12-01-2011, 01:08 AM

My Macbookpro started taking forever to boot tonight (like 30 minutes). I ran the disk utility from the OS X Disc and it could not solve the problem. It suggests that I back up and reformat the drive. This worries me a bit, because I am boot camped with a partition running windows for my employment apps and have never had to do this before. I believe that when I wipe the drive it will wipe my bootcamp partition. Is this correct? Can I simply wipe the OS X partition and reinstall? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

12-01-2011, 01:38 AM

My first suggestion and recommendation is to immediately make a backup of your OS X installation. Use Time Machine or cloning software. Also make a backup of your Windows partition. You can do that with the free WinClone provided the Windows partition is formatted to NTFS.

It sounds like your hard drive may be having problems. You can try erasing and reformatting but it may not resolve the error you received when you ran Disk Utility. Be prepared to change out the hard drive for a new one. (You can erase the OS X partition while leaving the Windows partition intact.)

12-01-2011, 01:47 AM

Great advice, the computer boots to the windows partition with no issue, and will boot to the Mac partition too just slowly. In order to just format the Mac partition do I just choose it when formatting? If so then it's possible that I could reinstall OS X on it and then restore from time capsule and be back up, correct?

12-01-2011, 03:27 AM

Yes, you can do that. In Disk Utility pick the OSX Partition and hit Erase. Did you back up to the Time Capsule with Time Machine? If so, after you reinstall you can migrate the files back or just Boot with the OSX DVD and restore from Time Machine Backup, but I believe that only works with a directly connected external drive.

I just hope though your hard drive is not dying for the sake of your Windows install.

How old is the MBP?