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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

Hi,

is it possible to clone from large to small size. I have partitioned a larger size and i would like to release some of them.

Thanks.
 
thanks worldwizard for the guide. I set up 48gb for my XP partition solely for games but it looks like games are quite large now adays lol so I'm going to up it to mabye 64GB.

I was thinking. I'll have to use a windows installer disc to format the newly created partition to NTFS before I can clone my drive back over won't I? Anyway, I'm imaging my bootcamp partition now..
 
Is it possible to use Disk Utility to shrink the OS X partition (don't even touch the bootcamp partition) and then boot up into Windows, and use the administrator tools to expand the Windows partition into the newly created free space on the drive?
 
props to all the tips on using winclone to change the size of the partition -- it worked beautifully and took almost no time at all!! Thanks for the help - you saved me a ton of time!

@thejadedmonkey:
I haven't tried this in windows in a while, but I don't think you can change the size of the boot partition.. if it was another partition I believe you could, but you can't resize a partition while you are running an OS on it.
 
when i delete my partition of windows from bootcamp and wanting to make a new and bigger partition, boot camp tells me i have to reformat my entire OSX drive, is there any way around this?

thanks
 
I have some information, if it isn't already said.. I didn't read the whole discussion :)
I'm currently using bootcamp and as many I have formatted it too small for my games. So I was searching for a solution too (that is in fact in this post).

I read that some had problems with the NTFS-format. The program I currently use is Paragon NTFS. That's $20 and it is even integrated with Disc Utility! If you want to format a disc you can choose formatting it in NTFS-format and it is not that slow at all.
Second is that iPartition is NOT a good program! I used the trial version to test it, but you can't resize a partition from your boot-cd. And I don't have any external drives that are formatted from which I could boot. I think that the other solutions are better. Besides: $40 for just a few features more than DiskUtility is a bit too much, isn't it?

I will test WinClone soon enough. Thanks for the advice. Hope I could help!

Grtz
Didii
 
NOTE: We have an MR guide for this topic now http://guides.macrumors.com/Extend_or_Resize_Boot_Camp_Partition

When I needed to resize the bootcamp on my Mac I tried the stellar partition manager.

I'm not questioning the product, which may well be a fine product, but I do wonder why many of your posts suggest products from Stellar.

http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-software.php

There is no indication on the Stellar website that it supports resizing NTFS and FAT32 partitions in a hybrid GPT/MBR partition scheme on the Mac platform. I won't add it to the MR guide until we get additional confirmation that it is actually capable of performing the desired task better than GParted Live or CampTune.

B
 
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

Thanks for sharing this knowledge with us.Your posting is really very good.
 
Read edit first!

Is it possible to use Disk Utility to shrink the OS X partition (don't even touch the bootcamp partition) and then boot up into Windows, and use the administrator tools to expand the Windows partition into the newly created free space on the drive?

It's perfectly possible! You won't need to make a backup and no need for extra programs! Here is a method just with the available programs of Mac and Windows. Faster and easier!
If you want a larger bootcamp partition:
  1. Startup in MAC OS X and run Disk Utilities
  2. Select the harddrive and resize it to the size you want
  3. Press apply of course
  4. Startup in Windows
  5. Start -> Run -> Diskpart
  6. Insert: list volume
  7. Insert: select volume # (with # the partition number)
  8. Insert: extend
  9. Normally you should have message that the operation was successful, if not check the number (don't worry if it was wrong, it changes nothing to that volume)
  10. Insert: exit
Now your partition of bootcamp should be larger than before. (Mind: I did it a while ago, could be I forgot something)
The problem I however had was that Mac couldn't resize because there was already data on the drive that should have been for windows. First solution was a defragmentation of my Macvolume, but that didn't work after defragmenting for several hours. So I just reinstalled everything...

If in the other way (Windows smaller partition) do this:
  1. Startup in Windows
  2. Start -> Right click Computer -> Manage
  3. Search for Disk Management
  4. Right click the correct volume -> Shrink Volume
  5. Enter the correct amount and press Shrink
  6. Startup in MAC OS X and start Disk Utility
  7. Enlarge the correct volume and press apply
I never tested this method, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Hope this helped! Any question just ask :)

EDIT: Ok this method is useless... As englishman says: extending the Bootcamp with windows doesn't work. And if you shrink the Bootcamp partition using windows, it opens space at the end of the HD, so not connected to the Mac-partition. Sorry if I gave anyone false hope...
 
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It's perfectly possible! You won't need to make a backup and no need for extra programs! Here is a method just with the available programs of Mac and Windows. Faster and easier!
If you want a larger bootcamp partition:
  1. Startup in MAC OS X and run Disk Utilities
  2. Select the harddrive and resize it to the size you want

I don't think you can do this to extend (backwards a partition) only forwards so your suggestion won't work.

The Mac OSX utility will only extend partitions forwards on the disk.
 
I don't think you can do this to extend (backwards a partition) only forwards so your suggestion won't work.

The Mac OSX utility will only extend partitions forwards on the disk.

That would be strange... I'm very sure I tried both ways. Extending is 100% sure working. Shrinking is only possible if no data is written on that part you wish to remove.
I'll check it again to be sure.

To be updated.


UPDATE: There's no problem for Mac to extend or shrink his partition. But Windows Disk Manager won't let me extending his boot disk. So I've tried forcing it with a program called Easeus. DON'T TRY IT! After failing to extend the disk, my pc automatically started up in Mac. I couldn't choose anymore with rEFit what partition I'd like to run. And Disk Utilities said that Windows just vanished from my pc.
I restarted, pressed option key and choose to start windows. Apparently that worked, but Windows said there was no Mac partition... Unable to boot in Mac again, I assumed Windows was right and I reinstalled Mac. So now I have Mac back, but when I select to startup in Windows it fails to start..
Good news though: Windows partition is eventually bigger than before!
 
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