Help creating a multi boot drive

The scenario

I have a 4530s which has ML and SL on a 200GB and a 50GB partition and it works great

I want to run an i7 and I watched a vid on YouTube on how to upgrade a 4530s and it looked hard

I watched a vid on how to upgrade a 4540s and it looked easy

I bought a 4540s

The 4540s has Windows 8.1 and I want to keep this partition

I want to keep the partitions on my 4530s

I have bought a 1TB drive for the 4540s and I want to create a machine which boots Mac and Windows

Ideally I want my Mac to be identical to what I have now

I have used 'Carbon Copy Cloner' to back up and move machines in the past

I put a bigger drive in this machine and simply cloned the partitions, then ran Chameleon and all was well.

I am pretty up on all things Mac and this is not the issue.

It is the Windows partition that I don't know anything about.

If I want to create a dual boot machine, how do I get Windows from the 320GB machine I have here, onto a 500GB partition on the new drive?

Is it best to use 'Disk Utility'

The Windows machine is NTFS so do I format the partition as NTFS and will Chameleon/Chimerea recognise it?

When I run the Mac for the first time on the 4540s do I delete the profiles and create new ones?

All advice gratefully received.

Finally, I imagine I will create three boot partitions

500GB Windows

300GB ML (might upgrade to Mavericks)

200GB SL (and offline storage)

Many thanks

funnymachine said:

The scenario

I have a 4530s which has ML and SL on a 200GB and a 50GB partition and it works great

I want to run an i7 and I watched a vid on YouTube on how to upgrade a 4530s and it looked hard

I watched a vid on how to upgrade a 4540s and it looked easy

I bought a 4540s

The 4540s has Windows 8.1 and I want to keep this partition

I want to keep the partitions on my 4530s

I have bought a 1TB drive for the 4540s and I want to create a machine which boots Mac and Windows

Ideally I want my Mac to be identical to what I have now

I have used 'Carbon Copy Cloner' to back up and move machines in the past

I put a bigger drive in this machine and simply cloned the partitions, then ran Chameleon and all was well.

I am pretty up on all things Mac and this is not the issue.

It is the Windows partition that I don't know anything about.

If I want to create a dual boot machine, how do I get Windows from the 320GB machine I have here, onto a 500GB partition on the new drive?

Is it best to use 'Disk Utility'

The Windows machine is NTFS so do I format the partition as NTFS and will Chameleon/Chimerea recognise it?

When I run the Mac for the first time on the 4540s do I delete the profiles and create new ones?

All advice gratefully received.

Finally, I imagine I will create three boot partitions

500GB Windows

300GB ML (might upgrade to Mavericks)

200GB SL (and offline storage)

Many thanks

Click to expand...

http://www.tonymacx86.com/multi-booting/96000-guide-dual-booting-mountain-lion-windows-8-a.html

Okay thanks

I have followed all the instructions and ended up with Boot0 errors

I have been doing this since 6pm last night and I am totally fried

I have done the terminal thing to the drive from my Mac and it thinks it is all done

I have tried Chimera, Chameleon, Clover, every which way

HELP!

Here is what I have done

Formatted drive GUID

750 FAT32

200 Mac OS Journaled for ML

50 Mac Os Journaled for SL

Cloned existing ML and SL to new drive

Mounted drive on PC

Reformatted FAT32 to NTFS

Cloned entire Win 8.1 system to 750 partition

Installed various boot loaders (get Boot 0 errot)

Tried every command line for for Boot0 error from my existing working Mac taking note of drive names and partitions

Tried lots of different BIOS settings

Will not boot on 4530 or 4540 please help

Thought I may be able to use Chameleon to boot into USB partition

If I connect the drive to the working 4530 the machine refuses to boot and locks on HP logo

Any ideas?

I am here in pile of my own dribble awaiting further instructions

Thanks

- - - Updated - - -

Okay thanks

I have followed all the instructions and ended up with Boot0 errors

I have been doing this since 6pm last night and I am totally fried

I have done the terminal thing to the drive from my Mac and it thinks it is all done

I have tried Chimera, Chameleon, Clover, every which way

HELP!

Here is what I have done

Formatted drive GUID

750 FAT32

200 Mac OS Journaled for ML

50 Mac Os Journaled for SL

Cloned existing ML and SL to new drive

Mounted drive on PC

Reformatted FAT32 to NTFS

Cloned entire Win 8.1 system to 750 partition

Installed various boot loaders (get Boot 0 errot)

Tried every command line for for Boot0 error from my existing working Mac taking note of drive names and partitions

Tried lots of different BIOS settings

Will not boot on 4530 or 4540 please help

Thought I may be able to use Chameleon to boot into USB partition

If I connect the drive to the working 4530 the machine refuses to boot and locks on HP logo

Any ideas?

I am here in pile of my own dribble awaiting further instructions

Thanks

funnymachine said:

Okay thanks

I have followed all the instructions and ended up with Boot0 errors
...

Click to expand...

ProBook guide: http://www.tonymacx86.com/hp-probook/77057-guide-installing-mountain-lion-hp-probook.html

Boot0: http://www.tonymacx86.com/25-boot0-error-official-guide.html

Dual-boot: http://www.tonymacx86.com/multi-booting/96000-guide-dual-booting-mountain-lion-windows-8-a.html

Yes, thank you - I have read all of those over and over and I am not getting anywhere with it

I have followed all the instructions carefully

I am guessing it is not going to be possible to simply clone my existing and working 4530s partitions to a new hard drive along with the existing Windows 8.1 partition on the 4540s

I have two main problems

Chimera/Clover does not see the Windows partition (I have now booted from an ISO CD)

The drive is 4096 sector

Now, I am going to clone Windows to a single GUID partition using a program I found to do it

Then when Windows works, perhaps I can create my other partitions?

I am only doing all this because my Mac Mini blew up!

Maybe I should just go get it fixed ;/)

funnymachine said:

Yes, thank you - I have read all of those over and over and I am not getting anywhere with it

I have followed all the instructions carefully

I am guessing it is not going to be possible to simply clone my existing and working 4530s partitions to a new hard drive along with the existing Windows 8.1 partition on the 4540s

I have two main problems

Chimera/Clover does not see the Windows partition (I have now booted from an ISO CD)

The drive is 4096 sector

Now, I am going to clone Windows to a single GUID partition using a program I found to do it

Then when Windows works, perhaps I can create my other partitions?

I am only doing all this because my Mac Mini blew up!

Maybe I should just go get it fixed ;/)

Click to expand...

Start with just OS X. Resolve the bootloader issues with only OS X first.

Win8.1 could be a UEFI install. In which case, it cannot be booted with Chameleon (you would have to use Clover UEFI). And obviously you're not using Clover UEFI as boot0 errors are impossible with it.

Cloning the Windows partitions can be done with Linux gparted. But that will not repair the Windows BCD files used by the Windows bootloader. That you will probably need to repair manually with BCDEDIT from within the Windows RE (recovery environment). It can be done but requires skills at the Windows command line (w/ BCDEDIT, DISKPART, etc.) and some knowledge about how the Windows bootloader works and what it needs in the BOOT\BCD file.