17" MacBook Pro 2010. Hard drive corrupted.

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I am giving my macbook to my wife and want to set it up as a clean install as a new user. I was running Win 7 in bootcamp which my wife doesn't want and made the mistake of instead of reverting to a single partition in bootcamp to reinstall OS X I deleted the partition in disk utility. Now instead of a single partition 500Gb drive I have 250Gb Mac OS X and 250Gb which is now greyed out and labelled free space. I cannot reformat, erase this partition or do any kind of disk repair. Does anyone have any ideas what i can do or is it down to a new HD.?
 

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Have you tried deleting the partition using the Boot Camp Assistant utility that created the partition? That usually works. Re-run the utility and look for the option to remove Windows.
 
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Have you tried deleting the partition using the Boot Camp Assistant utility that created the partition? That usually works. Re-run the utility and look for the option to remove Windows.

Unfortunately because I was stupid enough to delete the partition in disk utility when I go into bootcamp it only gives me the opportunity to reinstall windows as it doesn't recognise the corrupted windows partition. I can't do this as it was Win 7 that I have the disk for and now you can only install Win 8. That'll teach me to do things properly.
 

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If this MacBook Pro was running Mac OS 10.7 or newer previously…here are a couple things to try:

1. Boot into the Recovery Partition. Launch Disk Utility…then repartition the HD into one partition…and reinstall the OS. To boot into the Recovery Partition…press the two keys command + r when restarting the computer.

2. If this is not possible you can do "Internet Recovery". To do this:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

HTH,

- Nick
 
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Thanks for that Nick, I will give it a try.

Ken
 
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Another part of my problem is i don't have a recovery partition because of the way the HD was configured previously so I think to save time and hassle a new HD is the way to go, they seem to be cheap enough now.
Many thanks for the suggestions.
Ken
 
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Another part of my problem is i don't have a recovery partition because of the way the HD was configured previously so I think to save time and hassle a new HD is the way to go, they seem to be cheap enough now.
Many thanks for the suggestions.
Ken


Why not create or enable the Debug menu for Disk Utility and set its options to "Show every partition" and delete or change them as you like?


EDIT:
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/96114/how-to-enable-the-hidden-debug-menu
http://www.macworld.com/article/2871803/unlocking-disk-utility-s-hidden-secrets.html

etc. ...
 
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Why not create or enable the Debug menu for Disk Utility and set its options to "Show every partition" and delete or change them as you like?


EDIT:
disk utility - How To Enable The "Hidden" Debug Menu? - Ask Different
Unlocking Disk Utility

etc. ...

Have finally got round to trying this but when I enter the command in terminal to create debug I get a message saying that the process has been completed but when I go back to disk utility the option still doesn't show up. Could i perhaps have a different issue here?
 

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Need to boot from a USB stick with an OS X installer (or whatever it is you plan on doing a clean install with and then follow the directions here. That is the step by step for Yosemite, prior versions will be very similar if not exactly the same.
 
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Need to boot from a USB stick with an OS X installer (or whatever it is you plan on doing a clean install with and then follow the directions here. That is the step by step for Yosemite, prior versions will be very similar if not exactly the same.

Will give this a try as a last resort. Unfortunately the only install disk I have is Snow Leopard 10.6.3 and this would mean 2 or 3 upgrades to get back to Yosemite. I have several OS's to download once I could get back into App Store so might even revert to Mountain Lion or Mavericks, i'm not a great lover of Yosemite.
 

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Not sure what you mean by "once I could get back into the App Store".

Based on what you've stated, the computer you're giving to her still has OS X installed and bootable.

There is no reason to start over with SL. Download whichever OS you are going to install and create a USB stick.
And if the MB is not bootable, then download OS X on your iMac and load it onto a USB stick.

However, if the MB will boot to the Recovery partition, you can still erase, partition and do a clean install from there.
 
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Ok let me explain this for people to understand.

Once you create a partition for windows using bootcamp and you remove it you can no longer create a new bootcamp partition you should honestly reformat the drive and start again.
 
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Strangest day ever! I tried using terminal again to set up debug menu on disk utility three more times and although terminal had confirmed the process was complete it was still not available in DU. Although I had previously tried reinstalling Win onto the damaged partition in Bootcamp it would only install on a new partition in the Mac OS undamaged partition, so when I used BC to uninstall Win again it only reinstated the Mac OS partition and still left the other damaged one in tact. After failing to set up my debug menu in DU I tried for one more time installing and uninstalling Win again. YAY ....... this time for some reason it worked and I am now back with a 500Gb one partition disk.

Thanks so much for all the help and suggestions from you guys, my lesson is well and truly learned, always delete stuff the correct way. I can now get the Mac set up for my wife. (You'll all be glad to know that this is something that I do know how to do correctly.)

Thanks again.
 
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Glad to hear you have now got things working the way you wanted, even though I probably didn't understand everything you were trying to do properly.

But maybe that's partly due to your sig…??? ;) :D
 
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Glad to hear you have now got things working the way you wanted, even though I probably didn't understand everything you were trying to do properly.

But maybe that's partly due to your sig…??? ;) :D

You could well be right. I manage to confuse the **** out of myself, never mind other people.

Hence the sig. :Blushing:
 

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