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Macbook Pro hard drive does not show

C

cgtechie

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 14, 2009
7
0
A friend brought his new 15" Macbook Pro to me after trying to install Boot Camp and Windows XP. He said that he made a second partition for Windows; however, the drive showed only one partition formatted with NTFS. I tried reinstalling mac os using the disk that came with the laptop. When it came time to choose the destination drive, none showed up. I then went to Disk Utility. The drive and the volume showed up in the left panel but I could not Erase or do anything else - all the options were grayed out. With no firewire port I am also unable to use target mode. I am looking for suggestions on what I can do to re-install Leopard. Thanks in advance for your help.
 
Try partitioning it using MBR, then do it again with GUID (GUID is required to boot Intel Macs). (click the "Options..." button on the Partition tab page).
 
Thanks for your response, gr8tfly.
When you say try partitioning it with MBR, do you mean using fdisk?
When I click on the Partition tab in Disk Utility, the Option button is grayed out.
 
cgtechie said:
Thanks for your response, gr8tfly.
When you say try partitioning it with MBR, do you mean using fdisk?
When I click on the Partition tab in Disk Utility, the Option button is grayed out.
Click to expand...

The Volume Scheme (number of partitions) must be set to other than "Current" to enable the "Options..." button. Try setting it to "1 Partition".
 
Sounds like your friend overwrote the OS-X partition, which also replaced the partition table with MBR, instead of GUID.

If you can, run Terminal (same menu you found Disk Utility) and enter the following:

Code: 
diskutil list /dev/disk0

That should shed some light on what's going on with the partition.
 
This probably won't work (since Disk Utility thinks it can't talk to the device), but it's worth a try as there might be some information in any resulting error messages:

Code: 
diskutil partitionDisk disk0 GPTFormat HFS+ vol1 100%
 
Here's the result:

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *465.8 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS vol1 465.4 Gi disk0s2
 
Looking good! It looks like you now have a proper GUID partition.

Try running Disk Utility - it should show the proper HFS+ partition now, and you should be able to install OS-X.
 
I thought that the results looked good, but I didn't want to be premature in my celebration. I was waiting for your confirmation.

The Macbook is now going through installation!

THANK YOU VERY MUCH, gr8tfly!
 
cgtechie said:
I thought that the results looked good, but I didn't want to be premature in my celebration. I was waiting for your confirmation.

The Macbook is now going through installation!

THANK YOU VERY MUCH, gr8tfly!
Click to expand...

Whew! You're very welcome. Glad that did it. :)

If/when you do try a Bootcamp install again, make sure to:

  • Use a genuine XP Service Pack 2 disk
  • Use the Bootcamp Assistant to create the Windows partition.
  • and most importantly: Make sure to select the Windows partition [created by Bootcamp Assistant] during the Windows install. Then, partition it as either FAT32 or NTFS (during Windows install).

Enjoy!
 
I will make sure to install Boot Camp and Windows BEFORE I give the MacBook back to my friend!

Thanks again for your help!
 
JediMeister said:
Tada, Apple has a knowledgebase article on this issue but it took some looking to find.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I figured Disk Utility (the GUI front end) didn't like the "write only" part of NTFS in OS-X, and thought it couldn't do anything with the volume. Command line to the rescue ;). But, I missed the "J" on the format - yes, it should have been "JHFS+" or "Journaled HFS+". A bit to fast with the fingers :rolleyes:.

OP - you should enable journaling. In Disk Utility, select your boot volume, then click the "Enable Journaling" button (or, it's in the File menu).
 
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