Windows not recognizing the common data disk and other issues

[kenneth dyson]

i had to reinstall ubuntu on my triple boot macbook pro due to graphics issues. the 3 OSs are all booting up, but my refind menu has icons for: ubuntu, osx, windows, linux, windows. the first ubuntu entry does not boot up properly, loads up a grub command line interface. the osx works great, windows boots up but does not recognize the common data drive (E:), drive E: is now the macintoshHD. the linux icon boots up a grub menu where i can load ubuntu 14.04 just fine.
wondering how to:
A. fix the refind menu to have ubuntu, osx, windows in that order without extra entries.
B. get windows 7 to recognize the common data drive

here is gdisk output:
Recovery/transformation command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/disk0: 1465149168 sectors, 698.6 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 000052DF-3C5E-0000-4F13-0000225D0000
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1465149134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 4293 sectors (2.1 MiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 40 409639 200.0 MiB EF00 EFI system partition
2 409640 195722135 93.1 GiB AF00 Customer
3 195722136 196991671 619.9 MiB AB00 Recovery HD
4 196993024 685271039 232.8 GiB 0700 WINDOWS HD
5 685271040 863930367 85.2 GiB 8300
6 880583536 1464886983 278.6 GiB 0700 Storage
7 1464887296 1465147391 127.0 MiB 0700
8 863930368 880582655 7.9 GiB 8200

thanks in advance for any help

[Roderick W. Smith]

I assume that your common-storage partition is #6. If so, it's probably not included in your hybrid MBR, which means that Windows can't see it. You'll need to create a new hybrid MBR which includes that partition. You can do that with gdisk or with the version of gptsync that comes with rEFInd. (Do not use the gptsync that comes with rEFIt -- it's much older and less sophisticated in how it assigns partitions to the hybrid MBR.) Note that making such a change runs the risk of causing boot problems for Windows, which can be finicky about its partitions.

You should be able to use the dont_scan_volumes and/or dont_scan_dirs to eliminate unwanted boot loader entries from the menu. I can't provide you with a precise solution because you haven't provided precise details about the entries. I recommend you read the documentation, in the form of the comments in refind.conf and/or the rEFInd configuration file documentation. If you need more help, post back with the exact descriptions for all of your menu items.

I will say, though, that it's probably better to switch Linux to booting directly in EFI mode from rEFInd. You can do this by adding an EFI filesystem driver for whatever filesystem holds your kernel (probably ext4fs), and perhaps running the mkrlconf.sh script that comes with rEFInd in Linux. This action will add menu entries, so you'll then eliminate both of the ones you've got now using dont_scan_volumes and/or dont_scan_dirs. The main advantage will be faster booting without involving GRUB; but it should also be more robust to boot problems in the future.