I have a MacBookPro 9,1 (mid-2012, non-retina) running OS X 10.8.2.
Here is what I have done to my system:
- Installed Windows 7 x64 Pro to a boot camp partition; installed all windows updates.
- Using WinClone, save an image of this boot camp partition.
- Removed optical drive and HDD.
- Installed HDD in place of optical drive.
- Installed SSD in place of HDD.
- Booted to recovery partition, installed OS X on a flash drive.
- Booted to flash drive, created fusion drive using MacWorld's instructions
- Booted to recovery partition on flash drive.
- Restored system to fusion drive from a Time Machine backup. Unfortunately, it seems that because I never installed OS X on my fusion drive, I do not have a recovery partition. But that's an issue for another day.
- Using Boot Camp assistant, created a boot camp partition on my HDD.
- Using WinClone, restore my Windows installation from the previously created image.
Now, Windows boots to a black screen telling me that it can't find a bootable device. I have tried a few things to resolve this, all without effect:
- I know that VMware Fusion has to prepare a boot camp partition in order to virtualize it, so I figured it might inadvertently fix things. Alas, while it did successfully boot my boot camp partition into a virtual machine, I still can't boot into Windows.
- I figured I'd just try to reinstall Windows. Surprisingly, my system booted to my Windows install disc, which was in my original optical drive (which I had put in a USB case). But, Windows refused to install, giving me a an error 0x8030024. It seems the solution to this issue is to disconnect all drives but the one on which you want to install Windows, which is something I would dearly like to avoid. It would be a pain, but more than that, I'm afraid it would bork my fusion drive, even if I'm careful to never boot to OS X with the SSD disconnected.
- A lot of places said that this error results from a borked MBR, and suggest using a tool like gptfdisk to rewrite it. I followed the instructions here, but that didn't work either.
I am now completely at a loss as to how to proceed, and Google isn't much help either.
In conclusion, here is some information that you may find helpful:
$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *240.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage 239.7 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *750.2 GB disk1
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage 648.4 GB disk1s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 650.0 MB disk1s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 100.9 GB disk1s4
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS Mayfly *884.0 GB disk2
$ diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 63DC419F-1A09-4C5B-977A-F59F79502CA1
=========================================================
Name: FusionDrive
Size: 888087773184 B (888.1 GB)
Free Space: 0 B (0 B)
|
+-< Physical Volume B1B14251-2DB3-491C-9E7A-5C2FD11881BA
| ----------------------------------------------------
| Index: 0
| Disk: disk0s2
| Status: Online
| Size: 239713435648 B (239.7 GB)
|
+-< Physical Volume D0BA2837-514D-4620-8E1D-26D18137CA94
| ----------------------------------------------------
| Index: 1
| Disk: disk1s2
| Status: Online
| Size: 648374337536 B (648.4 GB)
|
+-> Logical Volume Family 736A8900-FE9C-4342-A932-EDC35444774C
----------------------------------------------------------
Encryption Status: Unlocked
Encryption Type: None
Conversion Status: NoConversion
Conversion Direction: -none-
Has Encrypted Extents: No
Fully Secure: No
Passphrase Required: No
|
+-> Logical Volume B4997853-59F8-4480-BB48-3481B2F2A123
---------------------------------------------------
Disk: disk2
Status: Online
Size (Total): 884000030720 B (884.0 GB)
Size (Converted): -none-
Revertible: No
LV Name: Mayfly
Volume Name: Mayfly
Content Hint: Apple_HFS
$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk1
Password:
gpt show: disk1: mediasize=750156374016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1465149168
gpt show: disk1: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk1: Sec GPT at sector 1465149167
start size index contents
0 1 MBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
409640 1266356128 2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1266765768 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1268035304 280
1268035584 197111808 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
1465147392 1743
1465149135 32 Sec GPT table
1465149167 1 Sec GPT header
$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk1
Disk: /dev/disk1 geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: EE 0 0 2 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 1268035583] <Unknown ID>
*2: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1268035584 - 197111808] HPFS/QNX/AUX
3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
Best Answer
The issue, it seems, was that the hard drive was in the optical bay. I found claims that Windows was designed not to boot from external drives, and that if you put an HDD in an optical bay and try to boot Windows from it, it will fail.
I have no idea if this is an accurate statement, but what I do know is this: when I switched my HDD back to its original position and put the SSD in the optical drive bay, Windows started booting again as though nothing had happened. The fusion drive still worked, too.