Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Problems restoring Windows to partition using Winclone

Jul 20, 2014 7:43PM PDT

I installed Windows on my 2012 iMac a couple of months ago and it all worked out fine until my programs needed updates and I realized I had given my Windows partition to little space. I did some research and found out that Winclone was a nice app that would let me make an image file of my Windows. I did so, deleted my old Windows partition and created a new bigger one. Happily I opened Winclone and selected my image file and tried to restore it to my new partition. A message popped up stating:

"Boot Camp only supports booting Windows from the first four partitions. You cannot restore to partition 5"

It told my to do "diskutil list" in terminal.

It shows three disks. The first one contains three partitions:

0: GUID_partition_scheme disk0

1: EFI EFI disk0s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X disk0s3

The second disk:

0: GUID_partition_scheme disk1

1: EFI EFI disk1s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage disk1s1

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD disk1s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data WINDOWS disk1s5

And disk 3:

0: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD disk3

As you can see, my partitioned Windows disk is named disk1s5 while the previos partition is named disk1s3. Is there any way to rename my partition. Or delete another partition, to make it one of the first four partitions? I have no idea what these different partitions do, so all help is highly appreciated!

Starting all over again and creating a whole new fresh windows partition with Boot Camp is not really an option as Id loose all my files, and I also can't find my windows install CD and license key ...

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Then back to WinClone for support.
Jul 21, 2014 1:33AM PDT

There are many things wrong going on here. The most glaring is no backup of your files. That is, if you don't backup, some day you learn why folk write so much about that.

So back to WinClone support and the hunt for your Windows CD/DVD etc.
Bob

- Collapse -
WinClone support
Jul 21, 2014 5:33AM PDT

Hey, thanks for reply!

Indeed I did not do a file-based backup from Windows, but I don't really think that's necessary. I installed Windows to be able to play games not compatible with Mac OS and I do all other work on Mac OS and therefore have almost no files to back up. I did backup the Windows Image file created by Winclone to an external drive though. I guess the real problem is that I can't find my Windows CD, so I can't do a fresh install.

WinClone support states:
If you receive the following error message when restoring a Winclone image: "You are attempting to restore to partition x. Boot Camp only supports booting Windows from the first four partitions. Please select a different partition or create a boot camp partition that is within the first four partitions...", it will not be possible to restore the image in the current configuration. Boot Camp must reside on one of the first four partitions.


Check the partition order by going to Utilities -> Terminal and type at the command prompt: disktul list

The results of this command should show the following:

/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *251.0 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 214.1 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 36.0 GB disk0s4


In the above example, Boot Camp resides at the fourth partition, following the EFI firmware partition, the OS X partition and the recovery partition. In some cases, there may not be a recovery partition present and Boot Camp may appear as disk0s3.

If Boot Camp is not located among the first four partitions, it will be necessary to remove partitions previously created to allow Boot Camp to be located among the first four partitions.


As you can see, the setup of partitions is quite different to mine. I'm really at a loss as I know very little about this, all help is highly appreciated! Also I'm interested in what those other wrong things going on are.

Olav

- Collapse -
Still back to WinClone.
Jul 21, 2014 6:09AM PDT

I spy something of an anomaly in the partitioning but WinClone would be the expert on that. I don't know if you spotted it but WinClone should be able to restore it anyway so you can dig out the files you forgot.
Bob

- Collapse -
Reply
Jul 21, 2014 6:23AM PDT

So you mean WinClone should be able to restore it even though its on partition 5?

- Collapse -
I see you didn't see what I saw.
Jul 21, 2014 6:54AM PDT

Take a look again and notice a missing number?

The second disk:

0: GUID_partition_scheme disk1

1: EFI EFI disk1s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage disk1s1

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD disk1s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data WINDOWS disk1s5 (where's 2 and 4?)

Also the 3rd disk looks like we could wipe that and use space there.

Again, WinClone needs to work this with you.
Bob