Partitions Issues

[georgelimys]

Hi Folks,

Need some help here. I set up BootCamp yesterday and it messed up my partitions. It created new partitions and I was able to erased 1 of it and free up 8gb of space, which can never add to the vol. Also, there appears a Container Disk2 which I tried deleting (trial and error) and became Container Disk1.

What is happening?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

God I hate it when those drives appear.

Best thing I can recommend is cloning your Mac partition with SuperDuper/CarbonCopyCloner to an external drive, boot from the clone, wipe and repartition the internal drive, then restore from back up.

Forget about BootCamp. It runs terrible on Macs especially laptops because Apple cripples it in several ways to make it look very pale. Buy a cheap useful PC like a Thinkpad X270

 

[MacDawg]

I would agree your best bet is to clone your Mac partition and do a complete nuke of the drive and restore the clone.

As far as BootCamp is concerned, its been years since I bothered with it. I run several VMware Fusion virtual machines and the performance is very good. Depending on what you need BootCamp for, you can use Fusion/Parallels or even VirtualBox (free) to accomplish the same things with the flexibility of not having to reboot and without the headaches of BootCamp. The only exception to that is if you are gaming, and even then, as you have found out, trying to BootCamp for gaming has its challenges.

Perhaps a little more information can be helpful
What are the specs of your Mac?
And what are you trying to accomplish with BootCamp?

 

[Weaselboy]

OP I'm with these two.. just clone it off then option key boot to the clone and erase the whole disk then clone it back.

Here is the key part though... when you erase the drive you need to check the box "show all devices" then select the drive itself at the very top of the left column like in my screenshot. Then erase the drive. That will get rid of the Bootcamp volume and all those containers and set it back to one partition filling the entire disk.

 

[spooklog]

I have to agree that Bootcamp has issues which don't seem well understood. I tried to install it on my 2012 Mac Mini--it ended up erasing an external drive and I still have no idea how or why this happened. If you do decide to use Bootcamp, please proceed with caution.

I think the suggestion to buy a cheap Windows laptop is a good one. If you really need Windows, skip Bootcamp and use the real thing--a dedicated Windows computer.

 

[Fishrrman]

I agree with replies 2 and 3 above.

1. Clone your Mac OS partition to an external drive with CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper
2. BOOT from the cloned backup
3. Open Disk Utility and NUKE the internal drive back to 1 partition, Mac OS extended, GUID partition map
4. Re-open CCC (or SD) and RE-CLONE your backup BACK TO the newly-created partition
and then...
5. FORGET ABOUT Boot Camp (unless you absolutely, positively have-to-have a native-booting Windows setup).
6. Use an "emulator" instead, such as VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or the free Virtual Box.