Edit the partition table; ptedit32 does not run.

Pro Grape · 02-21-2007, 09:34 AM

Hullo,

My MacBook Pro has three partitions: one for Mac OS X Tiger (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)), one for Windows Vista Business (NTFS), and a FAT32 partition for sharing information between the other two. Problem is, although the shared partition is formatted as FAT32 and Mac OS recognizes it, Windows doesn't see it.

What I have to do is edit the partition table directly, changing the Type field for the shared partition to 0B, which is the identifier for a FAT32 partition. Unfortunately, I can't get PTEDIT32 to work as it always gives "Error #5 when starting PowerQuest Engine" when I try to run it in Windows. Any other way to modify the table? Command line?

If you have suggestions for 3rd-party apps and if you know what they are doing under the hood, please tell me as I'd prefer to learn to do the job the nitty-gritty way.

Thanks!

Grape

TMX · 02-21-2007, 11:13 PM

OSX and windows XP use different types of partition maps (OSX uses GPT, XP uses MBR).

I would guess that these are not in sync; how did you create the three partitions in the first place, with bootcamp?

Also, because of the two partition table types, standard partition utilities will not work.

Pro Grape · 02-22-2007, 07:59 AM

Oh ok, I knew there was something up between the Windows side and the Mac side but I didn't know the two different map types.

This is how I set up the three partitions (not using BootCamp because it only supports two partitions):

I set up the partitions by first installing Mac OS on the whole drive, then from the Mac startup disc I ran diskutil in Terminal to resize the volume so that I had the Mac partition, a Linux partition, and a FAT32 partition in that order. The exact command was

Code:

diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 50G "Linux" "Shared" 1G "MS-DOS FAT32" "Windows" 23G

Apparently you have to make the middle partition Linux rather than FAT32 so that Windows doesn't think this is the default volume to install itself on.

Once I had Windows installed, I used the Mac startup disc again to erase the Linux volume to FAT32.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TMX

Also, because of the two partition table types, standard partition utilities will not work.

But can they be edited individually in their respective operating systems?

Thanks!

TMX · 02-22-2007, 03:54 PM

I'd imagine that (as it was released way before bootcamp) the OS X DVD would not be aware that it is using the two partition maps.

When I tried something similar, (triple-booting OS X, Windows and Linux) I used a tool called rEFIt to make sure everything played nice together; it replaces the default bootloader (the thing which decides which OS to load) and can sync the partition maps, plus do a few other tricks.

Can be found at: http://refit.sourceforge.net/

I'd make sure you have everything well backed up, then see if rEFIt can work it's magic and make everything work right. If you image your drive, if it does all go wrong you can just blank the disk and restore it to how it was from the images..

02-21-2007, 09:34 AM	#1 (permalink)
Pro Grape ym de shiznat. Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: BC, Canada Posts: 30 OS: Mac OS X.4 & Windows Vista	Edit the partition table; ptedit32 does not run. Hullo, My MacBook Pro has three partitions: one for Mac OS X Tiger (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)), one for Windows Vista Business (NTFS), and a FAT32 partition for sharing information between the other two. Problem is, although the shared partition is formatted as FAT32 and Mac OS recognizes it, Windows doesn't see it. What I have to do is edit the partition table directly, changing the Type field for the shared partition to 0B, which is the identifier for a FAT32 partition. Unfortunately, I can't get PTEDIT32 to work as it always gives "Error #5 when starting PowerQuest Engine" when I try to run it in Windows. Any other way to modify the table? Command line? If you have suggestions for 3rd-party apps and if you know what they are doing under the hood, please tell me as I'd prefer to learn to do the job the nitty-gritty way. Thanks! Grape

02-21-2007, 11:13 PM	#2 (permalink)
TMX Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 6 OS: XP Pro/Suse 9.2 Pro	OSX and windows XP use different types of partition maps (OSX uses GPT, XP uses MBR). I would guess that these are not in sync; how did you create the three partitions in the first place, with bootcamp? Also, because of the two partition table types, standard partition utilities will not work.

02-22-2007, 03:54 PM	#4 (permalink)
TMX Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 6 OS: XP Pro/Suse 9.2 Pro	I'd imagine that (as it was released way before bootcamp) the OS X DVD would not be aware that it is using the two partition maps. When I tried something similar, (triple-booting OS X, Windows and Linux) I used a tool called rEFIt to make sure everything played nice together; it replaces the default bootloader (the thing which decides which OS to load) and can sync the partition maps, plus do a few other tricks. Can be found at: http://refit.sourceforge.net/ I'd make sure you have everything well backed up, then see if rEFIt can work it's magic and make everything work right. If you image your drive, if it does all go wrong you can just blank the disk and restore it to how it was from the images..