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Anyone actually got OS X + Windows + another partition this way?
Authored by: gabester on Mar 21, '07 07:12:24AM

This is not a very good hint... simply referencing another site and saying, "it can be done." Also, it someone needs to update it to reflect the installation of Vista.

I am trying to create a multi-partition setup, and these are the steps I've followed:

1. Installed Mac OS X on 1 partition.
2. Use Boot Camp utility to partition for Windows.
3. Put Mac in target disk mode (firewire - Apple-T) and connect to 2nd Mac (or boot OS install disk if it's 10.4.6+)
4. In terminal, ran "sudo diskutil eraseVolume JHFS+ <name> disk#s3
(Your "boot camp" partition will be 3rd on drive - this step is critical because resizeVolume only works on JHFS+ formatted partitions!)
5. sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk1s3 <size> <partition4format ... name ... size> <partition5format ... name ... size> etc.

At this point I can boot the Mac from a Windows installer disk (XP SP2 or Vista) by holding down the option key. However, Vista refuses to install, issuing a hex error at the stage where you would select the partition to install onto; XP could format and copy install files to the appropriate partition but issued an error after the reboot to perform the actual installation saying:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

Other things I've tried:
From a single OS X partition on the internal drive, I've run Boot Camp Assistant to partition and then installed Vista and attempted to create the additional desired partitions that way (bad idea - Vista eats the hybrid gpt/mbr partition table created by Boot Camp and poops it out as MBR, preventing OS X from installation.

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After spending 3 days trying to figure this out, this is where I'm stuck. Any suggestions?
g=



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Got it working for 3 usable partitions
Authored by: gabester on Mar 21, '07 10:51:21PM

Here's what I did:

1.) Started with OS X install and 1 partition on disk (of course, this is really disk0s2 since there's the hidden EFI partition.
2.) Ran Boot Camp Assistant, partitioned drive, installed Windows (Vista).
3.) Rebooted from Install DVD (Intel 10.4.6 or later only.)
4.) Ran "diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 <x>G partition3format ... name ... size "
5.) Ran "diskutil eraseVolume partition3format partition3name disk0s3"

In my experience if you've got a 10.4.8 Mac or newer that you're connecting your Multi-part Boot Camp Mac to in FireWire Target Disk Mode, it automatically does step 5 for you.

At this point I had OS X, a data partition, and Vista all installed and working. Then I got greedy and tried to split the data partition again and this killed my Vista installation.

Some of the other literature I've found online seems to indicate that your Windows boot partition has to be the #3 partition; but seemingly because of the MBR wrapper limitation of 4 partitions it definitely cannot be past the #4 partition.

Tomorrow I might try to go against Apple's GPT spec and eliminate the hidden EFI partition; then I should be almost able to run my system the way I want with 2 OS X boot volumes, 1 Windows boot volume, and a data drive shared between them.
g=



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