How to create Boot Camp partition on a hard drive with two or more partition ?

[ulyssesric]

I've tried to install Windows on the new 24" iMac for whole day long without luck.

1. In the beginning I've no idea who Boot Camp works, so I followed the old styled Linux daul-boot experience on a PC: I made 3 partitions, two J-HPS+ for Mac OS X and one is "free-space".

2. After installing Mac OS X and finished transmitting all my user data, apps and files, I downloaded Boot Camp 1.1.1 and launched it. Soon I got the error message, I can not install Boot Camp on the disk with more than one partitions. So I grabbed the driver image from the Boot Camp Assistant package content and burned it into a CD.

3. I've iPartition installed previously. So I attached an external firewire drive to iMac, cloned the startup disk, and boot from the external drive. Then I launched iPartition, added a FAT32 partition in the free space, and reboot from the Windows XP SP2 CD. But Windows installer could't recognize the FAT32 partition: it could only see the whole disk space as an "Unknow" partition.

4. I went back into iPartition again, reformat the FAT32 partition into "PC partition (MBR)" and run Windows installer again. It still said that there is only one "Unknown" partition on the disk.

5. I put another hard-disk into the external firewire case, and run Windows installer again. Windows installer caught the external drive as one "Unknown" partition, of course. Then I deleted the partition with Windows installer, created a new partition, when I tried to install Windows on that partition, it said that I need "special software" to support booting from that device.

6. Went back to Mac OS X, I can see the partition on the external drive with disk utility. Then I open terminal, and tried to format the partition to FAT32 with "newfs_msdos -F32" command. This command executed without problem. After that, I reboot into Windows installer again, it saw the partition with correct size and format (FAT32), but it still said that I'll need special software.

7. And then, I gave up.

From the procedure I've figured out several things, please correct me if I'm wrong:

1. You can install and boot Windows on an external USB drive, but not on an external firewire drive.

2. You can only install Windows on the MRB partitions created by boot camp. Other 3rd-party partition tool will not work.

And my question is:

I just want to run Windows natively on a iMac 24" with two existed Mac OS Extended partitions, for god sake what should I do ?

 

[Nermal]

As you discovered, Boot Camp is designed for a single-partition system. The easiest solution might be to delete the FAT partition, then merge your two HFS partitions into one big one. Run Boot Camp and install Windows, then split the HFS partition into two using "diskutil resizeVolume" at the command line.

Edit: Actually, that might not work - "resizeVolume is only supported on GPT media with a Journaled HFS+ filesystem." I don't know whether it's still GPT after you've Boot Camped it.

 

[balamw]

The triple boot guide at onmac might help.

My guess is that iPartition is your problem. Boot Camp needs a particular hybrid of GPT and MBR... More details in the link.

http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp

There's an implication that the 24" might support booting OSX from straight MBR, in which case using a Windows partitioning tool might work.

B

 

[ulyssesric]

The triple boot guide at onmac might help.
My guess is that iPartition is your problem. Boot Camp needs a particular hybrid of GPT and MBR... More details in the link.
http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp
There's an implication that the 24" might support booting OSX from straight MBR, in which case using a Windows partitioning tool might work.
B

Thank you.

I've read the Triple Boot article. The Triple Boot article said that I should not partition hte disk with Boot Camp Assistant; instead I should use diskutil. I see no difference between this method and iPartition. The result is the same: one seperated FAT32 partition under the GPT structure but not a MBR.

I guess the key point is the next step in the article:

Windows Setup will start. At the disk partition screen, select the C: drive. "Quick partition" it as FAT32. Setup will continue and eventually it will restart your computer. (see Talk:Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp for a workaround if the Windows installer does not offer to reformat your windows partition at install time - the Windows installer should format it here or it may not be bootable)

And I've no idea what it means. In Windows Installer I can only see one partition noted as "C: [Unknown partition]" and the size is whole 250G. Should I just press enter and let Windows Install do the reset things ? Will this destroy existed J-HPS+ partitions ?

 

[balamw]

And I've no idea what it means. In Windows Installer I can only see one partition noted as "C: [Unknown partition]" and the size is whole 250G. Should I just press enter and let Windows Install do the reset things ? Will this destroy existed J-HPS+ partitions ?

If the size is your whole drive it's probably because Windows is not understanding your partition table. It will take over your whole drive. If I were you, which I'm not, I'd step back from iPartition for now and try to make it work according to the guide. Once you have it then go ahead and try again with iPartition

B

 

[ulyssesric]

If the size is your whole drive it's probably because Windows is not understanding your partition table. It will take over your whole drive. If I were you, which I'm not, I'd step back from iPartition for now and try to make it work according to the guide. Once you have it then go ahead and try again with iPartition
B

OK...After spending hours switch external hard drive and clone all my files, I did what the triple boot guide said, make a single partition, install but not partition with Boot Camp Assistant, bootup from external hard drive and split partition with terminal, and IT'S NOT WORKING. Windows installer still said that I've a whole "Unknown" partition.

So stop referring to that "Bible" everytime. IT'S NO WORKING, at least for me.

I'm stopping mass up with my new Mac. I'll grab a real PC from eBay or elsewhere.

Thanks anyway.

 

[7on]

OK...After spending hours switch external hard drive and clone all my files, I did what the triple boot guide said, make a single partition, install but not partition with Boot Camp Assistant, bootup from external hard drive and split partition with terminal, and IT'S NOT WORKING. Windows installer still said that I've a whole "Unknown" partition.

So stop referring to that "Bible" everytime. IT'S NO WORKING, at least for me.

I'm stopping mass up with my new Mac. I'll grab a real PC from eBay or elsewhere.

Thanks anyway.

You have to partition with the Bootcamp Assistant.

You can always hack the XP disk into booting from USB drives

 

[ulyssesric]

You have to partition with the Bootcamp Assistant.

Well, according to the "Triple Boot via BootCamp", which is referred by people here all the time:

Run the BootCamp Assistant and create the Windows XP driver cd. Then exit BootCamp. DO NOT PARTITION USING BOOTCAMP. If you already did, it created a 3rd partition at end of the drive. You can remove it if you boot from another drive and run this command: sudo gpt remove -i 3 /dev/disk0. A simpler way to remove the partition is to use Boot Camp Assistant, which allows to "restore the startup disk to a single volume" (see its manual).

And that's what I did.

Boot Camp does NOT allow you to create XP partition on a hard drive with TWO OR MORE existed partition.

You can always hack the XP disk into booting from USB drives

The problem is, I don't have a USB external case. Besides, XP won't allow you to create swap files on the external disk. Performance would be terrible.

 

[beatsme]

So...

anybody figured this out yet? I've tried to install XP but of course it doesn't recognize the partition table, so all it sees is the entire C: drive. I wonder if Apple is working on this issue...