Pretty sure I wiped out my OSX during partitioning.

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Hey there you awesome techies - I have often found answers here but now am going to post my own problem. Maybe someday I'll be able to help someone else, but right now I just know enough to be dangerous.

I am afraid I wiped out my OS X during the process of partitioning to run XP (and XP seems to be perfectly loaded and operational, thank you very much). When I hold the option key while pressing the Power-on button, the only drive icon that shows up on the gray screen is Windows. Plus, as I look on XP at "computer management," approximately 32 GB shows on "C" drive, and it says NTFS and Healthy. Good, that is what I told it to allocate to that partition. However, it shows that 201 GB is "unallocated." Of course, that is the remainder of my 250 GB hard drive where OSX should be; I would expect Windows to say it is Apple OSX, so the word "unallocated" makes me think OSX is not there. I will try to attach a picture, but I just gave you the info anyway. Do you think there is any point in pursuing ways to verify that OSX is gone, or should we just move on to what to do next?

I guess I am confused at this point what the next order of things should be. My end goal is the ever-popular choice to use Boot Camp to partition, and Fusion to run XP on my 250GB iMac running Leopard. (Fortunately, Time Machine backs up to my 500GB Newer Tech Mini Stack, so my data is safe for the most part.)

1) Do you think I can re-install Leopard on that "201 GB" portion from the install disks while leaving XP happily alone in its 32 GB home?
2) Or, do I uninstall windows, reformat the entire hard drive, and start over with installing Leopard from the install disks (and then getting software updates)?
3) After my own brain defrags (I have been messing with this for most of two days), I can reread the Boot Camp guide about installing Boot Camp drivers on the XP partition, and maybe that answers how I would delete or uninstall XP if I had to start from scratch. (Anyone remember which disk the boot camp drivers are on?)
4) Hopefully I can get support from VMware on Fusion. I'm looking at the booklet and thinking, "huh?" Any quick comments as to the order I should have (or should in the future) loaded Fusion would be appreciated: before Boot Camp? After Boot Camp and XP?

Of course, re-doing everything is not a guarantee it will go right since I don't know what I did wrong in the first place. I must have read 50 posts or articles about this subject before embarking on this journey, so I am flat out confused as to what went wrong.

Your comments and suggestions (and encouragement, too!) would be appreciated! These forums are a lifesaver.

Thanks!!!

showing my allocations.jpg
 
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The fact that windows says "unallocated" isn't really a sign of anything... it just can't read HFS+ (the OS X disk format). But the fact that you can select to boot into OS X is a bit strange...

I would wipe everything clean and start off fresh:

- Pop in your OS X install DVDs and hold down option to boot off that.
- When the installer comes up, select "Tools> Disk Utility" from the menu bar.
- Wipe the entire disk clean, deleting all partitions and format as HFS+
- Install OS X

Then restore from your backup and you should be all set on the OS X side of things.

Now for Fusion / Bootcamp:
May I ask why you necessarily want the boot camp partition if you plan on using Fusion anyway? It's only really useful if you plan on running Windows natively from time to time... but it's not strictly required.

But if you really want to use it, just run the boot camp assistent and follow the steps. Then, during the windows installation, be very careful not to do anything to the largest "unallocated" or the tiny partitions and only modify the partition with the size that you picked in the boot camp assistent.

Be sure to finish the Windows installation all the way through before trying to boot OS X again...
 
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May I ask why you necessarily want the boot camp partition if you plan on using Fusion anyway? It's only really useful if you plan on running Windows natively from time to time... but it's not strictly required.

Thanks so much for your help from Munich! The reason I was going to do the boot camp partition was because I don't know whether or not I will want to boot natively to windows, so I was just thinking ahead and covering my bases. I definitely will not be using it for games that need the full resources, so I think I will regroup and just go with Fusion alone. It's 3am Munich time so perhaps by the time you check this thread again I will have posted good, final, results.

I'll let you know what happens...
 
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After 90 minutes of searching for how to follow the instruction to "format as HFS+", I'll just ask it here. Please, Aptmunich, or anyone, which of the four "Mac OS Extended" options should I use? One thing leads me to think I should use the "Journaled" option, but then another thread made me think just the plain ol "extended." I'm just gonna sit on this until I have an answer, because I don't know how serious the repercussions are, if any, for picking the wrong one.

Thanks for any help I can get!
 
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"Mac OS X extended (journaled)" is the normal settings... it'll help protect your harddrive from unexpected power outages and the like...
 
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Restored OSX!

Okay! Started from scratch and now have OS X restored, and XP on the partition. Of course, I'm experiencing oodles of other troubles, as often happens when changing several things at once (like not being able to print from my Xerox network printer), and weird things with Fusion, but at least this critical portion is resolved.

Oh yea, Aptmunich, I forgot that the reason I needed to do the Boot Camp partition instead of just Fusion is that my XP is OEM, and I did not think I could use that safely with Fusion alone (and did not have a few spare hours to research it in forums).

Thanks so much for your help!!!
 
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Thank you so much, but Im having a lot of trouble once Im getting to disk utility I really don't know what to erase, or what you really mean to wipe the entire disk clean, my choices are:
186.3 GB Internal Serial ATA 2 disk
DVD-ROM: HL-DT-ST DVDRW GSA-S10N Media
Startup Volume: Mac OS X Install Disc 1
Unless you mean to wipe everything or just the mac os install disk, I'm not sure, sorry Im not to bright lol.
 
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You might want to try just doing an "Archive & Install" first without wiping the disk. If that works, you won't lose any data.

But if you can't select the internal harddrive to install OS X to, you might need to do a wipe of the entire harddrive by selecting "186,3 GB internal Sata disk" and then selecting "erase" and format it as "HFS+ Extended Journaled".
 

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