Shrink Bootcamp Vista Partition, Re-Claim in Mac w/ Disk Utility?

[goinskiing]

So, I have made my Vista partition too large and need to reclaim another 10GB (much better used in OSX ).

I have been trying to find ways to do this and haven't found a simple solution.

Then I thought of a way that might work. Let me know if you all think this would work.

1. Shrink the partition in Vista and split it, making unallocated space
2. Merge the Mac HD in Disk Utility with the unallocated space

Does anyone think this would work, or is disk utility not going to find that unallocated space. Just thought I'd bounce that idea off everyone.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I can tell you right now, this will NOT work. There's a utility called Winclone, which is what I used to perform this task. Here's what I did:

1. Connected an external drive (HFS Plus formatted) to my Intel Mac, large enough to hold the entire Windows partition
2. Used Winclone to make a copy of it, with the shrink option so that it only takes up as much space as it actually needs.
3. Used Boot Camp Assistant to delete then recreate the Windows partition, in the new size (smaller or larger, doesn't really matter - both work).
4. Used Winclone again, this time to restore the copy made earlier to the new Windows partition.
5. Booted up into Windows to make sure everything worked - which it did.

 

[goinskiing]

Thanks!

That looks like a fantastic solution! I'll give it a try today.

 

[goinskiing]

Do you shrink before the copy?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Do you shrink before the copy?

Yes - according to the documentation on the Winclone web site.

 

[goinskiing]

Yes - according to the documentation on the Winclone web site.

Duh, I'm blind. Thanks, sorry!