Partition hosed...

mrskitch · #1 10-22-2009, 11:08 PM

Hey y'all- I've got a particular situation that has rendered my hackintosh unable to boot into either os (windows 7/OS 10.6.1). Essentially, I used gParted to move Snow Leopard up in "Free Space" territory to stretch it out for more room (pretty much taking the place of my old 10.5.7).

Turns out, after doing so, Chameleon won't load- Windows 7 install disk wont even let me use diskpart to try and flag the 7 partition. I'm pretty much in a PC that wont boot either way.

SO, my solution is to try one of the new boot132 cd's with 10.6 support and try to use it as a efi loader. Is this even possible? I know alot of people use it to boot the retail DVD of snow- just wondering if it can boot HD's as well.

As always, love this community and thanks for any and all help!

EDIT: My specs are below and I'm using a GUID Partition Table if that helps.

Sweaty · #2 10-23-2009, 06:17 PM

Had a similar problem, tried to format a exfat partition to fat32 (to use between OSes) in SL and it wiped the whole hard drive. Chameleon wouldn't boot from the other drive or USB key until I unplugged that drive. Then it was fine. If disk utilitys done whatever it did to that drive to yours then youre stuffed, probably. sorry.

Dies · #3 10-24-2009, 02:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrskitch

Essentially, I used gParted to move Snow Leopard

That probably was not a good move. ;-)

Not sure why you would choose gparted over disk utility but..

Did you run gptsync after using gparted? Not sure it's required, but probably would have been a good idea, even if just to see the ouput from it.

Is the data still there? In other words, when you boot from a live CD or the OS X install disk can you mount the partitions and see your files?

mrskitch · #4 10-24-2009, 04:03 AM

Well, the boot132 let me back into Snow Leo, which is good. However my options are extremely limited to what I can do on the hard drive.

Essentially, disk utility can see my drive, but I can't do anything to them. Resize/partition--just about anything. Also Windows 7 wont boot even with the install cd to try and repair it. Its like the EFI got tweaked for the wrong somehow...not sure if its repairable or if I even want to since there is 250 gigs of free space out there that I can't even touch.

Unless someone has a way to repair the table or something I'm pulling everything off the drive I can and going to nuke the drive and start all over again which really sucks. All those precious programs, torrents, contacts, and carefully tweaked dual boot....gone.

Well, you live and you learn... then you eventually buy apple hardware (which is what I'll be doing soon, LOL).

thorazine74 · #5 10-24-2009, 02:34 PM

I think you cant live resize partitions in a hybrid gpt/mbr drive without getting into troubles with anything but disk utility.
Try using gptsync as suggested or maybe gpt fdisk to resync the tables.

mrskitch · #6 10-24-2009, 04:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thorazine74

I think you cant live resize partitions in a hybrid gpt/mbr drive without getting into troubles with anything but disk utility.
Try using gptsync as suggested or maybe gpt fdisk to resync the tables.

Thanks, I gave that a shot and it didn't seem to do anything. I did find, however, that once I got rid of the NTFS partition (windows) that all of the sudden disk utility was able to resize the drive, check it, and even repair it.

So, I'm still not exactly sure what happened, but it sounds like the windows partition was the culprit. Thanks for all the help guys.

srs5694 · #7 01-16-2010, 12:41 AM

I know this is an old thread, but I've a couple of comments:

First, Apple's Disk Utility locks out some options if it doesn't see 128MB or more free space after certain partitions. It's conceivable that your NTFS partition didn't have sufficient free space after it, or it was placed too close after your HFS+ partition, and so this was causing at least some of the problems.

Second, gParted probably either converted a hybrid MBR to a conventional GPT or changed the GPT data structures without modifying the MBR. It also may have wiped the boot loader out of the MBR. Converting to a straight-GPT setup would at least leave you with a good GPT, and it would theoretically be possible to create a fresh hybrid MBR and/or re-install the boot loader. Actually doing those things would involve jumping through some hoops; others have mentioned some of the hoops. Changing the GPT structures but not the MBR structures, OTOH, would leave the disk in a dangerously contradictory state -- the two partition tables wouldn't agree with one another and so different OSes and utilities could see the disk in different ways, potentially leading to very serious damage. At this point there's no way of knowing for sure what really happened.

Finally, my GPT fdisk program includes options to repair various types of damage, but real-world testing of those features is scant. It's too late for you now, but if somebody with a similar problem would care to test GPT fdisk, I'd appreciate hearing how it goes. Be cautious, though -- as I said, real-world testing of GPT fdisk's error-recovery options has been limited. These options are also intended for people who know what they're doing. At a minimum, anybody attempting such data recovery should read the Wikipedia entry on GPT to provide some background on GPT layout. That done, start with the 'v' (verify) option to check for damage. That done, reloading the primary or backup partition table or rebuilding the protective MBR might be in order; what would work best depends on the damage.