Resolved rMBP, Bootcamp off thunderbolt drive - MORE COMPLETE SOLUTION

[murphychris]

I have observed windows doing exactly this before in my own PC, it seems to want to stick the boot files on lowest numbered disk that's marked active unless it has no choice.

So the issue here is that your own PC has a true BIOS, which will see all attached disks, and number them in a particular order. The boot order can be selected in BIOS setup, which a PC has. Apple hardware does not. So my guess is that either you had Windows installed at one time on this other SSD. Multiple boot loader code (on two or more disks) confuses Apple's firmware, and that confusion manifests itself differently on different models. Most of the time zeroing sector 0's first 440 bytes, and restoring the hybrid MBR to a PMBR will fix this confusion, and Apple's EFI will exclude GPT only disks from scan. The first disk found to have a hybrid MBR, with bootloader code in the first 440 bytes of sector 0, and with a partition marked active (bootable) will be the one it tries to boot from.

In any case the rMBP appears to be behaving differently. Unclear if it's a feature or a bug.

----------

I can't believe it but a MBR was created on the internal fat portion see below

I think you're confused. Paste the previous command that created the mbr0.bin file.

 

[Mikewh]

So the issue here is that your own PC has a true BIOS, which will see all attached disks, and number them in a particular order. The boot order can be selected in BIOS setup, which a PC has. Apple hardware does not. So my guess is that either you had Windows installed at one time on this other SSD. Multiple boot loader code (on two or more disks) confuses Apple's firmware, and that confusion manifests itself differently on different models. Most of the time zeroing sector 0's first 440 bytes, and restoring the hybrid MBR to a PMBR will fix this confusion, and Apple's EFI will exclude GPT only disks from scan. The first disk found to have a hybrid MBR, with bootloader code in the first 440 bytes of sector 0, and with a partition marked active (bootable) will be the one it tries to boot from.

In any case the rMBP appears to be behaving differently. Unclear if it's a feature or a bug.

----------



I think you're confused. Paste the previous command that created the mbr0.bin file.

Your right. see previous post

 

[Mikewh]

the initial dump showed the mbr and now the next dump shows clearing of mbr. I will reboot and see if I can boot into windows.

MW

Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 of=~/mbr0.bin bs=512 count=1
Password:
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes transferred in 0.000380 secs (1347229 bytes/sec)
Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ hexdump -C ~/mbr0.bin
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
000001b0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  a6 a1 33 20 00 00 00 fe  |..........3 ....|
000001c0  ff ff ee fe ff ff 01 00  00 00 27 40 06 00 00 fe  |..........'@....|
000001d0  ff ff af fe ff ff 28 40  06 00 e0 58 82 39 00 fe  |......(@...X.9..|
000001e0  ff ff ab fe ff ff 08 99  88 39 20 5f 13 00 80 fe  |.........9 _....|
000001f0  ff ff 0b fe ff ff 00 00  9c 39 00 70 a1 00 55 aa  |.........9.p..U.|
00000200

----------

Upon reboot after clearing mbr from internal sad, my external thunderbolt win 7 no longer shows up on option screen

 

[murphychris]

the initial dump showed the mbr and now the next dump shows clearing of mbr. I will reboot and see if I can boot into windows.

No, what you show (below) is the lack of bootloader code in the 2nd dump. The MBR partition map is still present.

What EXACTLY happened in between these two dumps to cause this bootloader code to be cleared?

Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 of=~/mbr0.bin bs=512 count=1

That command produces a binary file of the contents of disk0's first sector, also known as the MBR which contains two parts, 440 bytes of bootloader code, and the rest contains the MBR partition map. It has nothing at all to do with the 5GB FAT partition you created would which be device /dev/disk0s4. Had you used that designation you'd have the first sector of that partition, rather than the first sector of the disk.

Now the question is why the same exact command on the same disk is producing different results. I suggest you confirm after every reboot, which disk is designated as disk0 because that is not a guaranteed static assignment. You may have actually gotten sectors off two different disks. Are the SSD's still designated as they were before with the larger SSD as disk0 and the smaller as disk1?

diskutil list

Upon reboot after clearing mbr from internal sad, my external thunderbolt win 7 no longer shows up on option screen

Wait wait wait.

1. Why did you clear the MBR from your internal SSD in the first place? No, nevermind, I don't want to know. It makes no sense.

2. When I asked you to post the results of diskutil list, in post #45 your results only showed two disks, and it was the small 64GB SSD that had Windows. You didn't say you also had Windows on a Thunderbolt drive. Why isn't diskutil list showing all of the drives? The Thunderbolt drive isn't listed.

----------

3. Did you keep/rename the mbr0.bin from the first time you used it? The one that has the bootloader code? Or did you overwrite that file when you issued the dd command a second time resulting in a new mbr0.bin file without the bootloader code?

My point is, if you had kept the bin file as a backup before deciding to obliterate your MBR, you'd be able to write that back to the disk and restore Windows bootability. But if you overwrote it...well, holy crap that was a bad idea.

 

[Mikewh]

synopsis so far

From my understanding now.

Without the internal fat partition created, windows 7 installer will not install on the external thunderbolt drive (error code 0x8000024). From apple support forums on older MBP's all that was required was removal of the main drive and install went forward. This does not work for the rMBP. When I removed the internal SSD and booted from the win7 installer, the instaler froze and did not continue at the microsoft windows boot screen. (I waited 5 min without progress).

The only way I was able to install on the thunderbolt drive was to create a new fat partition on the internal SSD. (likely can be smaller than 5 gb).

From the install to the external drive, it appears that Windows 7 installer a mbr is created on the internal ssd. (also mbr on external drive). When internal mbr is deleted, the external drive no longer shows up on the option screen for boot into windows.

What suggestions can I try next?

----------

No, what you show (below) is the lack of bootloader code in the 2nd dump. The MBR partition map is still present.

What EXACTLY happened in between these two dumps to cause this bootloader code to be cleared?



That command produces a binary file of the contents of disk0's first sector, also known as the MBR which contains two parts, 440 bytes of bootloader code, and the rest contains the MBR partition map. It has nothing at all to do with the 5GB FAT partition you created would which be device /dev/disk0s4. Had you used that designation you'd have the first sector of that partition, rather than the first sector of the disk.

Now the question is why the same exact command on the same disk is producing different results. I suggest you confirm after every reboot, which disk is designated as disk0 because that is not a guaranteed static assignment. You may have actually gotten sectors off two different disks. Are the SSD's still designated as they were before with the larger SSD as disk0 and the smaller as disk1?

diskutil list

Wait wait wait.

1. Why did you clear the MBR from your internal SSD in the first place? No, nevermind, I don't want to know. It makes no sense.

2. When I asked you to post the results of diskutil list, in post #45 your results only showed two disks, and it was the small 64GB SSD that had Windows. You didn't say you also had Windows on a Thunderbolt drive. Why isn't diskutil list showing all of the drives? The Thunderbolt drive isn't listed.

----------

3. Did you keep/rename the mbr0.bin from the first time you used it? The one that has the bootloader code? Or did you overwrite that file when you issued the dd command a second time resulting in a new mbr0.bin file without the bootloader code?

My point is, if you had kept the bin file as a backup before deciding to obliterate your MBR, you'd be able to write that back to the disk and restore Windows bootability. But if you overwrote it...well, holy crap that was a bad idea.

I will start the process all over and get the mbr file dumps after install. Likely will do this this week. I'll try to do it step by step and wait for your replies.

 

[murphychris]

Start over? After install? What?

I suggest you slow down and stop changing things. I can't keep up with the changes.

You have posted your prior working MBR in its entirety to the forum. If you've overwritten mbr0.bin on your disk with a file of the same name without a bootloader, you can recreate the original binary file from what you posted on the forum in post #50, and write that file back to sector 0 and get your existing installation working again. You don't have to start over.

 

[Mikewh]

From the initial posts #4, 5, and 6

 Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *64.0 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                63.8 GB    disk0s2
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            494.0 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data FAT                     5.4 GB     disk1s4

From cold boot Thunderbolt external drive is now disk0.

sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 of=~/mbr0.bin bs=512 count=1
hexdump -C ~/mbr0.bin

Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 of=~/mbr0.bin bs=512 count=1
Password:
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes transferred in 0.000421 secs (1216016 bytes/sec)
Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ hexdump -C ~/mbr0.bin
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
000001b0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  b1 37 e7 d3 00 00 00 fe  |.........7......|
000001c0  ff ff ee fe ff ff 01 00  00 00 27 40 06 00 00 fe  |..........'@....|
000001d0  ff ff 07 fe ff ff 00 48  06 00 00 c0 6d 07 00 00  |.......H....m...|
000001e0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
000001f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa  |..............U.|
00000200
Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ 

sudo dd if=/dev/disk1 of=~/mbr1.bin bs=512 count=1
hexdump -C ~/mbr1.bin

Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ hexdump -C ~/mbr1.bin
00000000  33 c0 8e d0 bc 00 7c 8e  c0 8e d8 be 00 7c bf 00  |3.....|......|..|
00000010  06 b9 00 02 fc f3 a4 50  68 1c 06 cb fb b9 04 00  |.......Ph.......|
00000020  bd be 07 80 7e 00 00 7c  0b 0f 85 0e 01 83 c5 10  |....~..|........|
00000030  e2 f1 cd 18 88 56 00 55  c6 46 11 05 c6 46 10 00  |.....V.U.F...F..|
00000040  b4 41 bb aa 55 cd 13 5d  72 0f 81 fb 55 aa 75 09  |.A..U..]r...U.u.|
00000050  f7 c1 01 00 74 03 fe 46  10 66 60 80 7e 10 00 74  |....t..F.f`.~..t|
00000060  26 66 68 00 00 00 00 66  ff 76 08 68 00 00 68 00  |&fh....f.v.h..h.|
00000070  7c 68 01 00 68 10 00 b4  42 8a 56 00 8b f4 cd 13  ||h..h...B.V.....|
00000080  9f 83 c4 10 9e eb 14 b8  01 02 bb 00 7c 8a 56 00  |............|.V.|
00000090  8a 76 01 8a 4e 02 8a 6e  03 cd 13 66 61 73 1c fe  |.v..N..n...fas..|
000000a0  4e 11 75 0c 80 7e 00 80  0f 84 8a 00 b2 80 eb 84  |N.u..~..........|
000000b0  55 32 e4 8a 56 00 cd 13  5d eb 9e 81 3e fe 7d 55  |U2..V...]...>.}U|
000000c0  aa 75 6e ff 76 00 e8 8d  00 75 17 fa b0 d1 e6 64  |.un.v....u.....d|
000000d0  e8 83 00 b0 df e6 60 e8  7c 00 b0 ff e6 64 e8 75  |......`.|....d.u|
000000e0  00 fb b8 00 bb cd 1a 66  23 c0 75 3b 66 81 fb 54  |.......f#.u;f..T|
000000f0  43 50 41 75 32 81 f9 02  01 72 2c 66 68 07 bb 00  |CPAu2....r,fh...|
00000100  00 66 68 00 02 00 00 66  68 08 00 00 00 66 53 66  |.fh....fh....fSf|
00000110  53 66 55 66 68 00 00 00  00 66 68 00 7c 00 00 66  |SfUfh....fh.|..f|
00000120  61 68 00 00 07 cd 1a 5a  32 f6 ea 00 7c 00 00 cd  |ah.....Z2...|...|
00000130  18 a0 b7 07 eb 08 a0 b6  07 eb 03 a0 b5 07 32 e4  |..............2.|
00000140  05 00 07 8b f0 ac 3c 00  74 09 bb 07 00 b4 0e cd  |......<.t.......|
00000150  10 eb f2 f4 eb fd 2b c9  e4 64 eb 00 24 02 e0 f8  |......+..d..$...|
00000160  24 02 c3 49 6e 76 61 6c  69 64 20 70 61 72 74 69  |$..Invalid parti|
00000170  74 69 6f 6e 20 74 61 62  6c 65 00 45 72 72 6f 72  |tion table.Error|
00000180  20 6c 6f 61 64 69 6e 67  20 6f 70 65 72 61 74 69  | loading operati|
00000190  6e 67 20 73 79 73 74 65  6d 00 4d 69 73 73 69 6e  |ng system.Missin|
000001a0  67 20 6f 70 65 72 61 74  69 6e 67 20 73 79 73 74  |g operating syst|
000001b0  65 6d 00 00 00 63 7b 9a  a6 a1 33 20 00 00 00 fe  |em...c{...3 ....|
000001c0  ff ff ee fe ff ff 01 00  00 00 27 40 06 00 00 fe  |..........'@....|
000001d0  ff ff af fe ff ff 28 40  06 00 e0 58 82 39 00 fe  |......(@...X.9..|
000001e0  ff ff ab fe ff ff 08 99  88 39 20 5f 13 00 80 fe  |.........9 _....|
000001f0  ff ff 0b fe ff ff 00 00  9c 39 00 70 a1 00 55 aa  |.........9.p..U.|
00000200

No bootloader on external thunderbolt drive. Windows 7 is currently on external drive. It looks like bootloader is on internal drive.

Can the internal bootloader on internal drive be moved to external thunderbolt drive?

How would I do this?

 

[murphychris]

Mikewh, you are very confused and you're really confusing me too.

New rule: your mbr0.bin and mbr1.bin files need better file names because it's not just a one disk system like when I originally suggested to someone else to use that dd command. So I suggest you rename them something more descriptive.

Post #50 contains an mbr0.bin whose bootloader and MBR partition map are identical to the Post #57 mbr1.bin. These two clearly are for the internal 500GB drive.

You say in post #54 that:

Upon reboot after clearing mbr from internal sad, my external thunderbolt win 7 no longer shows up on option screen

What does this mean? What did you do? You must not have done what you think you did or post #57's mb1.bin would not contain bootloader code. This statement is very confusing.

Can the internal bootloader on internal drive be moved to external thunderbolt drive?

Yes dd can do this, but I wish you'd slow down and stop speculating on the next step in totally f'n up your computer. You are like an ox in a china shop.

Do you even know for sure the TB drive had a bootloader on it?

This situation fairly well proves that the FAT partition on the internal disk has NOTHING to do with why you were able to boot Windows off the TB drive because that partition is still there, and yet you can't boot.

Please post the CURRENT results from the following commands:

diskutil list
fdisk /dev/disk0
fdisk /dev/disk1

 

[Mikewh]

New rule: your mbr0.bin and mbr1.bin files need better file names because it's not just a one disk system like when I originally suggested to someone else to use that dd command. So I suggest you rename them something more descriptive.

Post #50 contains an mbr0.bin whose bootloader and MBR partition map are identical to the Post #57 mbr1.bin. These two clearly are for the internal 500GB drive.

Here is what I did. I know I will slow down. I scrapped everything and started over and the results from post #57 were from the restart.

I will officially rename mbr1.bin to internal.bin.

The other bin from my thunderbolt will be named thunder.bin

You say in post #54 that:

Upon reboot after clearing mbr from internal sad, my external thunderbolt win 7 no longer shows up on option screen

What does this mean? What did you do? You must not have done what you think you did or post #57's mb1.bin would not contain bootloader code. This statement is very confusing.

Again, Post#57 is the redo of my work. Win 7 now is booting.

Yes dd can do this, but I wish you'd slow down and stop speculating on the next step in totally f'n up your computer. You are like an ox in a china shop.

Do you even know for sure the TB drive had a bootloader on it?

After I f'd up everything, the tb drive did not have a bootloader after all. That is why I started over at post #57.
I am now able to boot after reinstall.

Please post the CURRENT results from the following commands:

diskutil list
fdisk /dev/disk0
fdisk /dev/disk1

diskutil list:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            494.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data FAT                     5.4 GB     disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *64.0 GB    disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                63.8 GB    disk1s2

drive order changed this am. Yesterday disk0 was thunderbolt and internal was disk1

fdisk /dev/disk0

Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Password:
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 -  964843744] HFS+        
 3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 965253384 -    1269536] Darwin Boot 
*4: 0B 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 966524928 -   10579968] Win95 FAT-32

fdisk /dev/disk1

Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk1
Disk: /dev/disk1	geometry: 7783/255/63 [125045424 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: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    411648 -  124633088] HPFS/QNX/AUX
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

Thanks for your help.

----------

Here are the new renamed bins.

Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ hexdump -C ~/THUNDER.BIN
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
000001b0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  b1 37 e7 d3 00 00 00 fe  |.........7......|
000001c0  ff ff ee fe ff ff 01 00  00 00 27 40 06 00 00 fe  |..........'@....|
000001d0  ff ff 07 fe ff ff 00 48  06 00 00 c0 6d 07 00 00  |.......H....m...|
000001e0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
000001f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa  |..............U.|
00000200
Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ hexdump -C ~/internal.bin
00000000  33 c0 8e d0 bc 00 7c 8e  c0 8e d8 be 00 7c bf 00  |3.....|......|..|
00000010  06 b9 00 02 fc f3 a4 50  68 1c 06 cb fb b9 04 00  |.......Ph.......|
00000020  bd be 07 80 7e 00 00 7c  0b 0f 85 0e 01 83 c5 10  |....~..|........|
00000030  e2 f1 cd 18 88 56 00 55  c6 46 11 05 c6 46 10 00  |.....V.U.F...F..|
00000040  b4 41 bb aa 55 cd 13 5d  72 0f 81 fb 55 aa 75 09  |.A..U..]r...U.u.|
00000050  f7 c1 01 00 74 03 fe 46  10 66 60 80 7e 10 00 74  |....t..F.f`.~..t|
00000060  26 66 68 00 00 00 00 66  ff 76 08 68 00 00 68 00  |&fh....f.v.h..h.|
00000070  7c 68 01 00 68 10 00 b4  42 8a 56 00 8b f4 cd 13  ||h..h...B.V.....|
00000080  9f 83 c4 10 9e eb 14 b8  01 02 bb 00 7c 8a 56 00  |............|.V.|
00000090  8a 76 01 8a 4e 02 8a 6e  03 cd 13 66 61 73 1c fe  |.v..N..n...fas..|
000000a0  4e 11 75 0c 80 7e 00 80  0f 84 8a 00 b2 80 eb 84  |N.u..~..........|
000000b0  55 32 e4 8a 56 00 cd 13  5d eb 9e 81 3e fe 7d 55  |U2..V...]...>.}U|
000000c0  aa 75 6e ff 76 00 e8 8d  00 75 17 fa b0 d1 e6 64  |.un.v....u.....d|
000000d0  e8 83 00 b0 df e6 60 e8  7c 00 b0 ff e6 64 e8 75  |......`.|....d.u|
000000e0  00 fb b8 00 bb cd 1a 66  23 c0 75 3b 66 81 fb 54  |.......f#.u;f..T|
000000f0  43 50 41 75 32 81 f9 02  01 72 2c 66 68 07 bb 00  |CPAu2....r,fh...|
00000100  00 66 68 00 02 00 00 66  68 08 00 00 00 66 53 66  |.fh....fh....fSf|
00000110  53 66 55 66 68 00 00 00  00 66 68 00 7c 00 00 66  |SfUfh....fh.|..f|
00000120  61 68 00 00 07 cd 1a 5a  32 f6 ea 00 7c 00 00 cd  |ah.....Z2...|...|
00000130  18 a0 b7 07 eb 08 a0 b6  07 eb 03 a0 b5 07 32 e4  |..............2.|
00000140  05 00 07 8b f0 ac 3c 00  74 09 bb 07 00 b4 0e cd  |......<.t.......|
00000150  10 eb f2 f4 eb fd 2b c9  e4 64 eb 00 24 02 e0 f8  |......+..d..$...|
00000160  24 02 c3 49 6e 76 61 6c  69 64 20 70 61 72 74 69  |$..Invalid parti|
00000170  74 69 6f 6e 20 74 61 62  6c 65 00 45 72 72 6f 72  |tion table.Error|
00000180  20 6c 6f 61 64 69 6e 67  20 6f 70 65 72 61 74 69  | loading operati|
00000190  6e 67 20 73 79 73 74 65  6d 00 4d 69 73 73 69 6e  |ng system.Missin|
000001a0  67 20 6f 70 65 72 61 74  69 6e 67 20 73 79 73 74  |g operating syst|
000001b0  65 6d 00 00 00 63 7b 9a  a6 a1 33 20 00 00 00 fe  |em...c{...3 ....|
000001c0  ff ff ee fe ff ff 01 00  00 00 27 40 06 00 00 fe  |..........'@....|
000001d0  ff ff af fe ff ff 28 40  06 00 e0 58 82 39 00 fe  |......(@...X.9..|
000001e0  ff ff ab fe ff ff 08 99  88 39 20 5f 13 00 80 fe  |.........9 _....|
000001f0  ff ff 0b fe ff ff 00 00  9c 39 00 70 a1 00 55 aa  |.........9.p..U.|
00000200

 

[murphychris]

This 5GB "FAT" volume, does it automount? Are there any files in it?

Try this if it's already mounted:

ls -la /Volumes/FAT

Or this if it's not mounted:

diskutil mount readonly /dev/disk0s4
ls -la /Volumes/FAT

 

[Mikewh]

This 5GB "FAT" volume, does it automount? Are there any files in it?

Try this if it's already mounted:

ls -la /Volumes/FAT

It is an automount volume. I have not accessed it but here is result of ls command

Michaels-MacBook-Pro:~ michaelwheaton$ ls -la /Volumes/FAT
total 816
drwxrwxrwx  1 michaelwheaton  staff    4096 Aug 22 06:25 .
drwxrwxrwt@ 6 root            admin     204 Aug 22 09:34 ..
drwxrwxrwx  1 michaelwheaton  staff    4096 Aug 21 13:14 .Spotlight-V100
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 michaelwheaton  staff    4096 Aug 22 06:25 .Trashes
-rwxrwxrwx  1 michaelwheaton  staff    4096 Aug 21 13:14 ._.Trashes
-rwxrwxrwx  1 michaelwheaton  staff     289 Aug 21 15:59 .apdisk
drwxrwxrwx  1 michaelwheaton  staff    4096 Aug 22 06:25 .fseventsd
-rwxrwxrwx  1 michaelwheaton  staff     512 Aug 21 20:38 BOOTSECT.BAK
drwxrwxrwx  1 michaelwheaton  staff    4096 Aug 21 17:25 Boot
-rwxrwxrwx  1 michaelwheaton  staff  383786 Nov 20  2010 bootmgr

 

[murphychris]

I think I know what's going on. It's FOUR things that's making the Thunderbolt disk bootable.

Creating the FAT partition on the internal disk cause these two things to occur:
1. Created hybrid MBR, including an entry for the 5GB FAT partition.

2. Set the active flag on one of the MBR partitions (it doesn't matter which one gets it, as long as it's not partition 1, but in this case it is the 5GB FAT partition that is marked bootable.)

The Windows 7 installer is probably figuring out that the Thunderbolt disk isn't a BIOS bootable disk on the rMBP and it implodes unless it has another option to install the bootloader files onto; which steps 1 and 2 above uniquely provide that Boot Camp Assistant does not do on its own.

3. The Windows 7 installer places the first bootloader in the bootloader section of the MBR on the internal disk. It's job is to jump to a specific LBA on the same disk.

4. The Windows 7 installer places the next stage bootloader in the 5G FAT volume. And its job is to jump to a totally different device, the Thunderbolt drive, to boot Windows.


So this means that a FAT (or probably an NTFS) volume is needed on the internal disk to make certain external disks bootable on rMBPs and possibly other models.

The diskutil resize volume solution will only work if the internal disk has three partitions or fewer, which is normally the case: EFI System, Macintosh HD, Recovery HD. If there are four already, when diskutil creates a fifth partition it will not create a hybrid MBR and this solution will not work alone. But using gdisk, a differently formatted hybrid MBR (where only the last partition, the FAT32/NTFS partition for boot files) is placed in the MBR and flagged bootable) will allow this to work.

It should be possible to use vifs to edit /etc/fstab to prevent this FAT volume from being read/write mounted, which is a somewhat fragile situation possibly.

So now we just need someone else to test this.

 

[Mikewh]

Link please? Helps us know what you were trying to do.

Thanks,

B

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3342924?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2382648?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2023317?start=0&tstart=0

 

[balamw]

It should be possible to use vifs to edit /etc/fstab to prevent this FAT volume from being read/write mounted, which is a somewhat fragile situation possibly.

You might even using ro,noauto to stop it from mounting at all unless told to. Similar to http://apple.stackexchange.com/ques...ootcamp-partition-from-automatically-mounting

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3342924?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2382648?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2023317?start=0&tstart=0

All of those seem to predate TB and the rMBP so I'm still left wondering what specifically was your starting point.

I don't think you meant "Remove all of your internal drives except for the one where you're installing Windows. That's it." as mentioned in the first link.

B

 

[Mikewh]

You might even using ro,noauto to stop it from mounting at all unless told to. Similar to http://apple.stackexchange.com/ques...ootcamp-partition-from-automatically-mounting



All of those seem to predate TB and the rMBP so I'm still left wondering what specifically was your starting point.

I don't think you meant "Remove all of your internal drives except for the one where you're installing Windows. That's it." as mentioned in the first link.

B

Correct I only removed my internal drive to see if I could overcome the 0x80300024 windows install error.

As for as the other links used I unfortunately didn't keep track of all of them. Some addressed using thunderbolt as a boot drive but little was out there for the actual install with a rMBP.

Here was another link from this forum

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1368512/

 

[kimovski]

I got a spare external hard drive, so i tried plugged into goflex thunderbolt adapter, just to try out since i got a windows desktop. Followed instruction and successful installed windows.

 

[mixvio]

Sorry to bump this but I've been attempting the same thing and having no luck.

Initially I tried to get it working via USB and a SSD in an enclosure, following this guide --

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7-to-usb-external-hard-drive-must-read/

I was able to get Windows 7 installed, but when booting from the drive it would show the Windows 7 logo for a bit and then bluescreen; the particular STOP error referred to the disc being unavailable (and if I went into safe mode it would cause the same bluescreen whilst loading disk.sys), but oddly enough I could get it to work on my other non-Apple computers. Hunting around it seemed to be that part-way through the process the USB controller was being reset, which the OS interpreted as me suddenly removing the drive from the computer.

I figured I would attempt it with Thunderbolt instead of USB and see if I had any better luck with this.

Following the instructions in the first post I created the bootcamp partition and added the ISO and drivers to a USB stick; rebooting into setup, I was able to install to the Thunderbolt device directly finally. Unfortunately after the first stage of setup was complete (when it resets and loads Windows again to continue setup) it immediately gives me an error and tells me to load setup and select Startup Repair. I forget what the specific file it said it couldn't access was, but something in System32 that looked like it was boot.os or something vaguely similar. Unfortunately Startup Repair couldn't fix it, and I was stalled earlier on in the bootup sequence than even the bluescreen over USB.

Has anybody gotten this to actually work at all? I wanted to push Windows onto an external drive solely to dual-boot it without having to devote part of my rMBP's SSD to a second partition. Having done a slightly different hack in the past with an Eee and convincing the system a USB HD was actually internal, I'm already aware of the speed limitations (though Thunderbolt + SSD is pretty fast), and right now it simply seems to be a technical issue.

I'd love to get this working. My next attempt will involve the Windows 8 RC to see if that's any better, since I've read that it supposedly natively supports EFI over BIOS. But as that's just a RC I'd rather get Windows 7 working if I can.

 

[murphychris]

@mixvio

The experiences I've had with the Macbook Pro 4,1 are consistent with your description, in that the USB bus would just get yanked away shortly after the bootloader stage, when booting with the CSM. This is an Apple firmware limitation, and the only work around is to not depend on the CSM, i.e. booting in EFI mode.

And from what I've read, it takes quite a bit of work to get Windows 7 to EFI boot on Apple hardware, and separate and additional work to get Windows 7 to boot from USB.

So I think the best chance is Windows 8, EFI boot which is looking to be much easier (or at least more likely to work without much or any hacking), and USB booting is also easier (little to no hacking).

 

[mixvio]

Are you familiar with any methods to install Windows 8 to a USB disc directly? The above tutorial I linked did work with 7 (and I was able to boot into the disc on my PCs, just not my rMBP) but it looks like the method wouldn't be the same for 8.

I found this, but it looks limited to the enterprise edition:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/6991.windows-to-go-step-by-step.aspx

I have Windows 8 Pro from MSDN but the enterprise version would be overkill.

It would be fantastic if I can get this working, then I won't have to worry about carving my drive into two partitions. Trying to install 8 to the drive directly gave me the same error as with 7 — "Windows cannot be installed to USB devices."

 

[murphychris]

Are you familiar with any methods to install Windows 8 to a USB disc directly?

Nope. I don't use Windows.

I suggest using a VM. You can point the virtual disk file to any disk, partitioning not required.

 

[mixvio]

Yeah, I have a Parallels XP VM which gets me part of the way there, but I only wanted a Windows partition so I could run games and take full advantage of the hardware on the machine. While Parallels has come a pretty good way it's not quite native, and especially modern games struggle under it. Weirdly enough I've never had something fail to run, even if I couldn't get it working under Crossover or straight-up WINE; some stuff behaves bizarrely, but it will always open.

However I have good news, I was able to get it all working in the end and without much fuss. I followed this guide:

http://tweaks.com/windows/52279/how-to-create-a-windows-to-go-usb-drive/

Going with the instructions on how to do it within Windows 7 it worked without any hiccups; I was able to get the OS installed and booted from just a USB enclosure (didn't even need thunderbolt) without any further hacking. The caveat was that I had to have Windows 7 around somewhere first, but as I've already got it on my desktop that wasn't insurmountable.

I've been using Windows 8 for a few hours now and although the Windows Experience Index gives the HD a lower score than my platter drive under Windows 7 (5.3 vs 5.9, though there's a SSD in the enclosure) I'd really be unable to tell you if I notice anything at all. It boots up as fast as I remember Windows 7 doing so natively. I've run a few games and there's no discernible lag, everything even loads as fast as I expected.

Best of all I don't have to give up ~200 gigs of my drive to Windows only to play some games, and with a little bit of extra work I was even able to get the Win 8 install to load inside of Parallels back on OS X's end. The alt-select option detects it as a Windows installation at startup, as does the Startup Disc prefpane. All in all it works as if it was an internal partition, and I didn't have to struggle with it at all.

I think if you've got the installer this is a much better route to go. I've got Windows 8 through MSDN but when it is released officially I think it's just a $49.99 upgrade from 7. The internet tells me that you should be able to do this with the release preview you can still get for free as well, but that will necessitate reinstalling over the drive with the full version later.

 

[murphychris]

Yeah, I have a Parallels XP VM which gets me part of the way there, but I only wanted a Windows partition so I could run games

It's an utter waste of my time to help people play games. My suggestion is if games are important to you, either use Boot Camp exactly as prescribed by Apple, or get a dedicated PC.

 

[mixvio]

Well that's a fantastic attitude to possess. Thankfully I was able to find a solution that didn't rely on all or nothing, but let me send immense apologies for "wasting your time."

 

[murphychris]

Apology not required. I should ask why people need to use Boot Camp in the first place so I can decide whether to help.

You should post the solution that worked, someone will find that immensely more useful, rather than an unnecessary apology.

 

[mixvio]

Apology not required. I should ask why people need to use Boot Camp in the first place so I can decide whether to help.

You should post the solution that worked, someone will find that immensely useful rather than an unnecessary apology.

If you continued reading the rest of the post instead of throwing your forehead against your keyboard in anger upon encountering a sentence that stated I wanted Windows for — gasp — games, you would have seen me do exactly that, since I already surmised it would be beneficial for everyone else encountering the problem. There's also a handy link to the specific tutorial I followed.

I appreciate your suggestion of going with Windows 8 in the first place; with the effort Windows 7 was I probably wouldn't have tried 8 if you hadn't mentioned that USB booting is better supported under it, but throwing your hands up in the air and declaring the conversation a "waste of your time" is a bit much, dude.

Anyway rather than waste it further I'll bid you best wishes as I've managed to get this working exactly as I wanted on my end and it will be a waste of my time to engage you further.