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Resizing Boot Camp Partition

Okay, everybody, I need a dummy answer to my dummy question.

I'd like to resize the size of my windows partition to add an extra 1GB. Can I do that in disk utility without having to delete the partition and start Boot Camp all over again? Will it delete Windows if I try to resize it?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Jan 2, 2008 6:33 PM

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3 replies

Jan 2, 2008 6:59 PM in response to hfairfax

Disk Utility appears to let you shrink the Mac OS partition. It is not obvious whether it expands the Windows partition. If it doesn't expand the Windows partition, then this does not solve your problem. 🙂 If it does expand the Windows partition, it may or may not delete Windows (I'm guessing not, but that is an uneducated guess the consequences for which I refuse to be held responsible). Even if it does not delete Windows, it may render Windows unbootable. The issue with Windows--at least if you formatted the Windows partition NTFS--is that once you've installed Windows, the Windows partition contains a file C:boot.ini which, believe it or not, tells Windows where the Windows partition is. If you resize the Windows partition, then the data in boot.ini will surely be wrong, and so Windows will no longer boot, at least until you figure out how to fix boot.ini manually which may be as simple as running "repair" from the Windows installation CD.

The good news is that the place I learned this is http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone/ which contains a free utility for backing up your Windows partition, resizing your Windows partition, and other Windows partition tasks. So if you don't trust Disk Utility to the task, and you do trust WinClone, then you can use the latter.

Whichever route you take, back up early and back up often! Both partitions!

Jan 11, 2008 4:07 PM in response to hfairfax

I also ran out of space on my Boot Camp partition and wanted to resize it without reinstalling everything. It was formatted as FAT32, so I could do it all from within Disk Utility. As an added bonus, I got VMware Fusion using the new larger Boot Camp partition once I was all done. I posted my details at http://blog.stereodevelopment.com/2008/01/11/resize-a-boot-camp-partition-for-us e-with-vmware-fusion/. Hopefully it can help someone.

Resizing Boot Camp Partition

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