Help! I accidentally deleted my OS!

[~Trebuh~]

I accidentally deleted my OS (OS X LION 10.7) on my MacBook Pro 13".
I was messing around my Hard Drive making partitions.
(I am planning to triple boot ).
Before, I had my hard drive into 2 partitions for dual booting (os x lion ) and (windows 7) via bootcamp and suddenly got interested with ubuntu..
since i had no other partition left, i restored my partitions into a single volume via bootcamp, and made partitions using disk utility
Heres what i did

Used mac's disk utility to make partitions
my hd now has these partitions
- macintosh hd
- windows hd (ms-dos) (107 gb)
- linux hd (ms-dos) (102 gb)
- linux swap (ms-dos) (1.3 gb) an article i read suggested to make this one in case linux rans out of memory.

I inserted my windows 7 installations disc. My partitions listed there arent showing their names, so i had to rely on the their space (since i had my windows partition about 107 gb)
Chose the partition with the 107 gb space, sinc its in ms-dos, i have to format it. After the format, surprisingly, the installer is preventing me to install it. blah blah blah *xxx* mb is required. I was like "wt*, its 107 gb! theres enough space left!"
After that, i dunno why but i tried formating the other partions as well and it is still not working.. Until 1 partition worked, only to find out after the windows installation, that it was the partition where my osx lion is installed! Oh my, i dont have backups,not only that, i cant format the other partions as well, using (mac osx utilities).
what do i do?

Further informations will be included once i get online again.
Ill try to include pics too.
Thanks, hope you can help me

 

[Hybrid Trainer]

I hav no experience with macs disk utility from personal experience but from what I've read I'm guessing your data was gona the second you set the partition back to one drive. You wouldve been better off shrinking and then putting the extra space into one partition. But it's too late for that so on to the windows installation problem. The only time I ever had that problem was when my hard drive was dying but I doubt that's the case here. Maybe you could try making th partitions in the windows installation process instead? You do that by going into custom and clicking advance when you pick the partition/drive your installing to.

 

[Ayutac]

First you take a magnet… Becoming interested in Ubuntu is good. Take an empty USB-Stick and put Ubuntu there. I mean make the USB-Stick bootable. Then you could install Ubuntu, and before maybe access the files left on your system, because you can also run Ubuntu from the stick. But if you already formatted some partitions, I don't know how many files survived. Regarding your data, you may also seek help from local computer professionals.
And always do backups, at least on USB-Sticks.

Well, after the rescueing is over, I suggest installing Ubuntu on your hard drive. It may format everything into one partition and clean the mess up. After you got used to it, maybe with some help, you should install vbox/virtualbox. Then you can install two virtual PCs, one with Windows, one with MAC (as long as YOU have the installation CDs). So these two won't cause any harm anymore, because (I guess) you can isolate them on the vbox.
You may have some trouble with Ubuntu, but in general that's nothing the Internet doesn't know an answer of. The only thing you should look up before is if your hardware is Ubuntu compatible. But you can check this out with running Ubuntu from the stick.

 

[~Trebuh~]

I dont really care about the files inside, its not really important, what's been bugging me is that, the partitions i made cannot be modified usings Mac's disk utility PLUS, During the windows installation process the partitions shown there arent showing properly, I mean, their names aren't showing, their space arent right (reduced).
And after the format, It keeps on saying "XXX"MB of space is required" so i cant proceed to the installation, until i accidentally installed on my Mac HD. After that i ran the installation again to delete the other partitions, and for the second time again, another disaster. I dont know what happen but the "Recovery" (when you press option on bootup,you can access Mac osx utilities and install mac osx there; is gone).
For now, I had Windows 7 installed on my MacBook Pro,No idea to install OS X lion; And lost some space on my internal hardrive (Disk Management says i have 298.09 GB in all, its actually 320 GB, what happened to the 21.01 GB? How do i get it back?)

Is it Possible make a partition in windows in -Mac OS X Journaled-format for the installation of Mac OS X?

I'm not a technology guy, Im only 15, So i need help from you guys.
You can drop a VM or PM.
Any help is greatly appreciated, Thanks!

 

[Archer]

There's a lot to answer here, so forgive me if I miss anything important. Tell me and I'll be sure to update this, if that's the case.

Firstly, I'd like to address the disk size. Due to the way formatting and partition tables/sector sizes work, you're only going to get ~300GB out of a 320GB disk. Fact.

Secondly, if you set up the spare partition for Windows 7 using the Bootcamp wizard in Mac OS, then the Windows 7 install WILL see label as BOOTCAMP. If not, either something went wrong or you tried to create them manually. Use the wizard in future.

If you're not worried about data and want things back to a working state, you're going to have to find a Mac installer to boot from. If the computer came with Lion, chances are there won't be a DVD/USB Flash drive to recover from, so you'll need to get your hands on one of those. Alternatively, if it came with or you have a copy of Snow Leopard, you can install that and upgrade from inside.

You'll need to boot from one of the above and format the drive to a single HFS partition. Proceed with the install to get back to the single Mac OS. If you want bootcamp, USE THE WIZARD. Dual-booting Linux on a Mac has always been messy, so I have mostly avoided it. If you just want to learn/play around with Linux, I'd strongly recommend using a Virtual Machine for the time being.

The Windows install most likely took out the recovery partition, too, as Apple stores it on the same HDD in their infinite wisdom.

 

[~Trebuh~]

So i need to get an OS X Lion installer.
And how should i format the drive? Thru disk utility?
As i remember every time i try to format the drive it says something like disk cant be mounted..(Or maybe because the partitions have different formats?)
so basically, how do i format and merge them ino a single volume at the same time?
Thanks!

 

[Archer]

So i need to get an OS X Lion installer.
And how should i format the drive? Thru disk utility?
As i remember every time i try to format the drive it says something like disk cant be mounted..(Or maybe because the partitions have different formats?)
so basically, how do i format and merge them ino a single volume at the same time?
Thanks!

You'll need to format from the Disk Utility inside a Mac boot disk(DVD/USB, etc), yes. You won't be able to format from within the OS - how were you doing it to get the mount error?

Click the drive, Partition tab. Select 1 Partition. Options > GUID Partition table. Select HFS Journaled. Apply. Then install to that.

 

[~Trebuh~]

By clicking the minus buttons until 1 partition left.
GUID Partition table? Hmm
I remember something like switching into master boot ..something..
Maybe that caused the problem! Its a BIG BIG help! Thanks again!

++rep!
Hahaha

 

[Archer]

By clicking the minus buttons until 1 partition left.
GUID Partition table? Hmm
I remember something like switching into master boot ..something..
Maybe that caused the problem! Its a BIG BIG help! Thanks again!

++rep!
Hahaha

It might have changed the drive to Master Boot Record (MBR) when it formatted the drive for Windows. MBR is usually required for Windows to boot, but the Macs use EFI, so GUID can be used for Windows if the partitioning is done by the Bootcamp Assistant.

So have you worked it out? If so, remember to post the exact solution.

 

[~Trebuh~]

OK im gonna try it, i managed to get a Leopard Installation DVD from a friend,
That should work,by the way, once installed, can i switch from Leopard to Lion?

EDIT:
It seems that the installer Disk isnt working, The screen Stays in black with the blinking line on the top left (Blinking Underscore?)

Should i get a different installler DVD?

EDIT:

Or is it working? Maybe there's something i have to do first? In order to install Mac OS on a MacBook Pro running Windows 7?

 

[Archer]

OK im gonna try it, i managed to get a Leopard Installation DVD from a friend,
That should work,by the way, once installed, can i switch from Leopard to Lion?

EDIT:
It seems that the installer Disk isnt working, The screen Stays in black with the blinking line on the top left (Blinking Underscore?)

Should i get a different installler DVD?

EDIT:

Or is it working? Maybe there's something i have to do first? In order to install Mac OS on a MacBook Pro running Windows 7?

You can't install it and leave Windows in-place. You would usually need to boot of the disc by holding "C" on power-up. But you can't install a previous Mac OS to what the system came with. Nor can you do an in-place upgrade from Leopard to Lion, AFAIK.

The black screen with the blinking line is the MBR from Windows looking for a boot device. This means it has already gone past the CD boot prompt.

If it came with Lion, you're going to have to find a Lion installer.
If it came with Snow Leopard, you're going to need either Snowy (and upgrade from inside like before) or a Lion installer.

Solution

After getting hold of the Lion DMG, ~trebuh~ had to burn it using another mac's Disk Utility and boot from the newly created DVD. From there, the drive was formatted to HFS+ (with a GUID Partition table) and Lion was installed.