Windows 10 successfully installed with Bootcamp - can I delete macOS?

[zen]

I just installed Windows 10 on my late 2013 MBP, and it runs so much faster and smoother than Mojave that I’d like to actually ditch macOS altogether and give that hard drive space over to Windows.

Is this actually possible? I basically want to delete the macOS partition and resize the Windows one - is that something that can be done live?

 

[tl166115]

Absolutely. Bur you have to start over, which means that all of your previous data in both Mac OS and Windows would be erased.

Boot with a Windows 10 installation drive, use the command prompt to perform these commands in order:

diskpart
list disk
(Find the disk “number” for your hard drive, let’s say your hard drive is disk #1)
select disk 1
clean
(Then exit the command prompt)

Then perform the usual installation.

 

[zen]

Absolutely. Bur you have to start over, which means that all of your previous data in both Mac OS and Windows would be erased.

Boot with a Windows 10 installation drive, use the command prompt to perform these commands in order:

diskpart
list disk
(Find the disk “number” for your hard drive, let’s say your hard drive is disk #1)
select disk 1
clean
(Then exit the command prompt)

Then perform the usual installation.

Ah, okay. What about the Bootcamp drivers, etc? I guess there is a way of downloading them separately and installing after Windows?

There’s no way of resizing a live partition?

 

[tl166115]

Ah, okay. What about the Bootcamp drivers, etc? I guess there is a way of downloading them separately and installing after Windows?

I’d create the installation media in MacOS before it gets removed

 

[zen]

I’d create the installation media in MacOS before it gets removed

Good tip, thanks!

 

[Zeke D]

Here's what I'd do.
Presumably, your Windows 10 partition is the second one on the drive. Use Windows 10 to format the OS X drive to fat32. Then use Acorns or other windows-based cloner to clone your windows 10 install from one partition to the other. Once you've verified that the copy is running as expected, use Windows 10 to delete the "old" windows 10 install, and reclaim the disk space via disk management.

 

[milomak]

will bootcamp allow you to totally remove the macos partition?

i wouldn't anyway. would leave a functional macos install.

 

[Mike Boreham]

There’s no way of resizing a live partition?

Not live resizing but the same end result. I have done this a few times:

Make a clone of the Mac side
Make a Winclone image of the Windows partition,
Erase the internal drive completely for Mac.
Clone the Mac side back
Recreate BootCamp partition to use nearly all the internal
Restore Winclone image to the new larger BC partition.

Personally I would not get rid of the Mac partition completely, but it could be pretty small, c 20Gb.

 

[zen]

Not live resizing but the same end result. I have done this a few times:

Make a clone of the Mac side
Make a Winclone image of the Windows partition,
Erase the internal drive completely for Mac.
Clone the Mac side back
Recreate BootCamp partition to use nearly all the internal
Restore Winclone image to the new larger BC partition.

Personally I would not get rid of the Mac partition completely, but it could be pretty small, c 20Gb.

Thanks!

I’m in two minds at the moment - Windows 10 works great, but I’m getting less than an hour of battery life, versus about 5-6 hours under Mojave.

 

[PieVsCake]

Back when I used to bootcamp (built a PC for gaming and still use my Mac for everything else) I considered doing what your suggesting. Problem with that is if you ever have a problem with your Windows installation and need to scorch earth reinstall you are going to need to reinstall the Mac OS etc. Resizing the partition gave me worlds of hurt as well.

Set your default boot drive as bootcamp in system preferences, delete as much stuff from the OSX partition as you can and just forget about OSX till you need it.

Trust me, the few gigs of space your using on the mac side are worth it if even once you need to boot into OSX for any reason.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Thanks!

I’m in two minds at the moment - Windows 10 works great, but I’m getting less than an hour of battery life, versus about 5-6 hours under Mojave.

What level of power mgmt are you using in Windows 10? I would check to see it's not set to anything higher than "Balanced mode". If you are on a laptop, I would first try "power saver mode" with defaults and see if your battery life improves.