macos+bootcamp+NTFS partition- help needed

I am running MACOS lion + Bootcamp on a IMAC with 1TB disk. my bootcamp partition is too big to practically backup (500GB) and restore. I would like to shrink it, shrink the MACOS partition (500GB) and use the spare disk space to define a NTFS partition (about 700GB) to hold my photos and videos to be accessed from windows7
this is what I plan to do:
1- remove most of the data (360GB of photos after backing them up to external disk) from the bootcamp partition.
2 - backup bootcamp with winclone,
3- delete the bootcamp partition, resize it (smaller) and restore it with winclone.
4- shrink the MACOS partition (with MACOS disk utility)
5- define a new NTFS partition with the space freed in the bootcamp and MACOS partitions
using MACOS
Does that make sense? how can I make sure that I can use the spare space from both MACOS and bootcamp partitions after I shrink them.
Note: I am quite a newbie in the MACOS world (linux experience)
Thanks for your help

You can shrink the Boot Camp partition with "Camp Tune" from Paragon Software. $19.95 from here. You can of course also use WinClone.

Personally, I would leave well enough alone. Buy a large external hard drive, format it to NTFS if it has not already been, and place all your photos and videos on it. You can still access it easy enough from Windows 7 and also from OS X with a special driver that will allow read and write.

Thank you chscag for suggesting camp tune: I did not know about this software. The only reason to use the internal disk instead is speed (SATA v USB2 ) otherwise I would just leave it alone.
Jean-luc

Just as an addendum.... I'd make a few tweaks to your steps

1 - remove most of the data (360GB of photos after backing them up to external disk) from the bootcamp partition.
2 - backup bootcamp with winclone,
3 - delete the bootcamp partition using the bootcamp assistant
4 - shrink the MACOS partition (with MACOS disk utility)
5 - Using the bootcamp assitant create a smaller bootcamp partition and restore it with winclone.
6 - define a new NTFS partition with the space freed in the bootcamp and MACOS partitions
using MACOS
7 - buy and install Paragon NTFS so that you can read and write to the new NTFS storage partition.

Thank you mrplow. I will try to follow your suggestion. I read some good comments about winclone for backup recovery of bootcamp partition. Why do I need Paragon NTFS? for dual access (MACOS+windows7)
I would be very interested in that option if this is reliable.
Jean-luc

Paragon NTFS allows OSX to write to as well read NTFS formatted partitions (natively it can only read from them).

IMO it's the most robust NTFS solution for OSX. But have a forum search and a Google around. It's pretty highly thought of.

Great. I see that there are several versions of winclone:2.2 and 3.. the first one seems to be free, v3 must be pais for. I am inclined to buy v3 as it will be properly supported I guess.

I did the following:
1- deleted user data from my 500GB bootcamp partition
2-backed up bootcamp partition to xternal drive using winclone 3.7 . all OK
3-deleted the bootcamp partition with bootcamp assistant
4- resized the MacOS partition with disk utility (shrank it)
5-define a new partition as MS-DOS(FAT) 500GB size
6-winclone restore volume to new partition -> all Ok

Note :I have installed paragon NTFS before starting the whole procedure.

Now I can see the BOOTCAMP disk in MACOS but it does not appear in system preferences-> startup disk and also does not appear when I restart and hold the alt key Did I need to allocate the new Bootcamp partition with bootcamp assistant instead???

what can I do next? thanks for your help



=====update ===== I found on the web some info on how to select bootcamp as a startup disk:
systems preference -> Paragon NTFS and select as startup disk
unfortunately, when I do that it seems to go to the disk but I get a black window with the cursor blinking on the top left corner!!!

Do not start another thread. Keep posting to the same thread in order to avoid confusion and have multiple replies. I merged your threads together.

It's because you manually created the partition rather than "5 - Using the bootcamp assistant create a smaller bootcamp partition and restore it with winclone."

chscag:Sorry for the confusion . I thought the first thread was closed as I had an answer to my question (how to do it).
mrplow: I cannot get boot camp assistant to create another partition:
I have tried :
1- shrink the macos partition (the rest is grayed out) : boot camp error: the startup disk does not have enough space to be partitioned
2- extend back macos partition to the full disk : boot camp asks for an ISO image with destination being my external disks
3- define a second macos partition (macintosh HD2) : same thing as before
so defining a ms-dos partition and reloading with winclone was the only way I found to restore the bootcamp partition

Let's start again.

You began with an OSX partition and a bootcamp partition.

So you used the bootcamp assistant to delete the bootcamp partition. Did this complete ok?

You then resized the OSX partition to make it smaller

You then used the bootcamp assistant to attempt to create a new bootcamp partition. But this didn't work? What error did you get?

delete bootcamp partition with boot camp assistant went fine.
I think I then made the mistake to use the disk utility to shrink macos but also allocate another partition.
since then I have tried all kind of possibilities as mentioned in my previous post to no avail except allocating a ms-dos parttion with disk utility and restore bootcamp partition with winclone. I read that having the NTFS driver active can cause problems when restoring the bootcamp partition. not sure what I should do now.

The NTFS driver is not the issue.

What was the error that the bootcamp assistant gave you ?

Can you post a screenshot of diskutility so we can see your partition map

thank you. Unfortunately I am not at home now. will post this evening .Basically there is one partition (blue) with size 244 GB which must be the MAC OS with a handle to resize. SO i can extend the partition all the way to fill the disk, I can also allocate new partition (NTFS or MACOS)

Although you haven't posted the Bootcamp Assistant error I'd suggest it's telling you it doesn't have enough room. It needs to do the partitioning itself. I.e. it needs to see there's enough space for your existing OSX install and the requested Windows partition to be created from the OSX partition.

Providing you have your Winclone backup - delete all partitions except OSX.
Resize OSX to the size you want the OSX partition and the Windows partition combined
i.e. if you want to end up with 300gb for OSX, 200gb for Windows make the OSX partition (for now) 500gb

Now use the bootcamp assistant to create a 200gb partition (following the example above), which it will take from the OSX partition.
Once you'll have a bootable Bootcamp partition, do not do anything else to it except restore your Winclone backup to it.

Once done, make sure you can boot into both OSs

You now have a working OSX and Windows install and, from within OSX, you can create a storage partition, formatted to NTFS, with the remaining space.

Thank you very much mrplow: newbie's silly mistake! I
I simply could not see an option to partition in boot camp assistant, because I did nor uncheck the 2 first options in select taks (create windows 7 install disk and download latest software) and I ended up with create USB bootable drive....
So now I have managed to create the bootcamp partition and restore from winclone and it is now visible in startup disk
I am now trying to skrink the bootcamp partition and it seems to take for ages. Thank you again for your support
Jean-luc

Great. Some success

Post back with how you get on.

Well, perhaps chscag was right. I should have left it alone. The shrink process did not seem to finish , so in the end I decided to force quit and I knew that might spell trouble.
I am quite annoyed with winclone not displaying any information about the time it expects to take or a progress bar that indicates that the process is not stuck.
Anyway, after that I could not delete the bootcamp partition with boot camp assistant which crashed in the process. I then deleted the partition with disk utility,tried to extend the MACOS to the whole disk, did not work. I cannot recall how many things I tried in desperation. At the end I re-installed MACOS (I thought this would bring me back to factory defauts, I discovered it does not but it seemed to have helped with the disk partitioning and the allocation of a bootcamp: I managed eventually to re-allocate a bootcamp partition and restore windows7 from my image backup!!!!!!! I will not try to shrink my bootcamp partition , although it is a pity because the image backup will take a long time, it would have bben perfect if I could have srunk it and created a shared ntfs partition for all my photos. Anyway thank you again.

For what it is worth, little late now I know, but for me Winclone has NEVER worked!