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evilzero

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2008
14
0
is it possible to extend my partition size on boot camp without re-formatting?
i'm on unibody macbook pro running 50gb of Windows 7, i'm running out of space right now and I'm thinking to extend it to 70-80gb to install more games on it. can this be done guys?
 

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

No but you can use Winclone to back up your partition use DU to reduce the size of your os x partition and then restore it.

There was a thread recently with detailed instructions.
 

evilzero

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2008
14
0
thanks, but I read that people are having problems restoring windows 7 with winclone.. Is it fixed yet? I wanna know since i'm using win 7 myself..
 

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
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If you have enough disk space you could just use Disk Utility to backup the NTFS partition as a DMG as a non resizeable fallback if you can't restore from Winclone.

B
 

evilzero

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2008
14
0
cool, nice to hear that.. can't believe I went through lots of stuff from reformatting osx just to get bootcamp assistant to work.. restored my ntfs clone file to fat32 bootcamp partition and lost 20gb of my partition.. doing it over again now... :(
 

evilzero

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2008
14
0
ok i think i'm doing something wrong here.. i restored my clone (50gb) to a new made partition (70gb).. but when i boot into windows, I still have 50gb of storage.. how do i get the new extended partition back? can someone tell me what i'm suppose to do?
 

lucifiel

macrumors 6502a
Nov 7, 2009
982
2
In your basement
ok i think i'm doing something wrong here.. i restored my clone (50gb) to a new made partition (70gb).. but when i boot into windows, I still have 50gb of storage.. how do i get the new extended partition back? can someone tell me what i'm suppose to do?

you didn't put the clone on the wrong partition did you?
 

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
I would have recommended a GParted Live CD, but you already messed around with Winclone.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php

Well I guess that stands to reason if winclone uses ntfsprogs to do its stuff that the same capabilities should be in other packages!

I'd still use winclone to back things up (not generally a good idea to do major partition operations without a back up) but it does sound like gparted should do the trick.

Good to know!

B
 

evilzero

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2008
14
0
Thanks, I'll give GParted a try next time.. bcoz winclone isn't as friendly as I thought, well it's windows os part to blame though.. been running checkdisk after restore... 13 hours so far and it's not even done.. you guys were right..
 

Quad5Ny

macrumors 6502a
Sep 13, 2009
984
22
New York, USA
Thanks, I'll give GParted a try next time.. bcoz winclone isn't as friendly as I thought, well it's windows os part to blame though.. been running checkdisk after restore... 13 hours so far and it's not even done.. you guys were right..

Be really careful. Balamw is right, you should backup everything before you try to change partition sizes.

GParted isn't easy, but I was able to figure it out without reading any help documents(although I prob should have).

Good luck =)
 

CylonGlitch

macrumors 68030
Jul 7, 2009
2,956
268
Nashville
There is/was an app for windows called Partition Magic. It would allow you to adjust your partition sizes without having to reformat. It worked awesome. All you had to do was, on the Mac side, contract your Mac partition; then boot back to windows and use this to expand your partition.

Ok it is still there and there are several others :

Partition Magic 8
Partition Manager
Disk Doctor Suite 10
gParted

The first three can be pricy, but the last one is free. I know what one I would try first the next time I need to do it. :D
 

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
Last I checked PM8 didn't understand GPT, so I would never use it on a Mac. Unless I knew for a fact that the drive was partitioned using MBR only.

I would be very leery of any similar product that did not explicitly call out GPT or Mac compatibility for the same reason.

I know there have been some issues with Acronis (makers of Disk Doctor 10) TrueImage and hybrid GPT/MBR partition tables such as Boot Camp is prone to use.

gparted is clearly designed for GPT and the price is right.

EDIT: CAREFUL! PM8 has not been updated since 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PartitionMagic

EDIT2: DD10 is out as well, does not support GPT. http://kb.acronis.com/content/1827

EDIT3: Paragon Partition Manager 10 Professional claims GPT support and explicitly says that it supports Boot Camp, so it looks like a good solution!

B
 

evilzero

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 11, 2008
14
0
There is/was an app for windows called Partition Magic. It would allow you to adjust your partition sizes without having to reformat. It worked awesome. All you had to do was, on the Mac side, contract your Mac partition; then boot back to windows and use this to expand your partition.

Ok it is still there and there are several others :

Partition Magic 8
Partition Manager
Disk Doctor Suite 10
gParted

The first three can be pricy, but the last one is free. I know what one I would try first the next time I need to do it. :D

so you are saying all i have to do is shrink some partition on mac, then claim the partition in windows with one of those software? man... that sounds simple.. how come i never thought of that.. great stuff:D

Edit: so only PPM 10 is the only option for now i guess...
 

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
Edit: so only PPM 10 is the only option for now i guess...
Unless you are willing to try gparted.

It is good to know that PPM10 claims full Boot Camp support, especially if you can get it on sale cheaper than the full $80 price.

I still wouldn't resize it without a backup!

B
 

CylonGlitch

macrumors 68030
Jul 7, 2009
2,956
268
Nashville
I still wouldn't resize it without a backup!

Agreed!

Yes, when I used partition magic 8, it was nice enough to know it do anything with the Mac partitions thus you couldn't do anything if the drive was fully partitioned. So I just went into OSX and make the Mac partition smaller. Then partition magic saw the free space and was able to allocate it to the NTFS partition.

Oh, since it was my primary drive I had to boot off the install CD (tiger at the time) and adjust the primary partition that way -- it wouldn't let me make it smaller because it was the primary drive. I think this may have been fixed now.

Good luck. If I was going to do it over again, I would give gparted a try.
 

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
Paragon Solution

Hi All,

Paragon Software has a solution I think. I bought their NTFS for Mac and got a MacBrowser free, whihc doesn't install on Win 7 Pro 64 Bit for some reason.

But also downloaded a free item called Paragon Camptune...... I think it allows on the fly partition space management.

Check it out, and do tell me if I've got it all wrong !!

Regards

Preetinder
 

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
But also downloaded a free item called Paragon Camptune...... I think it allows on the fly partition space management.

Check it out, and do tell me if I've got it all wrong !!
I don't think it's on the fly since they say:

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/camptune/free_download.html said:
CampTune for Mac® OS X is an universal Linux-based bootable image that you can use on Apple Boot Camp. Before using this solution you have to burn it to any CD/DVD.

So it's basically something like a gparted live CD.

It's also still in beta FWIW, but seems very promising down the line! (I still won't resize partitions without a backup! ;))

B
 

ilovebananas

macrumors member
Apr 26, 2008
62
0
england
ok i think i'm doing something wrong here.. i restored my clone (50gb) to a new made partition (70gb).. but when i boot into windows, I still have 50gb of storage.. how do i get the new extended partition back? can someone tell me what i'm suppose to do?


I winclone, there is an option to expand the NTFS partition. This allows a smaller image (50gb in your case), to be expanded into a larger partition (70gb).
Just do winclone restore as normal then use this command. No access to winclone at the moment so don't know where it is but it works fine
 

panzer06

macrumors 68040
Sep 23, 2006
3,282
229
Kilrath
thanks, but I read that people are having problems restoring windows 7 with winclone.. Is it fixed yet? I wanna know since i'm using win 7 myself..

Winclone is even having problems restoring Vista since SL. Not good at all. I can't even use my new 640GB HD!

Cheers,
 
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