Synchronizing Partition Tables with rEFIt (err msg)

[Fawlty]

Using the shell command:

gtpsync.efi

I got a message that the MBR table has an extended partition and will not touch the disk.

Does anyone know how to work around this? I am having problems installing Windows XP and I suspect this might be part of the problem.

Will I have to edit the MBR table? This is new and unchartered territory for me.

Thanks,
F

[Robert L]

Using the shell command: gtpsync.efi
I got a message that the MBR table has an extended partition and will not touch the disk.

It seems that gptsync does not support extended partitions.
Do you really need more than 2 partitions for your WinXP installation, in addition to the OSX and EFI partitions? If not, get rid of the extended partition and use primary partitions only.
If you really need more partitions, you would have to syncronize the partitions manually from OSX using standard gpt and fdisk tools. But you would need a lot of knowledge about partition structure to do it properly.

[Fawlty]

I am up and running now! Basically I was trying to create the following partition configuration:

1) 60 GB for the Mac OS-X
2) 20 GB for data files to be shared between the two OSs (used FAT32)
3) 31.5 GB for Windows XP (using NTFS)

Originally, I got this configuration on my HD, however, I had problems making the FAT32 partition active in Windows. I was able to see the FAT32 partition in Mac OS-X without any problems.

I think I screwed up by allowing the Windows XP installer to format a partition. After reading stuff on the forum, I've come to this important conclusion:

!! IMPORTANT !! Do all your formatting a partitioning activities from the Mac OS-X

Before I installed Windows yesterday, I new that this install would go smoothly as rEFIt reported that both partition tables were in sync after I allowed the disk utility in Mac OS-X to take care of the formatting details.


Perhaps I am getting a bit carried away but I would like to somehow add linux to my configuration but I am not sure if one could get a fifth partition working for linux.

Before I try anything like this I would like to somehow backup all of my partitions. Can this be done with the disk tool in Mac OS-X? Ghost 2003 does not work on this platform.

Also, since I would be changing partition sizes to accomodate linux, would the new partition sizes have to be the same as the old partition sizes in order for me to restore the backed up original partion images? I suspect I would have to steal some space from my data partition rather than using space from one of the OSs.

R