swtaarrs Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 Short Version: My NTFS Windows partition got formatted as HFS+ during the OS X installation processes, is there any way I can get back to NTFS without losing my data? Long Version: I just finished installing OS X on my Dell Inspiron 9300 and it boots but wireless and sound don't work so I'll have to work on that..but I have a bigger issue to tackle first. Before installing OS X, my laptop was dual boot XP and Ubuntu. Because it's a Dell, it came with a 16mb FAT16 partition at the beginning of the drive, followed the NTFS partition for XP. When I installed Ubuntu, I shrank my windows partition at the end, so it's in the last 8GB of the drive. When it came time for me to try OS X, since I already had 4 primary partitions (stupid dell partition, XP, linux, linux swap), I deleted the 16MB partition at the beginning of the drive so that I could create a partition for OS X without having to create a logical partition. After that I shrank my XP partition again to make room for the OS X partition. (All of this was done with GParted in Ubuntu) So, at this point my drive looks like this: 86GB NTFS | 7GB unformatted(soon to be HFS) | 7GB ext3 | 1GB swap The problem is that in the partition table, the unformatted partition is #1 and the ntfs partition is #2, because the new partition replaced the small dell partition that was previously #1. When I booted the OS X install DVD, started disk utility, and told it to format the new partition as HFS+, it formatted OK but then said it couldn't mount it. I told it to format the same partition again, and this time it worked. I wasn't sure why that happened, but it was working, so I continued the installation and everything went fine. I booted into OS X, it said 3.5GB of disk used, 3.5GB free (so I know it installed to the right partition), then I booted back into Ubuntu to edit my grub settings to get the triple boot working. I opened up GParted to check out the disk, and saw that my big windows partition was now an HFS+ partition, as was the 7GB partition that I installed OS X onto. So, I guess when the OS X installer said it couldn't mount the partition it had just formatted, it had actually formatted my XP partition as HFS+ but then tried to mount the still unformatted 7GB partition, since the order of partitions in my partition table isn't the same as the layout on the drive. I do have a backup, but it's a backup of my whole hard drive, so if I restore it it'll restore my entire drive to the state it was in before I started partitioning, and I'd have to go through the installation process again (hopefully doing it right this time). So now for my big question: Is there any way for me to get my partition back to NTFS without losing all the data? I'm pretty sure the HFS+ formatting would've erased the relevant NTFS metadata, making this impossible, but I think I remember hearing that NTFS keeps a backup of the file table in the middle or end of the drive, so maybe it is possible. Again, I do have a backup of my drive that I can restore, but I'd like to fix this without restoring the whole drive if I can. I hope this makes sense, and I'll keep googling to see if I can find anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alicheusz Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 I have this same type of problem, in my pinion disk utility don't format your HTFS it just mess-up with partition table and probably create another one small partition before NTSF this one is something like mac os primary partition for logical NTFS(and this is mistake, I think that this is normal but for HFS partition), and this mess with Windows. Win XP don't see partition, mac os x don see files on this partition or even can't mount it but I don't have any solution for this I try TestDisk to repair but is show few error with I just don know what to do Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckDSanders Posted November 1, 2006 Share Posted November 1, 2006 You need to get a program to fix the file system. The problem is that it killed your partition table, so you need something to fix that. Type in partition repair or something in google and there are a number of programs out there. I am sorry I don't remember one off hand. They are kinda pricey, but if you are resourceful, I am sure you can find one on the "internet". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swtaarrs Posted November 1, 2006 Author Share Posted November 1, 2006 Thanks for the replies. I ended up restoring from my backup anyway and making sure my partitions were in the right order in the partition table before installing OS X again, and it worked this time. Now I have triple boot XP, Ubuntu, and OS X working Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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