Creating Partition Map error

[CupofDice]

(Posted this at osx.kbot.de, but since it's a bit of a rare problem, also posting it here)

 

Okay, months ago I tried installing tubgirl, but it timed out on the "creating partition map" part. So now I am trying zephyroth 10.5.1, and I get the same error. I tried zephyroth 10.5.2, but I get "still waiting for root device" errors. I assume this is caused by the latest MeDevil kexts because when I added those kexts to 10.5.1, I got the same error (10.5.1 without the latest kexts boots up just fine). Anyway after a good bit of searching (not a lot of people with this problem) I found a possible solution here (the 6th post). First I tried setting the type to ShagOS swap with Acronis Disk Detector on an empty partition, but of course that didn't work. Then I formatted a partition to fat32 and tagged it with ShagOS swap again, and this time zephyroth recognized the fat32 as a hfs+, but I couldn't erase it (it hung on preparing to erase-different, so at least there was some progress). When formatting to empty and fat32, I set it as active. Acronis gives three options-active, primary, and logical. How cbmkgd did it was to set it to primary active. I assume setting it to just active takes care of that. I also don't have a ahci to disable in my bios. Anyone have any ideas what else I can do?

 

Edit- Okay I just came across a post that said diskpart is a windows program. For some reason I thought it was a mac program, and so I didn't use the setting. Never used it before. What he says is a bit weird though. Did he make a blank partition with diskpart and the setting "id=af", then use ADD to set it to ShagOS swap, or was he just saying that once before he used diskpart and that worked before, but this time he was going to use ADD. I am thinking it is the second. So can anyone help me by giving me a command to partition/format 15gig of space the way he did with diskpart. I only have one partition (ntfs) on my system right now, so should I make free space with ADD first or can diskpart do that.

 

Edit 2- Okay, I now know I am supposed to use Acronis to make the free space. Do I set the free space as active, primary, or logical?

 

Edit 3- I think I am supposed to set the free space as logical as opposed to active/primary because when I did that to my fat32 partition, I couldn't boot into windows, and I need to use diskpart after making the free space. So I am going to try that.

 

Edit 4- Use the method to create unknown partition here. Will now try to install zephyroth.

 

Edit 5- Well that didn't work. Same error. I guess my only option now is a IDE hd.

 

Specs-

HP Pavilion a6230n PC (Vista Ultimate 64bit)

Asus M2N68-LA Motherboard (nforce 430)

3GB DDR2 SDRAM

Nvidia GeForce 6150 SE Graphics

Hitachi 400GB SATA

 

Thanks for any help.

[daxleet]

Same problem here. I'm getting "still waiting for root device", then when I fix that, the partitioner times out.

[ill_omen]

Yep, I too am a victim of this... Sata issue in OSX 10.5.1..

 

it is the a frustrating thing to ever wind up with.. but anyway..

 

I can say the following methods do not work for a 250GB Weston Digital (for future reference):

 

- deleting all partitions on a drive and asking OSX Installer to create HFS+ (Journalised)

- creating an un-formatted partition and asking OSX Installer to format disk1s3 (or what ever)

 

And a side issue, I've got an authentic 6GB Apple IDE Hard drive, but the damn thing is too small for like.. the last 100 mb or so of the actual Operating System.. *anger*

 

but like you say, I think it's time to simply fork out the money for an IDE drive and hope you have enough IDE controllers on your motherboard