Boot camp/Partitioning Problem

[Rooker156]

Hello all. I have run into a wee problem. I am a mac newbie and i kinda messed up my system.

 

I setup bootcamp and installed XP on an NTFS partition. All was well. Then I got the brilliant idea that i should resize the XP partition so i could make a fat32 partition to allow me to sgare files between the two. I had no idea how to go about doing this so I decided to boot off a gparted live CD. Mid-resize I had a power outage. My XP partion no longer shows up under osx. WHen i boot off of the gparted CD it shows that the drive is there, but to run chkdisk on it. How can I run check disk if i can't boot it? ANyway, im sure you are all shaking your heads at what i did wrong. So, if i end up losing my bootcamp partion so be it, but when i re-do it, i want it done right. What would be the steps i i would go thorugh to make two partions other then OSX (so XP and a second partion just for storage one NTFS one Fat32).

 

Also if anyone has any ideas on how i could potentially go about fixing they are more then welcome. Thank you!

[munky]

hi,

 

firstly, i dont think gparted is GPT-aware. GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a more modern disk partitioning system than the older Master Boot Record (MBR) system, but tries to be backwards-compatible by writing an equivalent MBR record to the disk. This is so that older software which isnt aware of GPT can still, theoretically at least, access data on the disk.

 

However, software designed to modify MBR disks can cause havoc with GPT disks - this is because they try to update (ie write to) the 'dummy' MBR record on the GPT disk, and - more often than not - screw the disk up.

 

Lesson for others here: DO NOT {censored} with GPT disks with software which doesnt understand GPT. Explicitly check for GPT compatability!

 

Where you go from here very much depends on the data on your drive. If you have everything backed up, or there's nothing on the disk you cant afford to lose, then boot from the install DVD which came with your Mac and start again. I'd recommend just installing Windows on a FAT32 partition - that way you can share data easily, with only two partitions. Lets call this Option 1.

 

If you're REALLY hell bent on having Windows on NTFS, you could use MacFUSE + NTFS-3g - this is free, opensource software which gives Mac OS X the ability to write to NTFS partitions. We'll call this Option 2.

 

Alternatively, if you're REALLY REALLY hell bent on Windows on NTFS + FAT32 sharing partition + Mac OS X partition, you're on your own, cos im not sure how to do that with Boot Camp This is Option 3.

 

For my money, if you want an easy life, go with Option 1. Windows will run fine on FAT32 - the only limitation you might hit is that you cant have a single file bigger than 4Gb on that partition. If this is likely to be a problem, go with Option 2.

 

Hope this made sense, and is of help.

 

For my money,