10.6.2 installed, want to add windows 7 starter HELP!

[sparren]

I have a problem installing Windows 7 on my current setup.

 

I have SL installed on one drive.

And I have a partition for Windows 7 on a second drive.

The second drive has another partition housing OSX data.

 

When i pop in the Windows 7 Starter installation disc, everything starts up okay, but when I'm asked to choose where to install, it sees my partitioned 2nd drive as one drive, instead of the different partitions.

 

If I choose that drive and install on it, will I lose my OSX data?

[srs5694]

I can think of two possibilities:

 

1. Windows is seeing both partitions on your second disk but is ignoring the OS X partition since it's obviously not a Windows partition.
   
2. The second disk is partitioned using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) system and Windows is ignoring the GPT data and is instead showing you the protective MBR, which has just one partition spanning the whole disk.
   

 

If #1 is correct, installing Windows will be safe -- or at least, as safe as such things are likely to be. (You could still lose your boot loader, this being a Windows install. Unplug the first drive to minimize this risk.) If #2 is correct, installing Windows on the one partition will completely hose your OS X data.

 

Chances are #1 is correct; Windows 7 is GPT-aware, although it won't install to a GPT disk on BIOS-based computers. IIRC, the Windows installer does tell you the sizes of the partitions it sees. Thus, you should be able to tell for sure which is correct by checking the size of the one partition that Windows reports. If it's the size of the partition you created, then #1 is almost certainly correct; but if it's the size of the whole disk, Windows is getting really confused and you should try to unconfuse it before proceeding. Perhaps there's a problem with your partition table that you could correct, for instance.