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Mavericks & Windows 8 on same drive without erasing

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Can i create another small partition for OSX( using diskmgmt.msc) and format it in disk utility ( HFS+J) and after installing OSX, Will it retain my Windows partition and the 7.8GB recovery partition?. I don't want to touch my windows files. I want the OEM installed WINDOWS.

I have created USB installer using clover and using the guide given in the forums, it specifically says " It will create a recovery partition". I don't want to lose any files/windows installation/recovery partition from Dell.

Attached Screenshot of diskmgmt.msc for your reference.
 

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Can i create another small partition for OSX( using diskmgmt.msc) and format it in disk utility ( HFS+J) and after installing OSX, Will it retain my Windows partition and the 7.8GB recovery partition?. I don't want to touch my windows files. I want the OEM installed WINDOWS.

Impossible to tell from your screen shot since we don't know if you have an MSR partition or not (Microsoft reserved partition is not shown in diskmgmt.msc, only in diskpart/list part). In order to format the target partition as HFS+J within Disk Utility, there must be no MSR partition.
 
Impossible to tell from your screen shot since we don't know if you have an MSR partition or not (Microsoft reserved partition is not shown in diskmgmt.msc, only in diskpart/list part). In order to format the target partition as HFS+J within Disk Utility, there must be no MSR partition.


Attached.
 

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Note MSR partition at position 3.

Can you guide me how to install mavericks on this disk. Like how to delete this partition and install mavericks and still not lose data ?
 
Can you guide me how to install mavericks on this disk. Like how to delete this partition and install mavericks and still not lose data ?

You should read this thread. You can delete the MSR partition in diskpart. Using diskpart without knowing what you're doing can be dangerous, so make sure you have a backup. A good backup/restore strategy is the only way you can insure you're not going to lose data.
 
My Lenovo came with a ~270MB EFI partition. OS X still doesn't like it much (Verify complains about not having an EFI partition) but I was still able to install.

I think you're right about the size.

I did a default install of Win81. It created the ~300MB Recovery partition, ~100MB EFI, 128MB MSR, and main partition in the remainder. Of course this config causes problems for OS X as it evidently demands a larger EFI partition. After installing Windows, I decided to see if I could fix it.

Since the Recovery partition is not really needed, I sacrificed it.

Goes something like this (from memory):
- boot Windows installer USB
- Shift+F10 for recovery command line
- type: diskpart
- type: list disk (verify disk 0)
- type: select disk 0
- type: list part (you should see the four partitions)
- type: select part 2 (part 2 is 99/100 EFI part)
- type: assign
- type: list vol (to find out the drive letter assigned to EFI/main volume, in my case E: and C: respectively)
- Shift+F10 for another command prompt
- type: robocopy e:\efi c:\efi.bak /mir
- switch back to original command prompt (the one running diskpart)
- type: select part 1
- type: delete part override
- type: select part 2
- type: delete part override
- type: create part efi size=200 (could be bigger)
- type: format quick fs=fat32 label="EFI"
- type: assign
- type: list vol (to find out new drive letter, in my case F: )
- switch back to other command prompt window (the one just running cmd)
- type: robocopy c:\efi.bak f:\EFI /mir
- type: exit
- switch to original command prompt (the one running diskpart)
- type: exit
- type: exit
- Alt+F4 at the Windows installer to quit

At this point, verify that Windows still boots... It should. And after it does, you should now be able to use diskmgmt.msc to resize the Windows partition, create placeholder partition(s) for OS X, and boot into the OS X installer/Disk Utility to erase as HFS+J.

If you wanted to retain the Recovery partition, you could probably clone it and place it after the main partition (assuming Windows isn't dependent on the position and only the partition GUID). The clone would have to be a perfect copy, including the GUID partition type.

Not exactly a process for noobs...

Your guide for altering a already existing Windows 8.1 installation (on my SSD) was very useful! Thanks a lot. Before I had this media kit error in disk utility everytime I tried to format a partition I created in diskmgmt in Win 8.1. Afterwards I could easily format as HFS+ Journaled which allowed to super dupe my installation to my SSD. I created a 350 MB EFI partition and deleted the reserved and recovery partition.
 
Hi, RehabMan,

You have been helpful in the past and hopefully you can be helpful again.

You haven't heard of me for some time as I had (past tense) a good working system, which was ruined (I don't know why) when trying to update to Yosemite. To remind you, I have an IB 4540s with a standard screen. It was a GPT formatted disk, dual boot Windows 8.1. I am loathe to reinstall Windows, so please if there is a way around that, let me know!

The background was that the update to Yosemite failed due to a claimed corrupt OSX partition (see below). So I tried to reinstall using Clover as a bootloader and got to the partitioning (erasing/formatting) of the journaled HFS+ stage, which then just sat there. The reason is as you point out in this thread but your solution is not so transparent to the average (or even experienced) Hackintosher. Moreover, I want to retain as best as possible my Windows and the supporting partitions (in other words, I don't want to solve one problem and create more).

The disk structure is/was as below. Perhaps the corrupt OSX partition (checked only on that partition with the Disk Manager) was related to this structure or perhaps there was an error specific only to that (the common sense view, given the limitation of error checking/fixing to that partition). But certainly, the small EFI and MSR (which limits by the small size and proximity the flexibility for change) do not seem to bide well for a reinstall of OSX. (I should add, that as per your multiboot guide, Windows was added post OSX previously, but now the situation has to be in reverse, as Windows remains sound and bootable).

/disk0 GUID_partition scheme 750.2 GB
/disk0s1 EFI 209.7 MB
/disk0s2 Microsoft Reserved 134.2 MB
/disk0s3 WINDOWS 669.1 GB
/disk0s4 a GUID (identical to that for disk0s5) 367.0 MB
/disk0s5 a GUID (same as above, amazingly!) 367.0 MB

I have checked that MS knows about the two GUID partitions, which are related to the recovery environment for Windows. Previously there was a /disk0s6 (OSX) and a /disk0s7 (the OSX Recovery Partition) but I deleted these using the MS partitioning tool.

I hope you can help with an intelligible to mortals strategy.

Regards,

Stuart
 
Hi, RehabMan,

You have been helpful in the past and hopefully you can be helpful again.

Regards,

Stuart

I used lateral thinking and used a Ubuntu stick, formatting first with gparted and then reformatting with the Disk Utility.

Seems to be going well.

Any pitfalls (eg alignment), would be grateful for your comments.
 
Hi, RehabMan,

You have been helpful in the past and hopefully you can be helpful again.

You haven't heard of me for some time as I had (past tense) a good working system, which was ruined (I don't know why) when trying to update to Yosemite. To remind you, I have an IB 4540s with a standard screen. It was a GPT formatted disk, dual boot Windows 8.1. I am loathe to reinstall Windows, so please if there is a way around that, let me know!

The background was that the update to Yosemite failed due to a claimed corrupt OSX partition (see below). So I tried to reinstall using Clover as a bootloader and got to the partitioning (erasing/formatting) of the journaled HFS+ stage, which then just sat there. The reason is as you point out in this thread but your solution is not so transparent to the average (or even experienced) Hackintosher. Moreover, I want to retain as best as possible my Windows and the supporting partitions (in other words, I don't want to solve one problem and create more).

The disk structure is/was as below. Perhaps the corrupt OSX partition (checked only on that partition with the Disk Manager) was related to this structure or perhaps there was an error specific only to that (the common sense view, given the limitation of error checking/fixing to that partition). But certainly, the small EFI and MSR (which limits by the small size and proximity the flexibility for change) do not seem to bide well for a reinstall of OSX. (I should add, that as per your multiboot guide, Windows was added post OSX previously, but now the situation has to be in reverse, as Windows remains sound and bootable).

/disk0 GUID_partition scheme 750.2 GB
/disk0s1 EFI 209.7 MB
/disk0s2 Microsoft Reserved 134.2 MB
/disk0s3 WINDOWS 669.1 GB
/disk0s4 a GUID (identical to that for disk0s5) 367.0 MB
/disk0s5 a GUID (same as above, amazingly!) 367.0 MB

I have checked that MS knows about the two GUID partitions, which are related to the recovery environment for Windows. Previously there was a /disk0s6 (OSX) and a /disk0s7 (the OSX Recovery Partition) but I deleted these using the MS partitioning tool.

I hope you can help with an intelligible to mortals strategy.

Regards,

Stuart

EFI partition is fine (200MB min is required by OS X). MSR partition is a problem for OS X -- remove it.

It is all detailed in this thread.
 
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