Resolved Resizing and Adding Partition Killed Windows 7 Bootcamp Partition

[owntheweb]

Hello Mac Gurus,
Once upon a time a year or so ago I installed Windows 7 on a Bootcamp partition with the help of my IT team. It was a smaller partition as I was only planning to use windows for my music composition software that required it... I didn't realize how much space Windows 7 required (what a hog!) and drive space was limited. After installing a video game recently (also a medium sized porker), I decided to to add some space.

Uh oh!

Using Mac Disk Utility, I reduced my Mac partition and added another MS-DOS (FAT) partition in hopes of making another write access drive accessible to Windows. This resulted in Bootcamp no longer being a bootable option (holding down option key when booting - drive not visible). I can still access my files via Mac and have backed everything up.

I just hope not to reinstall Windows as the music software is finicky and takes FOREVER to download. It's also tricky as I purchased a CD... and don't have a CD drive... and don't want to upgrade to the new online subscription version just yet.

Mac Info: MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)
Running: OS X Yosemite 10.10

Reading similar posts from two years ago, I figured I should post something new. To speed things up based on those posts, I ran this command:

sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

It resulted in this:

gpt show: disk0: mediasize=500277790720; sectorsize=512; blocks=977105060
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 977105059
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6         
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  486328120      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  486737760    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  488007296        384         
  488007680  234964992      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  722972672  254132224      5  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  977104896        131         
  977105027         32         Sec GPT table
  977105059          1         Sec GPT header

I ran this command:

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Results:

Disk: /dev/disk0	geometry: 60821/255/63 [977105060 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  486328120] HFS+        
 3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 486737760 -    1269536] Darwin Boot 
 4: 0B 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 488007680 -  234964992] Win95 FAT-32

I installed this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/

Then ran this:

sudo gdisk -l /dev/disk0

Results:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: hybrid
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/disk0: 977105060 sectors, 465.9 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 00006089-5C8B-0000-1202-00008B620000
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 977105026
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 521 sectors (260.5 KiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI system partition
   2          409640       486737759   231.9 GiB   AF00  Customer
   3       486737760       488007295   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
   4       488007680       722972671   112.0 GiB   0700  THE FAT
   5       722972672       977104895   121.2 GiB   0700  BOOTCAMP

I'm going to go for a walk now and will not destroy anything else...

Any thoughts on how I should proceed to fix my Windows partition? I truly appreciate the feedback in advance!

 

[maflynn]

Well it may or may not be too late, but I recommend the use of Winclone, which backs up your bootcamp partition. Always have a backup before doing any partition work (including your OS X partition).

Secondly, did you try undoing your steps, i.e., remove the FAT partition and resize the OSX partition back to what it was?

 

[owntheweb]

Hello maflynn,
Thanks for the quick response!

I should have known better before mucking around with partitions.

Sadly no WinClone. I do keep my Mac backed up via Time Machine and Time Capsule. Windows is being left out, using basic S3 services to keep important files there backed up (but not OS). I do have access to my separate work MacBook which has helped me in restoring files when my Time Machine backup wasn't fully recognized (that's another long story that ended well).

I did attempt to remove the extra partition and resize the Mac partition. There was some extra empty space there that I tried to approximate. No luck, and I didn't recall the original exact size.

Another related post I'm looking into that gives me hope (not understanding everything here just yet):
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4144252?start=0&tstart=0

 

[owntheweb]

Fixed it!

I followed the steps here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/19047693

Windows is bootable once again. Whoohoo!

Now to the next challenge: Seeing my Mac partition (new: lost it) again in Windows, and also seeing the new FAT partition there. I'll post separately if I get stuck.