Urgent Help Needed ! Windows is destroyed after a partition attempt

[Master1]

It was your fault, stop shifting the blame onto the software.

Yes it was my fault for not being careful, but it was also the software's fault. It should not have destroyed my partition.

Sorry your files are gone - but to be honest, and you can think its kicking you while your down if you want to.. But its not really about you, its about the next guy reading this thread.. And he just MIGHT think twice before clicking go on software that ###### with the partitions without a backup.

I do hope you can recover your files - I really do!!! Tools have already been suggested that might help.

The statement from you that makes me chime in is

Ok sure you clicked the shiny buttons - but you clearly just completely disregarded the obvious WARNING!!! to backup your data

You have been on neowin a couple of years, there have been loads of users with the same sort of issue as you - partition software X deleted my data, corrupted my disk, etc. etc. What you missed all of them? What do you think the major thing brought up in all of those threads was - BACKUP YOUR DATA!! Sorry it does not take a rocket scientist to comprehend that be it the OS built in tools, 3rd party tool be it free or paid, be it rated with 100 stars, whatever.

For starters you should ALWAYS have a backup of any file you don't want to loose.. But clearly if your going to be dicking with the partition of where that data resides or any partitions on the disk where the data is you should double check that you have a current backup, or run one before you do such a thing.

Sorry but you have no one to blame for the predicament your in other than yourself. I don't care how many stars the software got. It clearly warns you to have a backup! So how is it the software's fault?? And even if it didn't - come on, are you really going to say your that computer illiterate that you did not know better?

Good Luck - But I would chalk it up to lesson learned, and work out your future backup plan for your critical files!

Honestly, I trusted the software since it had a 5 star rating from CNET, but you're right I should have definitely made a backup of the files before proceeding ahead. As soon as I get maximal recovery. I'm going to both set up Time Machine on the OS X side and set up the Windows Backup on the Windows side. I have run some more tools and different tools have been able to recover different files and Im glad to say since the last time I said this, I have recovered quite a few more files. And I will definitely do more research besides CNET's approval of such software in future cases.

[DootDootMan]

Yes it was my fault for not being careful, but it was also the software's fault. It should not have destroyed my partition.

Honestly, I trusted the software since it had a 5 star rating from CNET, but you're right I should have definitely made a backup of the files before proceeding ahead. As soon as I get maximal recovery. I'm going to both set up Time Machine on the OS X side and set up the Windows Backup on the Windows side. I have run some more tools and different tools have been able to recover different files and Im glad to say since the last time I said this, I have recovered quite a few more files. And I will definitely do more research besides CNET's approval of such software in future cases.

I wouldn't trust CNET for anything. There are right and wrong ways to do what you tried to accomplish (free and paid). It seems as though you've chosen the wrong way. I don't know that you can recover all of the files although I wish you luck!

[+dave164 Subscriber¹]

Ahh I love Virtual Machines :). Completely done with the disgustingness of partitioning and dual / triple booting.

But sorry to hear about your problem, just try to copy what you need back over from the hard disk, repartition and reinstall.

[DootDootMan]

Ahh I love Virtual Machines :). Completely done with the disgustingness of partitioning and dual / triple booting.

But sorry to hear about your problem, just try to copy what you need back over from the hard disk, repartition and reinstall.

+1

[Master1]

I wouldn't trust CNET for anything. There are right and wrong ways to do what you tried to accomplish (free and paid). It seems as though you've chosen the wrong way. I don't know that you can recover all of the files although I wish you luck!

Its pretty safe to say now that CNET's credibility has gone down quite a bit in my book

Ahh I love Virtual Machines :). Completely done with the disgustingness of partitioning and dual / triple booting.

But sorry to hear about your problem, just try to copy what you need back over from the hard disk, repartition and reinstall.

Yes VM's are really nice. Though the only problem is that sometimes they slow down especially if your system is not too powerful. But I'm going to look into booting off of VM's since Windows 7 supports this feature.

[#Michael]

This is direct from apples KB on bootcamp:

While installing Microsoft Windows, I see that my hard disk has several partitions. Which one should I install Microsoft Windows on?

Use the partition labeled BOOTCAMP.

Important: Do not create or delete any partitions, or select any partition other than BOOTCAMP. Doing so may delete the contents of your Mac OS X startup volume.

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3777

And direct from the BC install guide PDF:

Selecting and Formatting the Windows Partition

It?s important to select the correct partition when installing Windows so that you don?t overwrite Mac OS X on your computer. You?ll then choose the correct format.

NOTICE: Do not create or delete a partition, or select any partition other than as noted below. Doing so may delete the entire contents of your Mac OS X partition.

Source: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Boot_Camp_Install-Setup.pdf

it is painfully obvious that once you create a partition using BC that you should only modify that partition using BC...do not use any other type of software.

Also FYI...BC only allows for 1 partition (AFAIK):

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2675480?threadID=2675480

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1742284?threadID=1742284

https://discussions.apple.com/message/8236657?messageID=8236657

So in other words....you borked your system rather well.

[Master1]

This is direct from apples KB on bootcamp:

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3777

And direct from the BC install guide PDF:

Source: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Boot_Camp_Install-Setup.pdf

it is painfully obvious that once you create a partition using BC that you should only modify that partition using BC...do not use any other type of software.

Also FYI...BC only allows for 1 partition (AFAIK):

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2675480?threadID=2675480

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1742284?threadID=1742284

https://discussions.apple.com/message/8236657?messageID=8236657

So in other words....you borked your system rather well.

So there is no way to setup a dual boot windows setup on a MacBook. How about rEFIt :(

[#Michael]

So there is no way to setup a dual boot windows setup on a MacBook. How about rEFIt :(

Someone who knows more about BC can correct me but both macs and BC were never intended to allow more than a dual os x/windows boot environment. The intention of BC was to allow a person to have a physical installation of a version of windows instead of using a VM software package.

AFAIK what you are trying to do on a macbook just isn't possible. Now if you are on an actual wintel computer where it was using os x in a hackintosh environment then you'd have no problem. But then windows would be your primary os and more than likely you wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

In regards to rEFIt - that appears to be a BC/efi replacement. Which would have been fine IF you hadn't used BC in the first place to create the partitions. Once you used BC and created the partitions there is no going back. It appears that you have to use BC to do any modifications on the partitions....such as expand/contract/delete/format.

I have followed this thread since your first post and read almost everything....sorry but you're toast at this point.

Advice:

1. Don't install any pre-release software on production machine (i.e lion and win 8)

2. Lion can be installed on an external drive such as a firewire or usb. You can then boot off of that and use it instead of you os x install. That way your os x install isn't touched at all while you explore lion

3. I highly doubt that BC or any of the VM softwares support Win 8 yet.

[Master1]

Someone who knows more about BC can correct me but both macs and BC were never intended to allow more than a dual os x/windows boot environment. The intention of BC was to allow a person to have a physical installation of a version of windows instead of using a VM software package.

AFAIK what you are trying to do on a macbook just isn't possible. Now if you are on an actual wintel computer where it was using os x in a hackintosh environment then you'd have no problem. But then windows would be your primary os and more than likely you wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

In regards to rEFIt - that appears to be a BC/efi replacement. Which would have been fine IF you hadn't used BC in the first place to create the partitions. Once you used BC and created the partitions there is no going back. It appears that you have to use BC to do any modifications on the partitions....such as expand/contract/delete/format.

I have followed this thread since your first post and read almost everything....sorry but you're toast at this point.

Advice:

1. Don't install any pre-release software on production machine (i.e lion and win 8)

2. Lion can be installed on an external drive such as a firewire or usb. You can then boot off of that and use it instead of you os x install. That way your os x install isn't touched at all while you explore lion

3. I highly doubt that BC or any of the VM softwares support Win 8 yet.

Im glad to say that I have been able to recover almost all the data back with the aid of some pretty powerful software. A big thanks to all the Neowininians who helped out in this time of crisis, and this is a lesson learned for me. :D :D :D

Now moving on to the annoying part. I have to reinstall Windows :( I had originally planned to do a fresh reinstall of both operating systems come summer time since I would have some spare time and a fresh install would be nice. In the meanwhile I have decided to install Windows XP Professional :wacko: Yes yes I know, but its only for a month till June. Would be too much of a hassle to reinstall Windows 7 then to have to reinstall it again in a month so it would work properly with OS X.

I remember back in the good old days of beta testing Windows 7, my home laptop was running Vista, and I was dual booting with Windows 7 test versions. Apparently I can not do the same on the MacBook Pro. Pretty retarded if you ask me, but thats a different story.

My dual boot with Lion has not caused any problems for OS X or for Windows 7 before this incident

So here is my question. If instead this time around I choose to forgo BootCamp and use rEFIt, can I dual boot Windows along with the dual boot of OS X, essentially a quad boot or am I asking for having my cake and eating it too ???

EDIT: Forgot to say the most important part. The single piece of software that was most helpful in the recovery process was Easeus. Easesus gets a big 10/10 in my book !!!