to format instead, since deleting that partition would merge the 128MB and the space occupied in BOOTCAMP together.

That's fine, those unallocated space bits show up due to different choices in partition alignment.

You must have done more than this because you have a non-standard partition scheme. Your HFS+ Media partition is unsupported by Boot Camp Assistant, so you must have created that after using Boot Camp Asssistant. Correct?

B

 

[palyons]

That's fine, those unallocated space bits show up due to different choices in partition alignment.

You must have done more than this because you have a non-standard partition scheme. Your HFS+ Media partition is unsupported by Boot Camp Assistant, so you must have created that after using Boot Camp Asssistant. Correct?

B

No, I actually just used Disk Utility to create the Media partition before I started the installation. You can accomplish the same thing in Disk Utility as Boot Camp Assistant by creating a FAT32 partition and naming it as BOOTCAMP. BootCamp Assistant is really just a user-friendly interface for Disk Utility for making the process simpler.