I just brought my MacBook back from the dead! Here is how it all happend:
1. My mum asks for Vista on her computer. I also decide to use Boot Camp on my MacBook with Vista.
2. My mum needs files backing up – I use my Time Machine hard drive (Installed MacDrive on her computer it can read Mac HFS+ disks)
3. Start boot camp assistant – It asks me to format my whole hard drive (it has done this before :s). So, I start to format my MacBook (because I have a Time Machine backup) and erase the drive. Insert disc 2 when it asks for it, gets about 60% through disc 2 and it says error installing OS X! (this is when the nightmare begins
)
4. Think to myself, oh well. I can just restore from a Time Machine backup. So, I get my Time Machine drive and select restore from backup. OS X can’t find the drive! So, after plugging my Time Machine into another PC (with MacDrive installed) it is revealed that MacDrive had screwed up the partitions! MacDrive could still read the data but my Mac couldn’t!
5. Thought that I could just get a backup image of the Time Machine, format and restore the backup, I don’t have a HD big enough in my house to backup the whole drive!
6. Finish installing Vista on my mums computer and then try installing Vista on my MacBook without boot camp. I change the HD’s type to Master Boot Record and install Vista fine! I decided that I wanted OS X (obviously) so I called Apple about the discs. They said they could send me some new ones free of charge (but the wait! It was Friday evening!)
7. I put the OS X install disc 2 into my PC and make an ISO image of it. I then burn a new disc in Mac format. Start installing OS X on my MacBook AGAIN and this time it says nothing to install when I put in the new disc 2. I decided to try the old one AGAIN (for the last time) and it comes up with the error. I just press quit installer and for some unknown reason, the welcome video started playing! Never had I been so happy to see that annoying video that you cannot skip!
8. I then put in my Time Machine drive to restore data (it is very important data) and I could not read it and nor would the partitions show up in Disk Utility (the drive showed though). I then downloaded some recovery software for mac. I hadn’t bought it and was on the trial so I was not able to recover the data but it did allow Disk Utility to read the disk (it must have force mounted it or something). I then click repair in disk utility for the drive and 15 minutes later, I was restoring all of my data!
9. I then decided that I still wanted Vista on Boot Camp – Got it running fine with a 20GB partition but then (trust me) I wanted a bigger partition
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10. Tried resizing in Disk Utility – didn’t work. I then made a copy of the volume using Disk Utility and deleted the partition and started Boot Camp again. Low and behold, it wanted me to format. Well, I thought hell no!
11. I then booted Disk Utility from my Install Disc and managed to create a 35GB FAT32 partition (don’t have ANY idea why it let me create a 35GB one though…) and booted OS X, and deleted it using Boot Camp. I then tried to create it again in boot camp and this time it let me!
12. The image of the Vista install that I had was somehow corrupt so instead, I did a clean install. I now have Vista on a 32GB NTFS partition and OS X as well
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It only took 2 days, a late night/early morning and a lot of frustration but hey!
No data was lost in the making of this blog post.