My Bootcamp is too small! what do?

Hi guise! Haven't been here in a while. hehe

I have a bit of a pickle and I need your help. My iMac has a 32 GB NTFS partition for Windows 7, and the rest of the hard drive is being used for Snow Leopard. I need a bit more space on my Windows partition and my Snow Leopard partition has about 20 GB of free space. I'd like to nondestructively reduce the size of my Mac partition by about 12 GB, and then nondestructively increase the size of my Windows partition to compensate. I don't want to back up and start over on either operating system, but I guess I can do that for the Windows partition if I HAVE to.

What do?

Also, should I ask this underneath the "Windows, Classic, Linux, and Other OS" board?

Bootcamp partition is too small! What do?

Hi guise! Haven't been here in a while. hehe

I have a bit of a pickle and I need your help. My iMac has a 32 GB NTFS partition for Windows 7, and the rest of the hard drive is being used for Snow Leopard. I need a bit more space on my Windows partition and my Snow Leopard partition has about 20 GB of free space. I'd like to nondestructively reduce the size of my Mac partition by about 12 GB, and then nondestructively increase the size of my Windows partition to compensate. I don't want to back up and start over on either operating system, but I guess I can do that for the Windows partition if I HAVE to.

What do?

In my opinion, you need a larger hard drive before you start thinking about re-sizing partitions. Reducing your OS X partition may lead to slow downs and other problems - since you only have 20 GB left.

Disk Utility can non-destructively re-size your OS X partition and there are several methods for doing the same with the Boot Camp partition. There is WinClone (free) and CampTune not free.

However, as I said above, it would be better to purchase and install a larger hard drive first. And be sure to backup everything before doing any re-sizing.

Regards.

The best advice I can give you is to get a bigger drive. 8 GB free space is going to cause OS X to run extremely sluggishly and other issues with any drive that has shipped in the last 3 years. You should be maintaining a minimum 15% free space on any system drive whether it's OS X, Windows, DOS, or any other os you can name.

Note: Merged duplicate threads. Posting the same question multiple times is not only not needed, it is not accepted on practically any forum.

bobtomay said:

The best advice I can give you is to get a bigger drive. 8 GB free space is going to cause OS X to run extremely sluggishly and other issues with any drive that has shipped in the last 3 years. You should be maintaining a minimum 15% free space on any system drive whether it's OS X, Windows, DOS, or any other os you can name.

Click to expand...

I have about 500 GB of unused space on my external, so I can certainly free up space if it's really that much of a problem. Once that's done I should have maybe 50 GB of free space on the Mac partition.

What do now?

im just now going to be installing windows. what would you guys recomend as far as NTFS partition for each. i have 500gb hardrive. should i just split it down the middle? both will used for basic tasks office, schoolwork, surfing ect. And windows will be running a few extra programs such as virus protection and such. any recomondations?

What version of Windows do you intend to install? Hard drive space requirements vary with the OS and whether or not it's 32 bit or 64 bit.

The minimum requirements for the 64 bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium are for at least 25 GB of disk space. Realistically, I would probably double that to 50 GB.

Requirements for XP are much less stringent, Vista about the same as Windows 7.

Unless you intend to run a lot of space hog Windows games, I would not divide that 500 GB hard drive into two equal parts.

Regards.

KyleO. said:

im just now going to be installing windows. what would you guys recomend as far as NTFS partition for each. i have 500gb hardrive. should i just split it down the middle? both will used for basic tasks office, schoolwork, surfing ect. And windows will be running a few extra programs such as virus protection and such. any recomondations?

Click to expand...

this is irrelevant...

bigfefan said:

I have about 500 GB of unused space on my external, so I can certainly free up space if it's really that much of a problem. Once that's done I should have maybe 50 GB of free space on the Mac partition. What do now?

Click to expand...

Go back and read my first post to you. If you free up space, you can resize.

Regards.

chscag said:

Go back and read my first post to you. If you free up space, you can resize.

Regards.

Click to expand...

M'kay. I'll give it a go after I free myself up. Thanx!

chscag said:

In my opinion, you need a larger hard drive before you start thinking about re-sizing partitions. Reducing your OS X partition may lead to slow downs and other problems - since you only have 20 GB left.

Disk Utility can non-destructively re-size your OS X partition and there are several methods for doing the same with the Boot Camp partition. There is WinClone (free) and CampTune not free.

However, as I said above, it would be better to purchase and install a larger hard drive first. And be sure to backup everything before doing any re-sizing.

Regards.

Click to expand...

Ok I'm all ready to resize. My Mac partition is at 65 GB free and my Windows has 7 GB free out of its 32 GB. I have Winclone and Disk utility, but what do I do next? How do I shrink my Mac partition without losing ANYTHING? Winclone looks pretty self explanatory to me...

EDIT: And what do you recommend for resizing based on the sizes given? I'm thinking increasing my Windows partition to 55 GB. Is that good?

UPDATE: Umm Winclone is baffling me..... What do? o_____________o

a bump for impatience.