help me find my mac drive please, i know its in there.

[dogtide]

The story so far...I aborted a windows install on bootcamp and now my mac wont boot up AT ALL.

The latest chapter...I have finally got some install discs and can force mac to boot up off disc but when I go for a repair it cannot see the MAC partition and says there is nothing there.

PLEASE CAN SOMEONE HELP ME FIND IT...I definitely did not delete it so it must be there somewhere, I just don't know how to find it.

 

[chscag]

If you booted from your OS X install DVD and Disk Utility can not find your MacIntosh HD partition, then you very likely overwrote it when trying to install Windows. A common error unfortunately.

The only solution is to reinstall OS X from your original install DVD. You will need to remove any partitions that were created for Windows, erase the disk, format it as HFS Extended Journaled, and reinstall OS X and applications.

Regards.

 

[dogtide]

hi,

i wish i had done that and i knew it so i could just accept that i stuffed up and get on with my life but i know 100% that i didn't overwrite it.

I have done lots of googling on this and find that many people have suffered the same fate when canceling a windows install in bootcamp. somehow the mac partition seems to be gone but i know must still be in there. i just dont know how to find it.

 

[86Apex]

Try to see if you can do an Archive and Install through the OS X installer. If it doesn't let you do that, then you may be SOL. :/

Most important thing when messing with your HD, as minor as it may seem. Always back up.

 

[dogtide]

Darn you bootcamp!!!

googled and found MANY MANY people who have suffered like I have because of an obvious bug in the set up.

Yes I should have done a back up but also, clearly when there are so many people who suffer the same outcome from doing EXACTLY as they are directed too then shouldn't that problem be clearly pointed out or addressed ??!!?!?!?!

 

[chscag]

It's time to put all that behind you. I agree the Boot Camp instructions are not all that great but lots of folks have had no problem whatsoever with them.

Anyway, time to reinstall OS X. Just make sure that before you decide to use Boot Camp again and install Windows, make a backup. Use Time Machine or cloning software: SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Another option: Use virtual software = VirtualBox from Sun Microsystems is free and works well.

Regards.

 

[sau124]

I had that identical issue - reformatted and reinstalled everything... backup setup and now I use parallel 5, much better, totally worth what I wanted to do...

 

[Raz0rEdge]

I keep hearing about this issue a lot lately..and in as much as it's bad that what happens while OS X isn't running affects it somehow, why are people cancelling the Windows setup to begin with? Cancelling the setup of an application is one thing, but the OS is always going to leave things in some random state..

I would also add that in MOST cases, running a virtualization software (VirtualBox, VMWare, Parallels) and Windows inside that will get you what you want with a lot less hassle and need to reboot back and forth..

Regards

 

[chscag]

I keep hearing about this issue a lot lately..and in as much as it's bad that what happens while OS X isn't running affects it somehow, why are people cancelling the Windows setup to begin with? Cancelling the setup of an application is one thing, but the OS is always going to leave things in some random state..

Note that the OP did not say why he aborted the installation of Windows. Actually canceling the setup will not leave the machine in an unstable state so that OS X can not boot. The way that usually happens is if the wrong partition is formatted during the Windows installation. The OS X boot sector gets overwritten. I suspect that's what might have happened in his case.

Regards.

 

[dogtide]

there seems to be a bug of some sort that i am reading about that was the same as the problem i faced.

I had successfully partitioned my mac drive to have 145GB as mac and set aside 15GB for the windows partition. A few days later i went to install windows and after a few mins of install when it showed me the options of where i could install it, there was only 1 choice and it was about 130GB in size. At this point, fearing that it would overwrite my MAC i aborted the install and since then I have not been able to get back into anything.
I do not believe I installed anything or wrote over the MAC partition as I exited before I chose a partition to put it onto.

In the last few days I have found the application TESTDISK which seems like it might be my only saviour but now the problem is that when i try to run it thru Terminal off a thumb drive after booting up with SNOW LEOPARD install discs and it says that I cannot run it without Rosetta software too.
That shouldn't be the case I don't think as TESTDISK by all accounts should run on INtel based MACs. Either way though, I am now stuck trying to figure out how to get Rosetta onto that thumb drive as well.

Any help at all at this dire stage would be more than appreciated.

Cheers in advance.