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Can Leopard resize Bootcamp's partition?

D

DaveF

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 29, 2007
851
62
NoVA
With Leopard's new Disk Utility, can a Bootcamp partition be non-destructively resize? Or is it still necessary to clone the Windows install, redo Bootcamp, and restore Windows?

I found my Bootcamp partition is too small and will need to be resized eventually (or, rather, games are much much larger than I realized :)). But I really don't want to reinstall Windows to accomplish this.
 
Funny you mention this. I used a tool called Winclone (a Mac app designed for cloning Windows partitions and restoring them) to perform exactly this procedure (increase Boot Camp partition size without reinstalling Windows). You can't do it in Disk Utility, but it's really not that hard.
  1. Convert your Windows partition to NTFS, if it isn't already
  2. Clone the partition (with Winclone) to an external drive
  3. Using Boot Camp Assistant, delete the old Windows partition
  4. Relaunch it and create a new, larger partition
  5. Cancel the install when prompted (choose Quit and Install Later)
  6. Restore the clone you made earlier to the new, larger partition
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Funny you mention this. I used a tool called Winclone (a Mac app designed for cloning Windows partitions and restoring them) to perform exactly this procedure (increase Boot Camp partition size without reinstalling Windows). You can't do it in Disk Utility, but it's really not that hard.
  1. Convert your Windows partition to NTFS, if it isn't already
  2. Clone the partition (with Winclone) to an external drive
  3. Using Boot Camp Assistant, delete the old Windows partition
  4. Relaunch it and create a new, larger partition
  5. Cancel the install when prompted (choose Quit and Install Later)
  6. Restore the clone you made earlier to the new, larger partition
Click to expand...

Is Winclone free?
 
Thanks.

Does WinClone trigger Windows Authorization system? Or, if all goes well, is it a transparent process? (I have the normal concerns of reinstalling windows, plus a desire to avoid dealing with the Authorization process again.) But I think I'm using FAT32 so I can read and write files in OS X, so I don't want to convert to NTFS.

iPartition could be a good solution. Though $50 for a single use tool also has its downsides.

Well, two solutions, with some tradeoffs. That's better than I had a few minutes ago. Thanks!
 
DaveF said:
Thanks.

Does WinClone trigger Windows Authorization system? Or, if all goes well, is it a transparent process? (I have the normal concerns of reinstalling windows, plus a desire to avoid dealing with the Authorization process again.) But I think I'm using FAT32 so I can read and write files in OS X, so I don't want to convert to NTFS.

iPartition could be a good solution. Though $50 for a single use tool also has its downsides.

Well, two solutions, with some tradeoffs. That's better than I had a few minutes ago. Thanks!
Click to expand...
I can't confirm on Vista whether it does or not, as I don't use it. I can tell you that the process went without a hitch on a Windows XP Pro install, though. No Windows demanding that it be reactivated or any such things.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Yes, it is. It is distributed as Donationware - this means it is free to use as long as you want but if you want to send a donation to the author as thanks you can.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I happen to be in the same boat as the OP. I'm trying to plan ahead and decide if it's worth it. I made a 60GB partition and 30GB's has been used.
I installed Vista/Office and a few small programs. I was shocked to see how much space they took up. I swear my PC running XP with the same software did not take up that much room.
 
the funny thing is that i'm doing the opposite, i want to resize my partition into a smaller volume is that available too? :rolleyes:
 
But is it destructible? Can't I just add more space to the Leopard partition? Do I have to clone the windows installation?
 
iPartition is nondestructive. 50 bucks does seem a bit steep but they are a solid company and focused on keeping your data safe during these operations. iDefrag works wonders on my media drive, OS X is great at preventing a lot of file fragmentation but with big fat media files and FCP projects my drives get trashed leaving bits everywhere.
 
More observations on WinClone

I attempted this yesterday and here are my observations...
Previous setup:
- MB with 2g RAM
- 10G of HD allocated to bootcamp running WinXP Pro (FAT32)
- VMWare Fusion Beta

New setup:
- Booted into Bootcamp side of WinXP (not VMWare) and changed file system to NTFS via commandline ('convert c: /fs:ntfs). Note that this requires reboot into winxp.
- Cloned my bootcamp using WinClone
- Used Bootcamp assistant to remove old win partition and created a new one (NTFS format). New size = 20G
- Restored above bootcamp image using WinClone

Observations:
- Had to reboot into winxp via bootcamp (before trying to launch VMware)
- WinXP detected corrupted disk and did its own fix
- Launched WinXP via VMWare (allocated 700MB of RAM for this VM)
- WinXP needed to call home and authenticate. Had no problem doing that.
- First boot into WinXP took a very long time. Subsequent bootup seems to be fine but slightly slow (cannot quantize this)

Question:
Is NTFS WinXP meant to be slightly slow in VMWare? I only use this VM to run IE and my Garmin GPS software. However, it would be nice if I can some dev tools like Visual Studio.
 
resizing bootcamp partiton

wrldwzrd89 said:
Funny you mention this. I used a tool called Winclone (a Mac app designed for cloning Windows partitions and restoring them) to perform exactly this procedure (increase Boot Camp partition size without reinstalling Windows). You can't do it in Disk Utility, but it's really not that hard.
  1. Convert your Windows partition to NTFS, if it isn't already
  2. Clone the partition (with Winclone) to an external drive
  3. Using Boot Camp Assistant, delete the old Windows partition
  4. Relaunch it and create a new, larger partition
  5. Cancel the install when prompted (choose Quit and Install Later)
  6. Restore the clone you made earlier to the new, larger partition
Click to expand...

The discussion refers to adjusting the boot camp partition UPWARDS. Will this same approach work if you wish to mkae a SMALLER bootcamp partition and thereby give back some of the space to the main MAC partition.
Thank you.
 
Can you increase the hardrive space on the XP side once you've already installed bootcamp on it?
 
stuff99 said:
Can you increase the hardrive space on the XP side once you've already installed bootcamp on it?
Click to expand...

If you take a look at the quoted section in the post right above yours (#20), you will see how that can be done using WinClone.

And just for clarity, you don't install BootCamp on your XP side (or partition). You run the Boot Camp Assistant program in your Leopard installation's Utilities folder in order to install XP (or modify the Windows partition as described in the quote).
 
I originally set-up a 32GB Fat32 partition for winxp using Bootcamp. I soon realised I needed more space so I used Winclone to copy my winxp partition and then re-sized my bootcamp xp partition to 70Gb. Reinstalling the winclone partition was a breeze but winxp still thinks it has only 32Gb to play with. How do I get it to recognise the new partition size?

TIA
 
andyiomoon said:
I originally set-up a 32GB Fat32 partition for winxp using Bootcamp. I soon realised I needed more space so I used Winclone to copy my winxp partition and then re-sized my bootcamp xp partition to 70Gb. Reinstalling the winclone partition was a breeze but winxp still thinks it has only 32Gb to play with. How do I get it to recognise the new partition size?

TIA
Click to expand...

Well, that is interesting- did the physical partition size remain at 70Gb? The reason I ask is that on the front page of Winclone, it notes that restoring a FAT32 clone will cause the partition to shrink to the size of the cloned drive which is why they recommend converting to NTFS to restore to an enlarged partition. The FAQs have a lot more info about partition resizing but seem to be down at the moment, so to quote the front page:
FAT Support
When restoring a FAT32 bootcamp partition, you must restore on to a partition that is the same size or larger as the original partition. If you restore it onto a partition that is larger, the partition will shrink to match the size of the original partition, and you will not be able to expand it. If you want the ability to increase the size of your Windows partition, convert it to NTFS. Winclone will then expand the image on restore to take up all the space on the partition.
Click to expand...
 
It does look like the partition has shrunk as you suggested. There is a tool in Winclone for expanding the image to the available space but that was throwing back errors suggesting it wasn't an NTFS partition despite me setting up NTFS in the first place.

I might go through the process again and will report back.
 
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