Problems with Partitions

[steftho]

Hello,

i've the following Problem:
I have 2 Partitions on my acer.. One with Mac OS X 160gb and One with Win 7 160gb.
Yesterday i decided to reduce the ntfs Win7 Partition to 80gb. In Win7 i can See the new 80gb free space. but in osx diskulitys the ntfs Partition has the same size as usaly.

What can i do to enlarge the OS X Partition?

 

[RehabMan]

Hello,

i've the following Problem:
I have 2 Partitions on my acer.. One with Mac OS X 160gb and One with Win 7 160gb.
Yesterday i decided to reduce the ntfs Win7 Partition to 80gb. In Win7 i can See the new 80gb free space. but in osx diskulitys the ntfs Partition has the same size as usaly.

What can i do to enlarge the OS X Partition?

Did you do the partition change in Windows? If you did, not a good idea... In a dual-boot system you have two partition tables: both MBR and GPT. It is important that these stay in sync. When you edit on the Windows side, it only edits the MBR partition table and leaves the GPT side untouched.

For more information on hybrids: http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/hybrid.html

What you should have done was do all editing in Disk Utility if possible (probably not allowed). Disk Utility is "hybrid aware" and keeps both MBR/GPT in sync. Short of that, edits can be done in Linux with gparted, followed by creating the MBR (and thus the hybrid) by running gptsync or gdisk.

My suggestion would be to backup all your data now. It is a good thing that OS X has only read-only access to NTFS drives, because your Windows partition is in danger from any programs accessing it based on the GPT table. After all your data is backed up, I would attempt to resize the Windows partition back to how it was (do that within Windows just like you did when you made it smaller). Hopefully that puts you back in sync and you can then resize properly (using Disk Utility or gparted as explained above). Advanced use of gdisk recovery tools could probably help, but even in the hands of an expert there is the possibility of a mistake. You might have to re-install everything, thus the suggestion to back everything up (everybody has a recent backup available anyway, right... especially before making changes to their partition tables?)

 

[steftho]

Hello,

i´ve a Backup from OSX on the second Partition is only the raw Win7 Installation.

Is it also possible to delete the whole NTFS Partition with Disk Ulity, enlarge the the OS X Partition and reinstall Win7 on the new smaller free Space of my Disk? or could i get problems with the booatloader?

 

[RehabMan]

Hello,

i´ve a Backup from OSX on the second Partition is only the raw Win7 Installation.

Good, although I don't think your OSX partition was too much at risk.

Is it also possible to delete the whole NTFS Partition with Disk Ulity, enlarge the the OS X Partition and reinstall Win7 on the new smaller free Space of my Disk? or could i get problems with the booatloader?

I've never found myself in your situation, but I think that should work. You will want to pay close attention to the target partition attributes (size and relative location, for example) to be sure it matches what you setup once you're in the Windows installer, because I'm not sure what Disk Utility does with a MBR that is clearly not synced with the GPT (does it just not touch it[bad], or does it re-write it[good]).

 

[steftho]

So its done


i just erased the old Win7 NTFS Partition and resized the Mac OS X Partition.
After that i had to format an FAT Partition because the WIN Installer gets an error with an empty
piece of the disk. Now i was able to erase the Fat Partition and make an NTFS Partition.


After installation of Windows 7 the bootloader doesnt work anymore. Only Windows starts up.
So i pluged in the Unibeast USB Installer and started Mac OS X.
I installed with Multibeast the latest Bootloader and now everything is fine

 

[RehabMan]

So its done


i just erased the old Win7 NTFS Partition and resized the Mac OS X Partition.
After that i had to format an FAT Partition because the WIN Installer gets an error with an empty
piece of the disk. Now i was able to erase the Fat Partition and make an NTFS Partition.

I'm not sure what you mean by "erase the Fat Partition and make an NTFS Partition"? What you want to do to prepare for Windows installation is create a MS-DOS (FAT32) partition within OS X Disk Utility, then in the Windows installer, simply format it as NTFS (DO NOT delete it, re-create it... simply format it in place). The idea is to keep your edits to the partition table on the Windows side to a minimum.

After installation of Windows 7 the bootloader doesnt work anymore. Only Windows starts up.
So i pluged in the Unibeast USB Installer and started Mac OS X.
I installed with Multibeast the latest Bootloader and now everything is fine

Hopefully everything is good...

 

[steftho]

I'm not sure what you mean by "erase the Fat Partition and make an NTFS Partition"? What you want to do to prepare for Windows installation is create a MS-DOS (FAT32) partition within OS X Disk Utility, then in the Windows installer, simply format it as NTFS (DO NOT delete it, re-create it... simply format it in place). The idea is to keep your edits to the partition table on the Windows side to a minimum.



Hopefully everything is good...

thats finally the way i choose... but its not so easy for me to explain it in english. Sorry for that.

 

[RehabMan]

thats finally the way i choose... but its not so easy for me to explain it in english. Sorry for that.

No worries. Glad you have it working... and learned something in the process!