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Possible to erase just the Mac partition in a single hard-drive multiboot system?


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I've currently configured a dual-boot system with OS X 10.10.5 in the first partition of my hard drive, and Windows 10 on another partition in the same hard drive.

 

A while ago, I installed a sketchy audio driver on my Mac partition, and because I didn't have a backup before I installed it (I know), I wanted to format that partition and install it.

 

I erased the partition in the Installer Disk Disk Utility, but when I tried to install it on the partition, it said something along the lines of "Windows will not be able to boot, restart and try again."

 

I know it's possible to reformat a Windows partition and not mess up the EFI or anything, but how would one go about formatting the Mac partition?

 

For what it's worth, I'm using an Acer laptop, with clover installed on the EFI partition to manage my boot.

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I've currently configured a dual-boot system with OS X 10.10.5 in the first partition of my hard drive, and Windows 10 on another partition in the same hard drive.

 

A while ago, I installed a sketchy audio driver on my Mac partition, and because I didn't have a backup before I installed it (I know), I wanted to format that partition and install it.

 

I erased the partition in the Installer Disk Disk Utility, but when I tried to install it on the partition, it said something along the lines of "Windows will not be able to boot, restart and try again."

 

I know it's possible to reformat a Windows partition and not mess up the EFI or anything, but how would one go about formatting the Mac partition?

 

For what it's worth, I'm using an Acer laptop, with clover installed on the EFI partition to manage my boot.

Using "gdisk" on Mac create Windows partition.

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If you reinstall OSX on the formated partition with a boot loader it should be able to choose between OSX and Win.

 

Just insure that the OSX partition is marked as Active through Fdisk.

 

Good luck.

 

Thanks for your reply, but that's not what I'm asking.

 

I currently have a working system with Mac on one partition and Windows on another controlled by Clover.  Everything works well.  I can boot into either system without any issues.

 

The problem I have is that when I'm trying to do a clean install of my Mac parition only, after I erase the partition in Disk Utility on the OS X installer USB, and then try to install it on that newly erased partition (leaving my Windows partition intact), it throws an error saying that installing Mac will mess up my Windows installation and then reboots.

 

Basically, I'd like to know how one goes about formatting just the Mac partition and re-installing Mac while leaving the Windows partition as is.

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Did you try to mark the Win partition NOT active ?

 

I think the whole difference came with Win10 when Microsoft allowed its boot loader to recognize other OSs and take control of the booting process.

 

I had this setup before with Yosemite and Win7 with Clover on the OSX partition. When I upgraded to Win10 the Windows boot loader took control.

 

So, I guess its a sort of boot loader protection. Try to mark it inactive.

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Did you try to mark the Win partition NOT active ?

 

I think the whole difference came with Win10 when Microsoft allowed its boot loader to recognize other OSs and take control of the booting process.

 

I had this setup before with Yosemite and Win7 with Clover on the OSX partition. When I upgraded to Win10 the Windows boot loader took control.

 

So, I guess its a sort of boot loader protection. Try to mark it inactive.

 

Okay, I'll try this, but I really don't want to have to re-install both Mac and Windows again.  That's what I had to do last the last time I erased the Mac partition.

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Just make sure you have a bootable USB with Clover in case you missed with the boot files such as boot0 and booth0

 

I do have a Clover drive, but the thing is, if I erase the Mac partition, it won't let me reinstall Mac without wiping the whole drive.

 

Also, how would I mark the Windows partition as inactive?  I believe that isn't possible to do within Windows.

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