Can I recover boot camp partition after removing it with gpt remove?

Question

My old MacBook Pro, A1286, (15in, mid-2012) has an SSD that divided my main boot disk into two partitions, one for Mac OSX (running 10.13, High Sierra) and one for Boot camp (running Windows 10).

The boot partition was always MacOSX. Unfortunately, after I removed it to try to use it as an external drive, it got damaged in some way after I reinstalled it. It would not longer boot correctly was identifying as type "FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF" when I went into recovery mode and ran diskutil list from the terminal.

The bootcamp partition was still bootable though.

In my attempts to repair my boot partition I came across this question that seemed to be very similar to what was happening to me.

I tried to follow the steps laid out by @klanomath. Two problems arose those:

1. I still got an error when I tried to verify the disk with diskutil verifyDisk disk0 (Specifically: Error: -69808: Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup Underlying error: 1: POSIX reports: Operation not permitted)
2. In trying to rebuild the partitions I removed all of them from disk0, and then tried to add them back. It seemed to go ok, but now the bootcamp partition is not recognized.

Does anyone know who to restore a bootcamp partition using gpt or another method without losing the data in the partition?

Thanks

EDIT:

Here is a image of the output of diskutil list

EDIT 2:

Progress - After @David Anderson pointed out an error (thank you for catching that) in the value I entered for the type, my partition for boot camp is recognized as "Windows Basic Data" type.

And in Startup Disk, it shows as an option

But unfortunately, when I try using Startup Disk to use it as the boot disk it won't boot still. And says;

"No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"

When I turn on the computer and hold down the option key it doesn't show up as an option either.

Here is the output from gpt -r show /dev/disk0

And here is the output from export LC_CTYPE="ASCII";dd if=/dev/disk0s2 bs=512 count=1 | vis -cw;echo

UPDATE:

After updating the type of the partition to 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC it shows as an option to boot into if I restart the computer. But it does not show in Startup Disk. And when I try to boot to disk0s2 it will hang at the apple logo with a full progress bar.

I believe I have an idea of what may be complicating my situation. First a little further explanation of how my drives were arranged in the computer originally.

Originally I had an HDD in the computer running OSX (10.8 I believe), then after awhile I added a second drive, an SSD (disk0) and partitioned it to have a OSX partition (disk0s2) and a bootcamp partition (disk0s3). The SSD OSX became my primary boot partition and the old HDD I used for storage, but I never removed OSX completely off of it (now listed as disk1 in diskutil)

A little ago I needed to be able to use the Bootcamp partition but did not have the power adapter for the mbp, so I tried to remove the SSD and use it as an external on a different computer, that did not work, and after I placed it back into the original mbp is when disk0 s2 wasn't being recognized and I started to try to fix it. This is when I messed up my bootcamp partition and then I posted on here.

I believe the OSX Recovery that I have been using is from the original HDD which only had 10.8 on it. And after doing some research it seems that maybe 10.8 can't identify the newer OSX partition (disk0s2) and that is why in Startup Disk I don't see it, but if I reboot the computer it does show up as an option.

Here are the outputs that you asked for.

sw_vers

ls -l /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/Boot/BCD

diskutil list

Answer 1

Note: You should make all the corrections to the GPT before making the changes given in this answer.

Your disk0 is not hybrid partition, which means the output from the command fdisk /dev/disk0 will probably appear as shown below.

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]
Offset: 0   Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 255  63 - 1023 255  63 [         1 -  976773167] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      

To create a hybrid partitioned disk, you need to edit the Master Boot Record (MBR) table on disk0. This can be accomplished by using the command given below.

fdisk -f /dev/zero -e /dev/disk0

In this case, the command fdisk is interactive. Enter the data given in the first column of the table below.

User Entry	Type	Default Value	Comment
edit 1	command	no	Edit first table entry
ee	parameter	yes	Partition id
n	parameter	yes	Edit in CHS mode?
1	parameter	no	Partition offset
409639	parameter	no	Partition size
edit 2	command	no	Edit second table entry
ff	parameter	no	Partition id
n	parameter	yes	Edit in CHS mode?
409640	parameter	yes	Partition offset
913864664	parameter	no	Partition size
edit 3	command	no	Edit third table entry
07	parameter	no	Partition id
n	parameter	yes	Edit in CHS mode?
914274304	parameter	yes	Partition offset
62498816	parameter	no	Partition size
flag 3	command	no	Flag the third table entry as bootable
print	command	no	Print loaded MBR partition table
quit	command	no	Quit edit of current MBR, saving current changes
y	parameter	no	Confirm save to disk, then quit?

The probable output from the fdisk interactive command print given in the above table or the command fdisk /dev/disk0 is given below.

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]
Offset: 0   Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE    0   0   2 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: FF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  913864664] Xenix BBT   
*3: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 914274304 -   62498816] HPFS/QNX/AUX
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      

 

Answer 2

I am also facing same issue after recovering my macOS partition which was changed by OSx recovery. To recover my macOS partition I followed the instruction at following posts

• Data Not Backed Up, Partition Type: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF
• How do I recover/fix my OS X partition?
• How to fix broken GPT, GUID and unmountable, no type volumes?

Last one was most helpful.

But in this process 1st entry of the partition table changed from MBR was PMBR. I suspect due to this only it is not showing up at the boot time, although it shows up from startup disk.

I will update my answer as I try to make my Bootcamp bootable again.

Update 1

I was able to successfully rebuild the MBR by following the step mentioned here and in another thread. But it is still not booting.

Here is the output from fdisk.

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 60821/255/63 [977105060 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE    0   0   2 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: FF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  618098816] Xenix BBT   
 3: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 618508456 -   45836120] HPFS/QNX/AUX
*4: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 664606720 -  312498176] HPFS/QNX/AUX 

BCD is present under /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/Boot/

Disk shows up in the startup but does not boot. Am I missing something?