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Heads Up!! ML install removes other partitions (on same drive)

VanneDC

VanneDC

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 5, 2010
860
92
Dubai, UAE
Just a word of caution, if your installing a "Clean" version of ML, and you have another partition on your drive (i had win7) it will wipe that and locate its restore partition there... NASTY...

I went into disk ultils and just erased my SL partition and selected that to be the install partition. Not once did it mention it was going to wipe the data on the rest of my drive...

Just a warning.
 
Thats good to know. Sounds like Apple continuing to take more control. If it were not for their fear of really making us angry they'd probably eliminate the file system as well.

I guess they've decided to wait another year or so before starting to brainwash us on that one. My oh my, Linux is looking better by the day.
 
ixodes said:
Thats good to know. Sounds like Apple continuing to take more control. If it were not for their fear of really making us angry they'd probably eliminate the file system as well.

I guess they've decided to wait another year or so before starting to brainwash us on that one. My oh my, Linux is looking better by the day.
Click to expand...

I think Snow Leopard looks pretty good.
 
minifridge1138 said:
I think Snow Leopard looks pretty good.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I still don't see a reason to upgrade. Are there any (major) apps yet that need Lion/ML to run? I'm sitting pretty with Snow Leopard just fine. Apple's best OS to date as far as I'm concerned.
 
Odd. I havemt tried with ML yet, but I've done clean installs of Lion on multiple partitioned drives, and the Recovery HD always is positioned at the end of the Lion partition and leaves subsequent partitions alone. Even doing an image backup of a Lion install will cause Disk Util Restore to create a Recovery HD partiton followning the image partition.

Upgrading Lion to ML left my BootCamp partition intact (I assume it upgraded the Recovery HD, but haven't checked).

I will have to try ML on one of those drives, making sure to have a partition following.
 
reminds me, is there any reason to keep the recovery partition, i would like to put Win7 back on it??
 
VanneDC said:
Just a word of caution, if your installing a "Clean" version of ML, and you have another partition on your drive (i had win7) it will wipe that and locate its restore partition there... NASTY...

I went into disk ultils and just erased my SL partition and selected that to be the install partition. Not once did it mention it was going to wipe the data on the rest of my drive...

Just a warning.
Click to expand...

I suspect that this is a bug when you install ML over SL or Lion install that does not have a recovery partition and there is another partition on the disk.

In those situations disk0s3 is the next partition for bootcamp or other purpose, whereas normally disk0s3 is the recovery partition. I've seen Carbon Copy Cloner do this. When you clone to an external drive that happens to have 2 partitions and no recovery hd, CCC creates a recovery partition on the second partition and then complains that it looks too big. I didn't think the ML installer would exhibit the same behaviour. If this is true, then it's a serious bug. I am going to try this out.

----------
ixodes said:
Thats good to know. Sounds like Apple continuing to take more control. If it were not for their fear of really making us angry they'd probably eliminate the file system as well.

I guess they've decided to wait another year or so before starting to brainwash us on that one. My oh my, Linux is looking better by the day.
Click to expand...

Yeah. A stupid bug shows how Apple wants to take more control. WTF are you ranting about? Let me pass you a tin foil hat.

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VanneDC said:
reminds me, is there any reason to keep the recovery partition, i would like to put Win7 back on it??
Click to expand...

How big is your recovery partition now?

Edit: Update

I've tried to recreate this problem, by doing a clean install on a two partition system without a recovery partition, and the recovery partition is created at the end of the partition where I installed ML. The second partition became disk0s4 and the recovery partition is disk0s3, as I would expect. The second partition was not erased or touched by the installer.

How exactly did you manage to do this?
 
Last edited:
i just installed ML to a test partition on my SSD and it didn't delete my Lion partition.

Obviously it was just windows it wanted to delete :p
 
VanneDC said:
reminds me, is there any reason to keep the recovery partition, i would like to put Win7 back on it??
Click to expand...

Use Boot Camp Assistant to create a new partition, then install Windows. The Recovery HD and Bootcamp partitions aren't mutually exclusive. The Bootcamp partition will be positioned following the Recovery HD partition. I haven't gone through this process with ML, though I'm fairly confident it would work as Lion did, even after hearing your experience. I wish I could try it, but I have a MBP and Bootcamp is restricted to the internal drive. Much as I'd like to help by verifying the process, it would require many hours of down time for my only machine.

The Recovery HD partition space comes out of the Lion/ML partition, leaving subsequent partitions starting block the same.

As I mentioned previously, the creation of the Recovery HD partition didn't affect my existing BC partition. However, I haven't tried with ML, yet, other than upgrading my existing Lion partition.

I did a lot of experiments when Lion first came out to determine when and where Recovery HD partitions are created. Whether doing an upgrade or clean install, the Recovery HD partition would be created and always follows the Lion partition (block wise). It is also created when using Disk Utility Restore to image a Lion partition to another drive's partition. So, all and all, using the installer or Disk Utility automatically takes care of the Recovery HD for you.

There really isn't any reason to get rid of Recovery HD - it's only 650MB, and can be handy for running Disk Utility for First Aid or imaging the boot partition using Restore (which I've been using for years to create my bootable backups).

Speaking of backup images, I highly recommend Winclone to create and restore images of Bootcamp Windows installs.
 
Just a word of caution, if your installing a "Clean" version of ML, and you have another partition on your drive (i had win7) it will wipe that and locate its restore partition there... NASTY...

I went into disk ultils and just erased my SL partition and selected that to be the install partition. Not once did it mention it was going to wipe the data on the rest of my drive...

Just a warning.
Click to expand...

I can not confirm that!

I installed ML on my MBP. It didn't touch my BootCamp partition. Still working.
On my MP I got a whole HD anyway for BC.
 
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