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User profile for user: jkotsonas
jkotsonas Author
User level: Level 1
9 points

Mac - partition question

Hello,

Long-time pc user who is trying to learn about macs as fast as possible :-)


I'm supporting a user who uses a mac, and who partitioned it in order so he could

run both Windows, and Mac.


I haven't been able to obtain info on how exactly the user partitioned his mac, but

however it was done, it appears that they didn't do it correctly as he as plenty of

hard drive space for the windows partition, but has run out of space on the Mac OS

side.


Is there a way that one can undo, or re-partition the hard drive without having to

redo everything, or is it like Windows where, if you reformat/partition you have to

back everything up as when you do, you'll wipe the drive.


Hopefully that all makes sense, but please let me know if there's any additional info

needed.


Cheers,


Jim

MS Outlook-OTHER, Windows 7, OS and Office suite are 64 bit

Posted on Mar 14, 2018 2:45 PM

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User profile for user: Tesserax
Tesserax
User level: Level 10
148,453 points

Mar 14, 2018 2:58 PM in response to jkotsonas

Macs use a feature, called Boot Camp, to create a separate partition on the system drive for running Windows. They would use the Boot Camp Assistant app to do so. This app also has the option for resizing the partitions.


Ref:

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User profile for user: Tesserax
Tesserax
User level: Level 10
148,453 points

Mar 15, 2018 12:10 PM in response to jkotsonas

No. I am not aware of any manual technique to do this that does not require, at least, three things:

  1. Make a clone backup of the Windows partition.
  2. Resize the Windows partition within Windows that includes erasing the partition's contents.
  3. Re-installing Windows from the clone.


I am aware of a number of apps that claim they can resize without any erasing, but I have not tested any of them myself to verify those claims. One of those apps is: Paragon Camptune X. Regardless of which method you choose, it is imperative to have good backups as anything can and will go wrong.

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User profile for user: Tesserax
Tesserax
User level: Level 10
148,453 points

Mar 17, 2018 8:46 AM in response to jkotsonas

Isn't that Disk Utility that is referred to in the link I posted an on board Apple utility - or am I reading that

wrong.

No, you read that article correctly, Disk Utility (DU) is a native macOS app. However, it was not designed to resize NTFS-formatted partitions of which the Boot Camp one is. That's what the Boot Camp Assistant is for ... and that utility is limited as well. From what I have experienced it works best for creating or removing a Boot Camp partition; resizing, not so much.

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User profile for user: Grant Bennet-Alder
Grant Bennet-Alder
User level: Level 10
127,177 points

Mar 18, 2018 8:09 AM in response to jkotsonas

It is a know DANGER to attempt to use ANY Windows-native Utilities to resize partitions on a a Mac.


Windows is allowed to run as a guest by emulating the Windows brain-damaged partition structure on top of the Mac Partition structure. Native-Windows Utilities do not acknowledge the existence of any other Operating System, so they freely clobber the Mac partition Map and essentially write over your MacOS partition data. When it does this, your MacOS partition is lost.

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Mac - partition question

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