Really need some advice on getting hard drive space back on windows partition??

[Aniej]

I really need to free up space on the windows partition of my Mac so that I can install certain software I need in order to complete a project due really soon. What would be the best way to accomplish this (I'd rather not increase the partition w/ a third party app)? I was thinking the best is to eliminate unnecessary files that I am pretty certain were installed as part of the Vista install so that I can recover as much HDD space on the windows partition as possible, but don't know what I can eliminate safely? Can someone please offer some ideas and very basic steps of where to find any of the items you reference? Thanks very much.

 

[-tWv-]

1)Use winclone to clone your bootcamp drive
2)remove the partition with bootcamp assistant
3)repartition with bootcamp assistant with a bigger partition
4)restore from winclone image

I think just giving more space to your drive would be easier than trying to delete files and possibly messing up your system. Winclone restores everything exactly as it was before so you should have no problems with the image/restore. I have done it many times and have never had problems.

Make sure you have a backup of your OSX partition also before you try to remove/repartition your drive. You don't want to loose all the data on that too because of some disk error.

 

[Aniej]

You might not have caught this part of my post, but I mentioned that I'd rather not increase the partition w/ a third party app, e.g., Winclone. There is certain software installed on the windows drive that I really don't want to play around with in terms of using something like winclone to transfer the items on the current partition.

So, any suggestions on what Windows Vista files to delete, I mean certainly people have deleted Windows files before

 

[MacManiac76]

Well you could always empty the cache and temp file folders, but this will only be a temporary solution.

Also you could check the Program Files folder and delete the folders of any applications that you don't use.

 

[jdechko]

What version of vista are you running?

 

[-tWv-]

You might not have caught this part of my post, but I mentioned that I'd rather not increase the partition w/ a third party app, e.g., Winclone. There is certain software installed on the windows drive that I really don't want to play around with in terms of using something like winclone to transfer the items on the current partition.

So, any suggestions on what Windows Vista files to delete, I mean certainly people have deleted Windows files before

Yeah, I didn't catch that at first but I don't know what winclone could mess up in terms of making and image/restoring the system. If you would rather use disk utility to make the image and then restore it you could do that also. That wouldn't be using a third party app and probably would have the same result.

Anyone else tried using disk utility to make an image of their windows partition and then restore with that image?