Removing OSX Partition and add it to main Windows volume?

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Level 1

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Removing OSX Partition and add it to main Windows volume?

Hi All,

I have had a Windows 7 partition on my late 2011 MacBook Pro SSD for a couple of months now, mainly for playing games. Its a nice 500GB SSD and I would like to use it as the main Drive for a PC I am putting together. Because of this I would need to remove the OSX partition and give the space taken by it to the Windows Partition. Is this possible? and if so, how would one best go about doing this?

The next Problem would be removing the bootcamp drivers and installing new ones for the new components my System will be running with. Would it be better to remove the Bootcamp drivers before or after I put the SSD into the new system? Would a standard windows system even boot with bootcamp drivers installed?

I hope you can help me out, thanks in advance!

Posted on May 5, 2016 2:54 AM

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Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

May 5, 2016 9:02 PM in response to Knacke_Brot

1. On a 2011 Mac, W7 is installed in legacy BIOS/MBR mode, but uses a Hybrid MBR which overlays the underlying GPT partition scheme.

a. The EFI partition is different on a PC s Mac.

b. You have Recovery HD on a Mac, which does not exist on a PC. There may be similar hidden OEM partitions for recovery.

c. Expanding a Hybrid MBR is tricky. You can convert the OS X partition to FAT (and then NTFS) and use it as an additional Windows drive.

2. Windows generalization to remove hardware specific drivers is done via a process called SysPrep. Please see https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721940(v=ws.10).aspx

3. You may also want to consider a Windows Backup that you can restore to second drive in the PC. Be aware of your Licensing limitations.

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