Installing Boot Camp on High Capacity Disks

Other World Computing has a great article on how to install a bootcamp partition on disk larger than 2.2TB.

I wish I had seen this earlier. As I recently replaced my 2TB that had bootcamp on a partition on it with a 3TB drive that I took out of my Synology, and I could not restore my old BootCamp partition using WinClone because I could not make the partition. I could do it again now, but would have to reback up the drive and then move it back afterwards, and am not sure I have enough hard drive space for this, unless I wipe out the old disc with BootCamp on it. And I have yet to do a WinClone Restore so I am not sure it will work and don’t want to lose the BootCamp partition just in case.

Got Windows up last night then ran Advanced System Optimizer and it tanked my system

In fact it was the same problem as before, so it seems that it was the Registration Optimizer that killed my BootCamp install to begin with, or at least once I managed to get it to reboot one time. It seems the Registry repair just doesn’t work!

I just tried a system Refresh, and the computer came back up, and ran the Bootcamp installer, and on it’s restart it went back into the system repair loop failure. So I am trying a Refresh again, and hope the computer makes it. I could do a full install again, but I want my documents, only because all of the downloads are already there, so I can quickly re-install them.
Now I have been considering moving to Windows because of the lack of expansion in the new MacPro, but honestly if Windows is this picky, I might not. 
I was going to make a Recovery DVD when I got my system back up, but it was a 55 Gig backup, and that is a shitload of DVD’s. I need to do this, but I need to use a hard drive to make the backup, so when I screw the system up, I can recover back to exactly my system, and not go through all this crap again!

Never got Windows to boot again, just had to wipe and re-install

So I was never able to get my Bootcamp Windows 8.1 install to boot again or get it to repair, so i finally just used. Bootcamp Assistant to wipe the partition, and re-partition.

Now I ended up having to do this 7 times, as 6 times windows on it’s first restart it came to an error message loop saying “The Computer Restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install Windows click OK to restart the computer, and reinstall Windows.” I finally found a fix for this ( https://avatargamingpc.com/support/951869-The-Computer-Restarted-unexpectedly-or-encountered-an-unexpected-error-during-installation-of-Windows ) but the Windows install had totally tanked by that time, and on the next re-partition and re-install, the install actually worked.

Have spent the day upgrading, and am now installing 8.1. Then time to re-install everything, and make a backup disc!

What a pain in the ass!

And today it is Windows 8.1 Bootcamp Issues

So I tried to boot into my Windows 8.1 Bootcamp Partition and it was a no go. Showed the green windows window then went black and restarted back into Mac.

I think the problem is that because of my USB issues I had moved my keyboard and mouse to the USB 3 Ports of my CalDigit SATA and USB 3 PCI card, but I have not installed drivers as of yet in Windows. It was fine without them before because I never plugged anything in, but without the drivers, it sure was not happy, and would not restart. So I need to make sure to install those drivers if and when I get Windows working again.

Now I am lucky in that I also have a separate Windows 8.1 Parallels install, for those times when I don’t want to fully boot into Windows, or do anything Graphics intensive. With that I was able to use a USB Key to create a recovery partition, and let it run it’s utilities to fix Windows, but they didn’t work, neither the auto fix or going to a backup.

So then i downloaded the Windows 8.1 Setup program to try and create an ISO so I could have a Windows 8.1 Installer and wipe my drive except my data (a pain, but I don’t have that much installed), but I ran into another problem. The program only works with a Windows 8.1 Serial number, not a Windows 8 serial number, though it was a free upgrade to 8.1! WTF!

Luckily with a little google searching I was able to download the Windows 8.1 ISO thanks to PC Advisor. You basically have to download the Windows 8 Install program, and enter your license number, and get it to start downloading, then quit the program. Then from the same link download the Windows 8.1 installer and run it, and it won’t ask for your serial. When the program finishes you can either make a USB by clicking install by creating media, or create an ISO, which you can use multiple times.

To do the ISO to a USB stick you need to download the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, and install that, and point it at the ISO you saved. Once that is done you need to copy a file to it as explained by PC Advisor or it will make you use the same serial number as the one you used to download, instead of whatever one was used for your install (since I have 2 installs).

Once Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool finishes, it is time for me to try again. I will restart into Windows with the Recovery Partition in, and tell it to re-install but keep my data, and will insert my painfully created USB stick with the Windows 8.1 Installer, and then it is time to re-install all of my programs! YIPEE! And I have had to use a 3rd USB key to use Boot Camp Assistant, to redownload the latest Bootcamp drivers so I can get my mac working once Windows does a mostly clean install!

Will update and let you know how things go.

How will the new MacPro work with BootCamp?

MacPro-Black

Of course Apple has announced the new strange MacPro, though not answered all of our questions about it. And my biggest question at the moment is about BootCamp, which because of Windows limitations of only being installed within the computer.

hero_bootcamp

I know on Laptop’s the only solution then is to partition your SSD harddrive and install windows there, but on current MacPro’s you can use an entire secondary hard drive as your bootcamp partition.

The new MacPro is run by a single SSD harddrive, so as of now it looks like you will have to partition, and install Windows on that, which means you will need a very large and expensive SSD drive to fit a full working windows environment and a full working Mac environment.

My current MacPro’s boot drive is a 3TB hard drive, which has 1.43 TB used. And 902.4 GB of that is used by my user. The scary part of that is that is with all of my extensive iTunes library on an external SAS. And that still leaves 500GB of data for my system and applications on Mac, which is pretty big for an SSD drive. I know there are ways to move your user to a separate hard drive, but it isn’t easy and is easy to really screw up your system! And honestly I wouldn’t really want my user to be external to the system.

Of course much can be moved out of my user, I have 219 GB in Parallels, which I could easily stop using now that I use bootcamp. And I have 117 GB in MobileSync files, which seems like an awful lot of iOS backups. And I just looked and After Effects CC has 107 GB of Disk Cache in my Application Support folder! Youch! Need to figure that out. Hell I have 14.3 GB of Mailboxes for Mail! Youch that is a lot of files, but still files within my User folder that would take up too much space on a single SSD drive!

Well it is a moot point right now, as I have my old MacPro, and couldn’t afford a new model even if it was out and all the questions were answered, but what freaks me out the most is see myself leaning more towards building a bad ass PC, and I really don’t want to give up on Mac as a platform. So maybe a Mac Laptop and a PC, or so I got he Hackintosh route? Some say they are so unstable and hard to upgrade (as you have to wait till files are updated and hacked so you can upgrade), but then I could have a Mac and a PC and have what I really want, a tower bigger than a current old tech MacPro. Something like the ASUS z9PE-D8 WS motherboard in the EEB form factor with dual Xeon’s. That could literally stomp on the single Xeon in the new MacPro and i could run Dual NVIDIA Geforce for Titan’s for graphics. That would be an amazing machine, expensive sure, but I would have so much fast internal storage and I wouldn’t have to invest in a ton of money in Thunderbolt peripherals (especially since Thunderbolt has not really caught on, and it doesn’t seem to be catching on very big in the PC world which means it will always be a niche product).