partition for windows 7 and lion os x, im stuck.

[thedartt]

Basically, I have a probook 4530s and have windows 7 reinstalled (i have a disc) and from my macbook I made the bootable lion usb with unibeast. Now that I have the lion, i want to partition my drive for the majority of the hdd to be put towards lion and the rest for windows 7 as ill be using it much less. I can't seem to partition my drive to the way I want using windows, there is only a shrink option which cuts it in half (about) but I don't want equal halves. I would like 600GB or so for lion, and the rest for windows (have a 750gb hdd).

As I boot the lion usb right now, I cannot install over my windows drive, and I also cannot go back to my windows and size them the way I want. I know the disk utility in Lion can do this much more easily, but I cannot get to it since I'm basically blocked from installing Lion right now since windows is taking up all of my space. Windows will not let me format my drive (or so it seems) to put lion on, THEN windows, which is what i'd like to do.

I have fresh installs for windows 7 on the disc and lion from the usb available, so are there any thoughts on how I can work this through? I feel like I should be in control with both of these OS's in my hands, however I'm stuck. Any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks

 

[RehabMan]

Basically, I have a probook 4530s and have windows 7 reinstalled (i have a disc) and from my macbook I made the bootable lion usb with unibeast. Now that I have the lion, i want to partition my drive for the majority of the hdd to be put towards lion and the rest for windows 7 as ill be using it much less. I can't seem to partition my drive to the way I want using windows, there is only a shrink option which cuts it in half (about) but I don't want equal halves. I would like 600GB or so for lion, and the rest for windows (have a 750gb hdd).

As I boot the lion usb right now, I cannot install over my windows drive, and I also cannot go back to my windows and size them the way I want. I know the disk utility in Lion can do this much more easily, but I cannot get to it since I'm basically blocked from installing Lion right now since windows is taking up all of my space. Windows will not let me format my drive (or so it seems) to put lion on, THEN windows, which is what i'd like to do.

I have fresh installs for windows 7 on the disc and lion from the usb available, so are there any thoughts on how I can work this through? I feel like I should be in control with both of these OS's in my hands, however I'm stuck. Any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks

Since you want to install Mac OS X, you are going to have to re-install Windows 7 anyway. This is because Lion requires the disk to be partitioned with GPT partitioning. So, just boot from your Lion/Unibeast stick, and re-partition your drive the way you like. Create two partitions of the size you want in Disk Utility, one Mac OS X Journaled, then other MS-DOS. The easiest way from there is to install Windows first, then Lion. You will have to format that MS-DOS partition to NTFS when in the Windows installer. After getting Windows installed, install Lion, then run the Probook installer to make your Lion partition bootable. Since your HDD is rather large, it is likely a 4k drive, so you will want to do a search on how to install Chimera on that drive.

 

[thedartt]

thanks, these tips I wouldn't have foreseen help, like putting things in certain formats etc. since I haven't done this before. However, your first step is to boot from usb and partition how I like. But, I cannot install my OS X on the same drive I have windows on for some reason, probably because windows is taking up the entire space. In the disk manager on windows 7 it will not let me format the drive since, well... then things would be non-operational. Just want to start clean but can't seem to have my laptop let me put lion on right now. Thoughts on this?

 

[RehabMan]

thanks, these tips I wouldn't have foreseen help, like putting things in certain formats etc. since I haven't done this before. However, your first step is to boot from usb and partition how I like. But, I cannot install my OS X on the same drive I have windows on for some reason, probably because windows is taking up the entire space. In the disk manager on windows 7 it will not let me format the drive since, well... then things would be non-operational. Just want to start clean but can't seem to have my laptop let me put lion on right now. Thoughts on this?

You need to re-partition in Disk Utility. Boot from your Unibeast/Lion USB stick. Then select Disk Utility from the Utility menu. Completely re-partition the drive from there. The reason you are stuck is you are trying to do this from Windows... Please note that re-partitioning will wipe out any data you already have on the Win7 partition, so make sure to backup that data somewhere. Probably obvious, but...

If you want to see a complete quad-boot walk-through, see my blog (see my signature, below). It shows you how to install Win7, Win8, Lion, and Ubuntu. Which is more than you want to do, but you can learn from the steps outlined there...

 

[thedartt]

I'll look into this, thanks rehabman. you're being a great help.

 

[thedartt]

I now see what you mean completely, i didn't realize you could access the disk utility without installing the OS. Silly mistake, rookie mistake. Anyway, i was looking at your quad boot page and had a couple of questions. You list to put windows at fat32, but i'm only given exfat, ms-dos(FAT). can i use ms-dos in place of fat32? also, when it comes to options in disk utility, do i select GUID, apple partition map, or master boot record? otherwise sizing the partitions works perfectly in this program and thanks for pointing it out to me, I'm feeling like im getting closer. just need to know what option to choose for the partition since even when reading through each description it seems a bit cryptic to me. thanks

 

[thedartt]

looks like before i needed an explanation on how to get to disk utility you covered the ms dos and apple journaled part in the original post. still wondering which option to use to partition of the 3 given. sorry, replying to myself so you dont need to repeat yourself.

 

[RehabMan]

I now see what you mean completely, i didn't realize you could access the disk utility without installing the OS. Silly mistake, rookie mistake. Anyway, i was looking at your quad boot page and had a couple of questions. You list to put windows at fat32, but i'm only given exfat, ms-dos(FAT). can i use ms-dos in place of fat32? also, when it comes to options in disk utility, do i select GUID, apple partition map, or master boot record? otherwise sizing the partitions works perfectly in this program and thanks for pointing it out to me, I'm feeling like im getting closer. just need to know what option to choose for the partition since even when reading through each description it seems a bit cryptic to me. thanks

MS-DOS is FAT32. You want GPT (guid partition table), as it is required by OS X.

 

[DirtMcGirt]

Might be somewhat off topic, but I hated having to shutdown & reboot into different partitions to do 1 thing or another so I just got VM Fusion and it runs seamless into OSX (like if you want to transfer files and stuff).

 

[bigmat78]

Is it possible to re-partition, instead of wiping everything and creating two new partitions?

For example, using gpart to shrink or resize the existing windows partition ?