Bootcamp troubles. Doesn't let me have a 3rd partition!

[MacRaccoon]

The target in short is to have:
- one partition for OS X in its native file system
- one partition for Win 7 in NTFS
- one storage partition read/write accessible by both in exFAT

The problem in short is that the 3rd partition messes up the rest always!
First bootcamp requires you to have just one partition when you start. It splits the whole hdd in 2 partitions one for os x and one for win 7, which is great.
It installs win 7 and everything works great! Until I try to make the 3rd storage partition.

First I tried to shrink the win 7 partition under win and make the storage partition out of that space. Well when i go ahead to do it in disk manager it says taht this would make the partition dynamic and no OS can be booted from the whole disk!

So I started from beginning. Turned everything back to just one partition with OS x on it. Installed Win 7 and this time i shrinked the OS X partition and made successfully the storage partition out of it in exFAT.

Well the problem now is that win 7 won't boot! It doesn't see it's partition upon boot.
before the shrinkage the partitions was
Macintosh HD | Bootcamp
after the shrink
Macintosh HD | Storage | Bootcamp

So I guess it's looking for windows on the second partition which is now Storage instead of Bootcamp.


So I guess I'm asking is there a way to let bootcamp now that now it's on the 3rd partition and if not what's the proper way to have those 2 OSes and a storage partition as I described?

 

[MacRaccoon]

I guess I described it too long.

In very short, a way to tell bootcamp that it should boot from the 3rd partition now instead of the second, should do it.
How do we control that?

 

[ssn637]

I've got my rMBP 500 GB Flash Disk divided into 3 partitions in a similar configuration to what you've attempted. Here's how I did it:
- Create a time capsule backup of your original OS X installation
- Create a Boot Camp partition of the desired size and install Windows onto that partition
- Create a backup of the Windows partition with WinClone
- Boot the system from a Coriolis iPartition bootable flash disk created from the iPartition program. You can also boot the original system in target mode and repartition the drive from a second Macbook if you have one with iPartition installed.
- Resize the OS X partition to create a new volume of free space with iPartition
- Create a new partition (Mac OS X Extended, Journaled) within the empty volume. I don't know if you can create the partition in exFAT but you can always give it a try.
- Make sure the Windows partition is active and bootable (iPartition can check this for you when the volume is highlighted). You also need to ensure the newly-created Library partition is visible in Windows (there's a check box for this).
- You should now be able to start up in either OS X or Windows with the new Library volume available to both. You'll need MacDrive of HFS for Windows to allow read/write access to the HFS+ Library partition from Windows.
- If you can't boot into one or the other system try to restore either from the backups you've already created

This procedure worked just fine for me. The key is to not mess with the Windows partition once it's been created using the Boot Camp utility, which means your original OS X partition must be large enough to be split into two volumes.

 

[pratnala]

Hi

The solution for this is not to use Bootcamp to install Windows. Just select the option "Download drivers" when you fire up Bootcamp. Now, make your desired partition layout in Disk Utility, restart your Mac, insert your USB installation disk for Windows, install Windows on the required partition and continue. This should work IMHO.

Mine is a triple boot setup with OS X, Windows and Ubuntu and I didn't use Bootcamp at all to make my partitions - just to download the drivers. I did them manually.

Hope this helps.

The target in short is to have:
- one partition for OS X in its native file system
- one partition for Win 7 in NTFS
- one storage partition read/write accessible by both in exFAT

The problem in short is that the 3rd partition messes up the rest always!
First bootcamp requires you to have just one partition when you start. It splits the whole hdd in 2 partitions one for os x and one for win 7, which is great.
It installs win 7 and everything works great! Until I try to make the 3rd storage partition.

First I tried to shrink the win 7 partition under win and make the storage partition out of that space. Well when i go ahead to do it in disk manager it says taht this would make the partition dynamic and no OS can be booted from the whole disk!

So I started from beginning. Turned everything back to just one partition with OS x on it. Installed Win 7 and this time i shrinked the OS X partition and made successfully the storage partition out of it in exFAT.

Well the problem now is that win 7 won't boot! It doesn't see it's partition upon boot.
before the shrinkage the partitions was
Macintosh HD | Bootcamp
after the shrink
Macintosh HD | Storage | Bootcamp

So I guess it's looking for windows on the second partition which is now Storage instead of Bootcamp.


So I guess I'm asking is there a way to let bootcamp now that now it's on the 3rd partition and if not what's the proper way to have those 2 OSes and a storage partition as I described?

 

[MacRaccoon]

thank you guys, in the meantime i found this:
http://forums.macworld.com/index.ph...setup-os-x-lion-bootcamp-win7-data-partition/

which seems to be the simplest method so far

 

[MikBe]

Hi

The solution for this is not to use Bootcamp to install Windows. Just select the option "Download drivers" when you fire up Bootcamp. Now, make your desired partition layout in Disk Utility, restart your Mac, insert your USB installation disk for Windows, install Windows on the required partition and continue. This should work IMHO.

Mine is a triple boot setup with OS X, Windows and Ubuntu and I didn't use Bootcamp at all to make my partitions - just to download the drivers. I did them manually.

Hope this helps.

This, of course, does not work. I'm not sure if using Ubuntu installs a boot loader that works but Windows will NOT install just by manually creating partitions in Disk Utility. There has to be some tricky fake MBR stuff going on that Boot Camp Assistant does for us.

 

[MacRaccoon]

i reinstalled windwos and it works now

 

[pratnala]

This, of course, does not work. I'm not sure if using Ubuntu installs a boot loader that works but Windows will NOT install just by manually creating partitions in Disk Utility. There has to be some tricky fake MBR stuff going on that Boot Camp Assistant does for us.

It worked for me.