Partitioning goof

[alanthing]

Ok so I messed things up, and would like to try and fix it. Some guidance would be awesome, but I understand Boot Camp is in Beta and I may just have to wipe out my hard drive and start over.

 

I started with a clean install of OS X. I did a FileVault of my home directory, copied files from my old desktop over, and installed Boot Camp. I created a 20GB partition for Windows and the partition resizing was good. I booted the Windows installer and tried to get tricky with things.

 

I deleted the 20GB partition that the Boot Camp assistant made and created a 15GB partition for Windows. I wanted to use 5GB for Linux and triple boot. Note- in hindsight, I should've look at a triple-boot how-to first! When Windows finished partitioning (NTFS Full) and copied over the files and rebooted, it said hal.dll was not found. I figured it was because I nLited my XP CD (XP Gold, I had to slipstream SP-2).

 

I figured I'd install Fedora Core 6 because I had used the DVD before I knew it worked. In the Fedora installer, I deleted the 15GB partition I created in the Windows installer and created a 6GB partition and a 1GB swap. I installed Grub to /dev/sda3, NOT the MBA of /dev/sda. Installation was fine and linux booted up as expected. Upon a reboot, holding the Option button showed Machintosh HD and Windows- choosing Windows booted up Grub then Linux. I installed rEFIt once back in OS X to get closer to triple-booting.

 

I remade my SP-2 CD and gave Windows another shot. At the partitioning section, I deleted the swap partition (because I heard you can only have 4 primary partitions, and no extended partitions with Boot Camp) and then deleted the Linux partition (I want to use Ubuntu anyway). I created a 15GB NTFS partition again and again I got the hal.dll error again.

 

At this point, I realized I may have goofed. I went back to the Boot Camp assistant to restore my OS X partition to full size, but I got this error:

Your startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.

Your startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.

 

I rebooted my machine and rEFIt still shows the Linux partition, even after deleting it in the Windows installer. I selected rEFIt's "Start Partitioning Tool" for grins and I see the source of the problem- the Windows (and perhaps Linux) installer edited the MBR table, while not updating the GPT table. the rEFIt Partitioning Tool didn't even load- it gave me this output:

 

rEFIt - Partitioning Tool

   Starting gptsync.efi

   Current GPT partition table
   # Start LBA End LBA   Type
   1		40	409639 EFI System (FAT)
   2	409640 151404583 Mac OS X HFS+
   3 151404584 163692583 Basic Data
   4 163692584 165789735 Linux Swap

   Current MBR partition table
   # A Start LBA End LBA   Type
   1		   1	409639 EE EFI Protective
   2	  409640 151412624 AF Mac OS X HFS+
   3   151412625 182402009 07 NTFS
   4   182402010 195350399 0F Win95 Extended (LBA)

   Status: Extended partition found in MBR table, will not touch this disk

   Error: Not Found returned from gptsync.efi

 

At this point, I'd be happy with one of two things: making OS X one partition again and properly following a how-to for triple-booting, or, having 15GB for Windows, and 5GB for Linux (don't need swap with 2GB RAM). I guess I need to edit one of these partition tables to match the other before it'll work. I suppose I can reinstall OS X but I spent a lot of time installing apps and configuring them to have to do it again. If I have to use rEFIt->Legacy Boot disk->Partition Magic or similar tool, I have the capability. I can also do command-line stuff on OS X or Linux.

 

Thanks for reading this long message and helping out!