gavspav Posted December 11, 2006 Share Posted December 11, 2006 I've got into a right tangle trying to install 10.4.8 on my Windows machine. I created a new partition on one of my hard drives and booted from the DVD. All was going well. I opened Disk Utility, navigated to my new partition and Erased. Only thing is, Disk Utility erased the wrong partition. Aargh. At first I thought this was me just erasing the wrong partition but I went back and tried it again. This time I made sure I was erasing the right partition. Disk Utility mounted the drive and it was the wrong one again. Not sure what's going on here So I rebooted my pc hoping to sort out the mess from Windows. But I couldn't boot Windows either, looks like I've deleted the MBR too! Doh. Can I rebuild the MBR in Terminal to reboot Windows? Can I unerase the erased partition to get my data back (I'm sure I can do this from Windows or another machine to be honest) Any help would surely save me alot of time, Thanks Gav Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/35520-format-tangle-disk-utility-problems/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted December 11, 2006 Share Posted December 11, 2006 Boot Windows CD. Hit R for Recovery. Run FIXMBR and maybe FIXBOOT. In Terminal on OSX install DVD, type: diskutil list (locate the "diskn" where "n" is the number of your disk (probably disk0) fdisk -u /dev/rdisk0 <--- replace "0" with correct number Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/35520-format-tangle-disk-utility-problems/#findComment-252801 Share on other sites More sharing options...
gavspav Posted December 11, 2006 Author Share Posted December 11, 2006 Boot Windows CD. Hit R for Recovery. Run FIXMBR and maybe FIXBOOT. In Terminal on OSX install DVD, type: diskutil list (locate the "diskn" where "n" is the number of your disk (probably disk0) fdisk -u /dev/rdisk0 <--- replace "0" with correct number Thanks for the quick response. I've rebooted to the recovery console. I'm getting the mssage "computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record" Not sure whether to risk it. XP is installed on a secondary drive so I think (guess) that the MBR was on the master drive (which is the one I accidentally deleted). Does the recovery console allow me to rebuild the MBR on the master drive? Gavin Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/35520-format-tangle-disk-utility-problems/#findComment-252813 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted December 11, 2006 Share Posted December 11, 2006 Each drive has its own MBR. The BIOS selects which drive to boot from (when you set drive order) and the "active" flag tells BIOS which partition on that drive to boot from. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/35520-format-tangle-disk-utility-problems/#findComment-252862 Share on other sites More sharing options...
gavspav Posted December 12, 2006 Author Share Posted December 12, 2006 Thanks very much for helping me sort that one out. Managed to boot XP and recover all the lost data. Any idea why Disk utility erased the wrong partition? I tried to erase the second partition on the volume and it erased the first(or possibly both - the other was unformatted) without warning me. Honest! Gavin Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/35520-format-tangle-disk-utility-problems/#findComment-253355 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted December 12, 2006 Share Posted December 12, 2006 In Disk Utility, the first icon is the hard drive. If you accidentally clicked the 2nd icon (the 1st partition) or the hard drive icon itself, then you would get the situation you had. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/35520-format-tangle-disk-utility-problems/#findComment-253446 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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