I seem to be having some disk issues. My main drive no longer successfully boots, though I can boot into Windows from my Bootcamp partition. Disk Utility fails to repair it, so I am 'assuming' I need to format the drive and restore from my Time Machine. Will I be able to format that portion of the drive without impacting my Bootcamp drive?
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Format disk without losing Bootcamp?
- Thread starter Tomb01
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No, not likely. Besides, when Disk Utility can no longer repair a drive, it's probably time to replace it. I would not trust that drive with my data even after formatting it. (I believe OWC has replacement SSDs for your model MBP.) Use WinClone to make a copy of your Boot Camp partition which you can use to copy on to a new SSD. If you have been making backups of your OS X partition, you can restore that to the new drive.
Sigh, the problem showed up when trying to use Winclone to copy the partition. Will see if Winclone works from my external backup image, which still boots. So far I can now boot from my external image and the bootcamp drive. Have Applecare so may give Apple a call to see if it covers a disk failure.
Not really true and generally bad advice to give. Plenty of drives which are absolutely fine can manifest unrepairable or corrupted volumes. Disk Utility isn't exactly a powerful tool for repairing volumes and something like DiskWarrior makes mince meat out of it.
OP, if you can still boot into Windows it may be worth checking the SMART data on the HDD (click health tab once installed & screenshot the outcome). It may also be likely that you can access the data on your OS X partition through your Windows volume, so you can backup the data that way to an external drive.
Please quote this and we'll go from here, I don't want you doing more damage than is necessary.
Good suggestion on checking the SMART data, will check that after I try Winclone again. I can still boot into Windows, and was able to copy off some of the things that my Time Machine does not grab. With Time Machine I am 'assuming' I can simply return to the state I was in prior to the problem. Am booted at this point from my external 'Super Duper' backup image, which tells me that it cannot repair my Macintosh HD (my internal boot drive) and to copy files and reformat it. I do have another utility (Drive Genius) and will give that a try today. My biggest concern now is saving my Bootcamp information. Don't really have a problem with formatting and restoring my main Mac OS X drive, but my Bootcamp backup is quite old (my bad) and I will lose some things it will take me a while to recreate if I cannot copy it off. Have done a chkdsk to 'fix' the Windows drive, and will try Winclone again in hopes it will work now, from my external boot image. Thanks for the support.
Time Machine backs up all of your applications and user data. You are correct in that you can restore the TM backup directly to your machine.
However, if the SMART data checks out to indicate the SSD is OK, then restoring your TM volume might mean that you're simply restoring a corrupted volume -- depending on when the TM backup was done.
As such, I would recommend:
1) Check SMART
2) If it checks out & all the data is on your TM backup, you don't need to worry about losing data.
3) Shut down, turn back on, and hold CMD+R on Startup to go into OS X Utilities.
4) Format Macintosh HD volume only through Disk Utility, leaving your Windows partition alone
5) Select Reinstall OS X to install a clean OS
6) Once that's installed, you can restore any apps/data using Migration Assistant within the OS.
I wouldn't go through all the hassle of cloning your Windows partition and stuff ... if you wipe your OS X partition, it wouldn't affect your BootCamp partition.
Sounds like a good plan. Was able to complete a Winclone, though, so worst case I am prepared if something ELSE should go horribly wrong...
And doing a 'clean' install is not necessarily a bad thing at this point. I have 'upgraded' for the past couple of releases, so not unhappy with that option. Thanks!
Sounds like a good plan. Was able to complete a Winclone, though, so worst case I am prepared if something ELSE should go horribly wrong...
That's great, let me know how you get on and I'll try my best to help if any hiccups arise.
Best wishes and hope you have a wonderful week.
That's great, let me know how you get on and I'll try my best to help if any hiccups arise.
Best wishes and hope you have a wonderful week.
Well, so far so good. Have reinstalled El Capitan on my boot drive, and it starts up just fine. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to connect to my Time Machine backup to restore. Tried both Migration Assistant and 'restore from time machine' from the recovery disk, and both return errors connect to 'my_network.local'. I know the password is right, I can see it in my keychain, and connect to it with Time Machine from this external image, just cannot seem to get to it to 'restore' from it. Sigh, nuthin's easy any more. Any ideas why recovery will be unable to connect to my Time Machine?
Am running 'verify backup' at this point, but I can go into Time Machine and see it from this external boot, so am thinking it is something else.
Thanks again for your assistance.
Hi there,
May I confirm if your Time Machine volume is USB, or is it on a shared network/Time Capsule?
network/Time Capsule.
EDIT: OK, backup 'verification' completed normally so I think my backup is OK. Will try again to restore it. Will boot from my 'new' install and see if I can 'enter time machine' and see my backups there.
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Status: Formatted my boot partition, installed a fresh copy of El Capitan, and was able to restart successfully. Then struggled a bit with connecting to my Time Capsule to restore my latest backup. Initially failed, as the password I had apparently had a typo, but once I figured that out was able to start the process. Instead of 'restoring' from the backup, I used Migration Assistant. The good news it was pretty painless, the bad news it DOES take time over even an 802.11ac connection. In retrospect, I probably should have restored my Super Duper backup (goes pretty fast with a Thunderbolt connection), then restored the last backup to that, as I think it would not have had so much work to do, but at least I am back and running. Sadly, I don't know that I will ever be able to define exactly what caused the problem. Regardless, am back in operation, and now have current backups of both my primary partition and my bootcamp partition.
Thanks for the help here.
Just make sure you keep up with your backups - Time Machine, SuperDuper, and whatever you're using to backup Windows.