Formatted NTFS by mistake

[regfman]

I screwed up:

I have a MBP with 10.5 on it. A while back I installed XP with Boot Camp. I probably used Fat32 for the XP partition.
Today I decided that I would remove XP and try out Windows 7 beta. I used Boot Camp to delete the XP partition. I then used Boot Camp to make a new partition and then I started the Windows 7 install. Windows stopped and said that it needed an NTFS formatted partition.

I didn't see a way of doing that formatting within the windows installer, nor was there a way to change the Fat32 to NTFS with the options in Boot Camp, nor with the OS X Disk Utility.

A friend of mine suggested doing the XP install which would allow me to select a format at the beginning of the XP install. A fine idea, UNFORTUNATELY I wasn't paying attention when I formatted the C: drive (instead of the other drive I had just partitioned) and that wiped out my OS X partition! The only fortunate thing is that I had at least backed up my wife's itunes earlier in the day and I don't have any important files that I lost on that machine.

The problem now is that I can't load OS X from the install disk because the drive is formatted NTFS. The computer loads the install disk but can't proceed through the install.

How should I proceed? If I put in the XP disk I think it will allow me to reformat to Fat32 but I'd rather do the formatting with some Apple utility that would format the disk like it comes from Apple.

 

[lostless]

When your mac boots up to the restore DVD, some where in the menus up top, is a program called disk utility. I forget the menu name. load that program up select the partition you want to fix and hit erase, which will then ask you to reformat.

 

[regfman]

I think things have degraded further. At this point I can get the windows disk to proceed through an install, which I have not let it do. I had the Windows installation disk delete the partition but then I did not proceed with the Windows install.

Then I rebooted with the Apple OS X installation disk and I immediately get the tone at bootup, I hear a bit of DVD drive noise but then it stops with a completely grey screen and doesn't proceed. I got nothing.

 

[sickmacdoc]

Well I don't know what method you are using to try to boot to the Installer disk, but have you tried pressing and holding the "Option" key immediately after the startup chime to get to the screen which will show you the bootable volumes currently available and let you select one to continue booting with?

 

[regfman]

Thanks guys.

I used the Option key to get back to a point where I could see the Apple Installation disk and then did the Erase to delete the NTFS partition and then was able to format the whole disk as Fat32. Then do the complete install of the OS and do all the updates and load the extra stuff that I use.

I am up and running. Thank you.

I guess I should proceed with Boot Camp to get another partition and see if can load my Windows 7 beta this time.

 

[ppc750fx]

Thanks guys.

I used the Option key to get back to a point where I could see the Apple Installation disk and then did the Erase to delete the NTFS partition and then was able to format the whole disk as Fat32. Then do the complete install of the OS and do all the updates and load the extra stuff that I use.

Wait... do you mean that you just made your root partition FAT32?! I wasn't aware that was possible...

 

[regfman]

Wait... do you mean that you just made your root partition FAT32?! I wasn't aware that was possible...

Well now it's about 14 hours later and I can't remember exactly. Maybe I didn't really have the choice to make it that, but I think that I saw that it was listed as FAT32 after I did the erase.

 

[ppc750fx]

Well now it's about 14 hours later and I can't remember exactly. Maybe I didn't really have the choice to make it that, but I think that I saw that it was listed as FAT32 after I did the erase.

I didn't know that OS X would boot off of a FAT32 partition. Huh. It's definitely not a good idea, even if it will work.

 

[lostless]

Go figure. OSX booting on fat32. I agree that you should be using HFS+ journaled and not Fat 32. Fat 32 is a very poor file system that could easyly corrupt data. Also the max file size on Fat 32 is 4 gigs, so i recommend reformatting again.

 

[Nermal]

I'm 95% confident that you cannot install OS X to a FAT32 volume. I suspect that the OP has created a FAT32 volume in addition to the HFS one.

 

[sickmacdoc]

EDIT-UPDATE: OK, not that there was much if any question, but I did the tests mentioned below and as we suspected, no- OSX will not install on a FAT32 volume with any Partition Table Map type.

#1- Tried a drive formatted as FAT32 with MBR Partition Table Map-- OSX installer said no go- must have GUID Partition Table Map.

#2- Reformatted with FAT32 on a GUID Partition Table Map-- OSX installer now reported "cannot be installed on a volume with the MS-DOS (FAT32) format."
Option button gave an option to format the volume as Mac OS Extended. Reformatted and installation then proceeded normally.

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Well now it's about 14 hours later and I can't remember exactly. Maybe I didn't really have the choice to make it that, but I think that I saw that it was listed as FAT32 after I did the erase.

I seriously doubt that the volume is currently formatted as FAT32 for (among other things) the reasons listed below which are displayed when you try to use SuperDuper to clone to a PC formatted disk and that there is some confusion going on here.

Do us a favor and click the hard drive icon on the desktop once, then go to the "File" menu and select "Get Info". Please let us know what it says in the "Format:" field. I'm certain it will read "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".

IMO what happened was that when you started up with the installer and used Disk Utility from it you erased and for some reason chose "MS-DOS (FAT)" for the process. THEN you started the OSX installer which realized that it was not possible and reformatted it in the background to be compatible with the installation. Since it was a clean install, it wouldn't necessarily pop a warning about items being erased- and just went ahead and did it. I am going to try it on a spare drive later to just confirm this for curiosity!