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Moving my Windows partition to second drive?

L

LeeM

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
my current setup in my macbook pro is ssd with windows and osx partition, os's and apps. second drive with windows and osx partition for files.

can i clone my windows ssd partition onto the hdd windows partition? i want the ssd space back for osx
 
ok so i used winclone, made an image and loaded it on to my hdd in the optibay. it shows as a bootable disk but i just get the black screen with flashing underscore.
 
I am not familiar with the Apple laptops. However if the machine does not natively support booting windows from the optibay then it will not work.

(Windows laptops from lenove do support booting from a HDD in the optibay)

A few questions/suggestions though (since you are concerned about space):
- How much memory is in your computer
- Have you disabled hibernation in windows?
- Have you decreased the size of the pagefile in Windows - if you have 4Gb then 256 ~ 512 Mb is normally enough. If you go to 8Gb and above I would use only 128Mb. Windows allocates as much pagefile as you have as memory so if you have 16 Gb memory (OS X loves more memory) then you loose 16Gb in windows on a system managed pagefile and the same size for a hibernation file.

You should be able to run Windows 7 / 8 on 24 - 32Gb comfortably if you move your data to the second HDD.

Hope this helps and I am not telling you old stuff that you already know. Cheers.
 
LeeM said:
ok so i used winclone, made an image and loaded it on to my hdd in the optibay. it shows as a bootable disk but i just get the black screen with flashing underscore.
Click to expand...

My understanding is that a Bootcamp partition has to be on the startup drive.

A suggestion would be to keep the minimum Mac OS boot drive necessary on the SSD, and use the rest for the Windows drive. The problem with this would be, if your SSD is small, Windows OS stuff can grow rather quickly.
 
blesscheese said:
My understanding is that a Bootcamp partition has to be on the startup drive.

A suggestion would be to keep the minimum Mac OS boot drive necessary on the SSD, and use the rest for the Windows drive. The problem with this would be, if your SSD is small, Windows OS stuff can grow rather quickly.
Click to expand...

If you image with winclone then there is no need to have in windows "System Restore" enabled which eats up space. Service pack upgrades also eat up a Gb or more and they normally after a short time can be safely deleted - I have never reverted from an applied service pack.
 
ive only got a 128gb ssd and use windows rarely enough that im not bothered about the speed from the ssd. only reason i wanted to move it. nothing was full but id prefer ssd space for osx is all
 
ok, im just going to pull the laptop apart again, put the mechanical drive in its usual place, plug in my superdrive and boot off a disk, then swap my ssd back in after install. should work right?
 
MJL said:
If you image with winclone then there is no need to have in windows "System Restore" enabled which eats up space. Service pack upgrades also eat up a Gb or more and they normally after a short time can be safely deleted - I have never reverted from an applied service pack.
Click to expand...

That's a good point about the "System Restore" backup point, or whatever they are exactly. With both my wife and my father-in-law, one day their drives were almost full...it turns out System Restore had (literally) ballooned up to over 50GB (!) on their 120GB drives.

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LeeM said:
ok, im just going to pull the laptop apart again, put the mechanical drive in its usual place, plug in my superdrive and boot off a disk, then swap my ssd back in after install. should work right?
Click to expand...

I don't think it matters where the drive is, as long as it is your Mac OS X boot up drive. In other words, you can't have the Mac OS System files on one drive, and then the Windows on another. Both Windows and Mac have to boot from the same drive.

It isn't too hard (at least it didn't used to be) to have the Mac OS System-boot files on one drive, and your home folder on another drive. This would give you space to put your Windows files all on the same 128GB SSD with your Mac OS System boot drive.
 
ive seen lots of posts by people saying theyve got the 2 os's on separate drives though
 
blesscheese said:
That's a good point about the "System Restore" backup point, or whatever they are exactly. With both my wife and my father-in-law, one day their drives were almost full...it turns out System Restore had (literally) ballooned up to over 50GB (!) on their 120GB drives.

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I don't think it matters where the drive is, as long as it is your Mac OS X boot up drive. In other words, you can't have the Mac OS System files on one drive, and then the Windows on another. Both Windows and Mac have to boot from the same drive.

It isn't too hard (at least it didn't used to be) to have the Mac OS System-boot files on one drive, and your home folder on another drive. This would give you space to put your Windows files all on the same 128GB SSD with your Mac OS System boot drive.
Click to expand...

I have one on on drive and another on the other drive. I yesterday posted on 123macmini my experience with a problem I recently experienced and how I solved it (note - black screen).

@ Leem - you may want to take a look at that, it is under troubleshooting.
 
LeeM said:
ive seen lots of posts by people saying theyve got the 2 os's on separate drives though
Click to expand...

You are right! (and I was wrong...). Found this on the Apple Support FAQ:
"Which application should I use to create a Windows partition and to install Windows?
Use Boot Camp Assistant (located in the Utilities folder) to create a Windows partition and to install Microsoft Windows. Boot Camp Assistant works with an Intel-based Mac that has a single hard disk partition or Fusion Drive. Boot Camp Assistant creates an additional partition for the Microsoft Windows operating system or allows you to install Microsoft Windows on another drive if you have more than one internal drive."

It won't work with RAID drives, however.

SWEET! I can put Windoze on my Mac Mini Server's other drive now...
 
what a **** about. ive lost my disc bootcamp wouldnt make me a bootable disc for me, it would only allow me to make a bootable usb (bearing in mind my laptop has a superdrive) i didnt think it was supposed to do that.
anyway, hdd in the allocated slot, windows installing off a disc, ill report back.

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crashed halfway through installation. **** it im goin the pub
 
cant get it to work for ****. if i unplug my ssd i can boot into windows, as soon as my ssd is plugged in i get black screen when booting into windows. so ive installed parallels and it uses my bootcamp partition to virtualise so i'll do that and upgrade from 8 to 16gb ram
 
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