Trouble installing Bootcamp on new SSD

[Christopher Evans]

Hi all, new poster here-

I'm having trouble installing a new bootcamp partition on my late 2013 iMac that has just had a crucial mx500 2TB SSD professionally installed. The mac came back from them working perfectly with a 2TB APFS partition with High Sierra installed and all my old data transferred.

There are a few facets to the problems I now face getting bootcamp up and running-

1) On my first run through using bootcamp utility to install a fresh version of windows 10 in the usual way (aiming for a mac partition of 1.25GB and windows of 750GB), I got as far as booting up into the windows installer where it asks which partition to install windows on to. I had previously been able to use the 'sliding bar' in bootcamp to select the partition sizes as above. Unfortunately, when I came to select this partition, the windows installed said that this partition could not be used, and needed to be formatted. I continued as the installer requested, 'reformatted' that partition in the installer, but was still unable to continue and install on that partition. Has anyone else come up against this/think why this may be?

2) After exiting the installer and booting back into High Sierra, I see that my Mac partition has indeed reduced in size to the desired 1.25TB, with the remaining 750GB marked as 'free space'. I find I am unable to resize my existing mac partition back to 2TB to start 'afresh'- I cannot drag the mac partition slider to take this space up, and when I try to 'delete' the free space, I get an error message- I will try and post some screenshots below. Can anyone provide a fix for this?

3) Interestingly, the bootcamp assistant suggests a slightly different story to the above. It seems to think that my Mac partition is still at 2TB (see screenshots). N.B- I have approx 360GB of data on my mac partition currently. When I try to click through again on bootcamp assistant, I get an error message stating the the drive cannot be formatted. Again, why would this be and how can I fix it?

I'm really stuck here and don't know how to proceed! Any help moving forward would be appreciated! Ill put as many relevant screenshots below as I can.


Bootcamp assistant errors-

https://ibb.co/njxO6n
https://ibb.co/bZc1sS
https://ibb.co/h8iKe7


Terminal readout of disk utility-

https://ibb.co/k6ykK7


The three disk utility views of the drive/container/mac volume-
https://ibb.co/h9GuCS
https://ibb.co/exDkK7
https://ibb.co/mfzQK7


The four steps I have tried to delete the free space-

https://ibb.co/dyowRn
https://ibb.co/jfOVmn
https://ibb.co/cPruCS
https://ibb.co/gSzsz7


Many thanks everyone for your help, Chris.

 

[honestone]

Are you making backups of your Mac information? And better yet, are you using either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable backup/clone? If you are, and if you have the full ODS 10.13.4 installation file, then there is a way to solve this.

Also, although I am certainly no expert with Bootcamp, I'm wondering if the Bootcamp partition needs to be first formatted, via Disk Utility, as ExFAT, Master Boot Record?

 

[Christopher Evans]

I have a full current time machine and iCloud backups of important documents, along with the original drive that came out of the iMac with the bootcamp and Mac partitions intact (I have put it in an external caddy). I cannot seem to boot from these however.

My understanding is that bootcamp handles this all for you when you go through the assistant. My problem now is that I seem to have no way of using the 750GB on the drive allocated as free space- I cannot incorporate it back into my Mac partition, and I can't set it up as a brand new partition either as I just get the above error messages.

 

[honestone]

First, forgot to ask you a basic question: what exact Mac OS are you running? I am using the latest version of High Sierra, OS 10.13.4, and with High Sierra, Apple did introduce some "quirky" things (they also instituted some other "bizarre" policies).

Secondly, Time Machine backups are not bootable, whereas backups made with either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner are bootable. That is one place where they have a distinct advantage over Time Machine.

Third, don't know why you can't boot your Mac from that "older" disk containing everything you had on the machine before. But I vaguely remember reading something about that a long time ago, and that one cannot do that. Just out of curiosity, with that external drive connected, when you boot up your Mac while holding down the Option key, does it show that external device? You could also open up the System Preference "Startup Disk" and see if it is there. If it is not in either case, you cannot boot your machine from such an external device.

Fourth, given that you cannot do anything with that "rogue" partition in Disk Utility, it might be best if 1) you take one more Time Machine backup, and then 2) boot your machine from the (hidden) Recovery HD partition. This link describes how to boot to that partition (there is more than one way, and that will "dictate" which Mac OS you would get if you used it to obtain the Mac OS):

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

Fifth, you would start with the 4th option on the screen presented to you, and have Disk Utility Erase and Format the entire SSD. You could then have Disk Utility partition the drive, and on the partition you want for Windows, format it as ExFAT, Master Boot Record.

Sixth, you would then select that second choice, and the "applicable" Mac OS will be installed (you will need to first choose the Mac partition, of course).

Lastly, you'll be offered the opportunity to "migrate"/copy needed (Mac) "stuff" from your backup.

I guess the other possibility is that the SSD could somehow be defective, but that seems unlikely. Still, you might want to contact Crucial and/or the "shop" that did the installation of the SSD.