Need help resizing Mac partition.

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Ok, so I'm running Lion and my problem is this: I have two partitions, one Macintosh HD and one for Bootcamp. I shrunk the size of my Mac partition from 900 GB to 800 GB, thinking that it would increase the size of my Bootcamp partition to 200 GB. Needless to say it did not, but now I have 100 GB of empty "grey" space underneath my Mac partition. I want to resize the Mac partition back to its previous size, so I drag the resize slider down to fill the empty space and click "apply". It immediately reverts back to the previous description (800 GB of Mac with 100 GB of grey space) while saying "partition complete." I'm no longer worried about resizing the Bootcamp partition; I just need to get my Mac partition back to its previous (post-Bootcamp) size.

Screen Shot 2013-06-26 at 4.54.45 PM.png
 

chscag

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It should have worked. By "resize slider" I'm assuming you grabbed the resize corner (bottom right corner) and dragged it to fill the remainder of the drive up to the Boot Camp partition? When it gave you the message "partition complete" did you exit Disk Utility and reboot back to your Macintosh HD to check whether or not the 100 GB was recovered?

By the way, the correct procedure for expanding your Boot Camp partition is to use software designed to do that non-destructively. "CampTune" from Paragon Software is what we recommend. The method you used does not work (as you found out).
 
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Yes that was what I was referring to. I did reboot, and that 100 GB was still in the gray. To complicate things even further, I decided just for kicks to try and restore just under the full amount of missing space (to make my Mac partition 897.3 GB instead of the full 900.65 GB) and that worked perfectly. In other words, it only doesn't work when I drag that little slider all the way down to restore the full amount. So now, I'm only missing roughly 3 GB of space...but of course that is 3 GB I would like to have back!

Screen Shot 2013-06-26 at 10.54.42 PM.png
 

chscag

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OK, what you're seeing is normal. It's the way space is calculated. You now have the full amount of your drive as it was before.
 
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Awesome, and thanks for making that clear. But now, I have a much bigger problem. I just tried to reboot into Windows, and got the message "No boot device found, please insert boot disk"...I literally did nothing to the boot camp partition in the disk utility! Everything I did was with the Macintosh HD partition from within OS X; the partition setup looks exactly like the screenshot and yet apparently the bootcamp partition is now unbootable. Any idea what might have happened? I had stuff on that partition that I need!

Screen Shot 2013-06-26 at 11.25.05 PM.png
 

chscag

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Yeah, unfortunately when you move or resize partitions it destroys the Windows boot sector. You might try repairing it with your Windows DVD. Follow the Microsoft instructions at this LINK. But a warning.... do NOT repair the wrong partition! Make sure it's the boot camp partition you're repairing. If that doesn't work, you may be able to pull data off the Windows partition from OS X.

By the way, there are lots of web sites that show how to repair Windows 7. If you're using another version of Windows, search for the applicable repair. Note though, that the repair instructions are assuming you're using a Windows machine but in reality, your Boot Camp partition is a native Windows installation.
 
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Thanks for all the help. By the time you replied I had already thought to give the Windows (8) install disk a try, and that repaired it. Interestingly, my OS X now takes about 3-5 minutes to boot up as opposed to the usual 1 minute or so, but I suspect that might have something to do with the desktop items I created from all those screen grabs. At least now everything starts up, and I think I can figure the rest out on my own. Thanks again!
 

chscag

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Great, glad to hear you're back up again. And yes, the more items on the desktop you have the longer it will take to boot.
 

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