Make BootCamp partition bigger?
So I went with the 32GB partition size for BootCamp, but now i realise that was too small for some of the apps i want on there, is there a way to expand this without blowing away the whole partion and starting again? especially as I already activated windows.
This is actually easier than you would believe.
You have to get a copy of Winclone which is available at http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone/
With this you will backup your Windows partition then you would use Boot Camp to delete your Windows partition. At this time you would use Winclone to make a new partition the size that you want and then restore your copy of windows that you backed up.
Similar Messages
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Hi, I have macbook Pro, running Leopard OS X. I partitioned my hard drive a while ago to install windows and only allowed myself 10 Gig of data. I deleted windows after i realised i wasnt enjoying using it at all and wasted my hard drive. I now decided that i want another OSX on there instead yet i have only allowed myself 10 gb on the partition. I have ben thru some programms but am struggling on making this partition bigger.
I only want it at 20gb but cant seem to make the partition bigger, only smaller or split it into further partition.
Is there a way to do this, i have all installation discs from original OSX so think this could help.
Any help please would be fantastic.
Thanks ChrisHi, dragging the partition will only make smaller, not larger. In disk utility you can only split or make smaller the partitions. Yes i booted from installation disks also but still no help.
And Brody, I am willing to erase the disc completely, infact jus started doing a backup in order to do so but that failed also. And the information you gave on partition a hard drive, Although very simple and i already know how to do this, but it wont let me make the partition bigger, and i dont want to make a new partition, just enlarge the one i already have, which i dont see possible from disk utility.
Getting really frustrated now, even backing up is saying no to me. **** external being a douche.
I dont mind erasing the hard drive but surely this must be doable without deleting the secondary partition back t a single volume, and re partitioning into 2 volumes again.
Thanks again -
Make Bootcamp partition on former laptop drive bootable again
I have my former laptop drive with its OS X partition and its Bootcamp partition. Only the OS X partition comes up on the list when the option key is held down at startup. The Bootcamp partition seems absolutely fine and I can access the files but I can't boot into it because it doesn't come up on the startup options list. I am now running Lion on my new laptop and I'm assuming that to be the problem? Hoping someone can help. I would have liked to have migrated the Bootcamp partition to the new laptop but that seems much more difficult than anticipated because it would appear you can no longer create a blank Windows partition as the install disk has to be inserted when you create the partition. I'd settle for just being able to boot into it on the, now external, drive. I can move the stuff I really want off my old OS X setup to my new laptop and then I could even dedicate the whole external drive to Windows if I wanted - as long as it's bootable!
Any help will be much appreciated. I have searched around and no-one else seems to be describing quite the scenario I have. I tried using refit it sort out the problem but it just didn't seem to do anything - I installed it on the OS X partition on the external drive and perhaps ought to have installed it on the laptop's internal drive instead - not sure - either way it didn't ask for a startup disk to be chosen and has had no effect when I try to startup again.you have to have the Windows partition on an internally connected drive.
Using Windows on different hardware / motherboard may not work or be stable even.
Re-activation on new hardware
Lots of people want to run Windows off external drive, and answer is no.
Boot Camp Assistant in Lion would be happy to set aside 60GB.
If you don't have the Windows DVD then how do you intend to? do you own one? there are other options includinig buying Windows 7 system builder for Home Premium 64-bit or windows 8.
Parallels may allow you to access and run as a VM using the old Windows.
External Windows may not show in Startup Disk for a number of reasons. - mounting and seeing the drive and NTFS, the use of some NTFS 3rd party drivers for OS X.
Try WinClone latest or something else to image and restore. -
I can't make a partition bigger?
Recently, I found a problem when I was trying to repartition my drive. I partitioned it about a month ago, but now I can't make one of the drives bigger.
Usually, you would have a dot inbetween the two drives which lets you rescale both the systems at the same time (increase one, decrease the other). But here I don't have it, and the only things I can do are
And also
Make another one which has a dot inbetween.
Can anyone tell me why I can't rescale the partitions properly and how to fix it?Once the partitions have been created, you can't move the starting point of any partition. For example:
I could highlight and remove the partition Mavericks. And while I could pull Video down to fill the space, I can't pull Snow up.
So in a similar idea to what you want to do, if I wanted to make Mavericks larger, I'd have to backup the data on Mavericks first. You could do these next two steps in either order. Highlight and remove Mavericks, then drag the bottom corner of Video up to make the empty space larger. Click the + button to fill the now larger unused area with a new partition. I'd name it Mavericks again, but it can be any name you want. Lastly, restore the backup to the new, larger partition. -
i want to instal windows 7 using bootcamp on my mac book pro and how large do i have to make the partition if i want to use it for gaming?
"At least 16 GB of free space on the disk onto which you’re installing for 32-bit, or 20 GB for 64-bit (for Microsoft Windows and Windows-based applications)."
That's what Apple proposes in here Boot Camp: System requirements for Microsoft Windows
Personally I would double these amounts and add to that the diskspace needed for your Windows games.
Stefan -
I currently have a Bootcamp partition (30 Gb or so) running XP pro. I want to switch to Win 7, which I understand requires a clean install since there is no upgrade path from XP directly to Win7. While doing so I want to increase the size of my BC partition. (I'm offloading iTunes and iPhoto to external drives and freeing up 60+ Gb so I can make a bigger partition)
Do I just run Bootcamp Assistant and do the deed as if I were starting from scratch, but specify a larger partition?
The full scenario is that I have an HP laptop running Win7, and XP pro in Bootcamp. I want to swap them. Any advice on the process? Activate/Deactivate/Reactivate dance. I realize this is a Windows question, but someone may have done this before.
Thanks for any help.contrary to kappy, you can buy and use CampTune to resize.
you can't use a HP install on Mac.
you need a retail Win7 to activate on a different motherboard.
Start from scratch. Anything else is likely to have problems. -
How to clone bootcamp partition on Mac?
Hello!
I currently have a 200GB bootcamp partition on my 2TB internal iMac hard drive. I want more space for my windows partition. I have a spare 500GB Hard drive laying around, and was wondering if there was a way that I could clone the bootcamp partition from my iMac onto that drive. I'd still want it to be bootable.That way I could have an extra 300GB of space without sacrificing my internal HD. Is there an easy way to do this? Thanks!
ThomasMac OS Yosemite and Win8.1 on external Thunderbolt/USB 3 drive.
How to:
Remember before you start: Make sure you have updated backups on everything involved, unmount all not necessary drives. during the different stages unmount the drive not working on i.e. if you are doing things on the external unmount the internal. Take your time and be sure to choose the right drive and partition so you don’t mess everything up.
1. Update all Mac OS updates from Mac App Store.
2. Run Boot Camp on internal (original) drive, including make a USB stick drivers for Win (Can take forever on a slow USB stick, but will get there) Install Windows from DVD or similar (I did from a bought DVD, no OEM allowed)
3. Test-run and configure and add all updates for Windows and installing an Antivirus app is also good to do.
4. Install a new fresh Mac OS on an external USB or Thunderbolt drive (or use CarbonCopyCloner to get a copy of internal Mac OS)
5. Check the new external Mac OS by rebooting to it. if Ok, reboot to internal again.
6. Run WinClone 4 and make an image file from the Boot Camp to an image file to your desktop.
7. Run Disk Utility and select your external drive, Choose the Partition tab, click the + below the main (only partition), select the space between the now two partitions and drag upp or down until lower parts size is at least a tad bigger than the original Boot Camp volume or bigger. Select the new partition and rename it and choose to format it to MS-DOS FAT. Execute.
8. Run WinClone again and choose your new image-file, and target your new FAT-partition on the external drive.
9. Reboot the Mac, and when screen goes black, press and hold the alt-button until the startup drives is shown, select the new Windows disk on your external drive. If all ok your computer will start on Windows on your external drive. When running Windows goto your USB-stick open the Boot Camp folder and run the setup.exe.
When all seems to work ok reboot again and this time to your internal Mac OS.
10. When in your internal Mac OS, run the Boot Camp app again and make sure only the Remove Win8xx is checked, run and the Boot Camp will be removed on your Mac drive.
Check-run everything agan.
Thats how I did it, might be easier way but at least I’m a happy camper now :-)
So now I have the options to run Mac OS on my internal drive, run Mac OS on my external together with Parallels Desktop and Windows 8.1 in a virtual or just run Windows only on the external drive (best for gaming etc in windows) -
"Resizeing" A Bootcamp partition
Hi - a pretty complex question
I know that you can't just resize a bootcamp partition, but I'm wondering if this proposed solution would work so that I could save myself some time:
-Make a disk image of the bootcamp partition and store it on the Macintosh HD using the Disk utility from the Snow Leopard installation disk.
-Get rid of the Bootcamp partition (which currently is a 32GB fat32 partition)
-Repair disk permissions (for good measure)
-Use the Bootcamp utility to create a larger (50GB Maybe) NTFS Partition.
-Use Disk utility from the snow leopard installation disk to dump the disk image of the old partition into the new partition.
Would that Work????
IF so, anything I should Know?
Thanks!Sorry, I just remembered to post the follow up:
I successfully was able to use winclone (http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone) - Thank you very much "Sausage King of Chicago"
Their is one minor caveat. In order to successfully resize the partition, the windows drive MUST be formatted for NTFS (not fat32. Type:
"CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS"
in the windows Command prompt program. (of course, substitute your local disk's drive letter for "C" - mine was "F"
Command prompt will say that it can not reformat the drive, because it would have to dismount the local disk, so it will schedule a boot time re-format. Windows will have to restart twice (for me anyways) in order to reformat, so make sure you hold down option as the computer is restarting.
Once this is done, check to make sure that Windows XP is still working properly, then boot back into OSX.
Once in OSX, use winclone to Image your Bootcamp partition. Save it as a file to the desktop.
When done, remove your Bootcamp partition from the computer (making sure that the image file is still safe!!!) using Boot Camp Assistant.
Now repair your Macintosh HD using disk utility (repair disk). My disk needed so much repair that it told me to start up with my Leopard installer disk, and repair the disk from its disk utility.
Now you are ready to use Boot Camp Assistant to set up a new LARGER bootcamp partition. When you are done, don't go ahead and install windows, instead, dbl click on the image file you made, and when winclone opens, restore it into your new, bigger bootcamp partition. It should work.
Same Windows computer- much more free space!
Thanks for your advice -
Upgrading hard drive with bootcamp partition
On my MacBook i've got a Lion partition and a Bootcamp partition with the Windows 8 Consumer preview. Would it be possible to copy the partitions from my current drive to a bigger drive and extend each the partitions to make use of the extra space? I would rather not have to reinstall both Lion and Windows as I've got all the apps and settings i like on Lion and getting an OpenGL graphics driver to work (so i could play Minecraft) and installing VB6 was a huge hassle.
You can clone both the Mac and the Boot Camp Partitions separately to external drives then back clone to the new drive after installation. Be sure to clone the Mac Partition with Carbon Copy Cloner which can copy the lion recovery partition also. After having the clone of the Mac installed then set up anew Boot Camp partition but don't install any Windows OS. Clone the original Boot Camp partition with Winclone or Paragon HDM 12 themn back clone this to the newly creaed BootCamp partition.
You might want to scan the Boot Camp section of these forums for comments on this process.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/windows_software/boot_camp -
Success: moving bootcamp partition to an external drive
Background
Due to the relatively small, non-exchangable SSD on my Mac, I'd limited the bootcamp partition to 50GB when installing Windows. I needed to install new software in Windows, but was running out of space fast and didn't have the necessary space on the Windows side. I don't use Windows that often and for that reason, I wanted to move the Bootcamp partition to an external hard drive, freeing up space for the Mac side on the internal SSD. I'd read many conflicting reports on the web, some claiming they'd done it successfully, while others said it would be impossible, because Windows 7 wouldn't run from an external drive. I had a HDD in a USB 3 enclosure, and first tried to install Windows to this (using various guides on the web). I was very close to success with this USB 3 drive, but Windows would fail during start-up. Most reports claiming to have successfully been able to run Windows 7 from an external drive, had used Thunderbolt drives, so I decided to get myself a Lacie Rugged USB 3/Thunderbolt series Solid State Drive.
Hardware used
MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display (mid 2012), 2,3 GHz Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD
Lacie Rugged USB 3/Thunderbolt series, 120GB Solid State Drive
Software used
Mac OS X Mavericks, 10.9.2
Windows 7 Ultimate
Plus several free downloads from the internet, see description below.
Procedure
Step 1: Get the Thunderbolt drive to work under your Bootcamp Windows 7 installation.
This should be simple enough, but proved to be a little tricky. Here’s what I did (assumes you are running Mac OS X before you begin):
1. Make sure your Thunderbolt drive is disconnected before proceeding.
2. Restart your Mac and hold down the option key (alt key on some keyboards) during startup.
3. Choose the Windows drive to start up Windows 7 on your Bootcamp partition.
4. After log in to Windows 7, download the necessary driver software for your Thunderbolt drive (find it at the manufacturer’s homepage of your Thunderbolt drive - in my case lacie.com).
5. If the downloaded driver installer is in a compressed format (like zip for example) be sure to decompress it before running the driver installer.
6. Shut down your computer.
7. Connect your Thunderbolt drive to your computer.
8. Start up in Windows 7 (see items 2 & 3 above) and if it all went well, you should now be able to see your Thunderbolt drive under Start>Computer.
Step 2: Format your Thunderbolt drive in NTFS-format.
Still running Windows 7 with your Thunderbolt drive connected and visible to the system, it is now time to format your external Thunderbolt drive in NTFS-format. There are several ways of doing this. I used the procedure described here at tedhhack.co.uk.
Step 3: Follow the directions at intowindows.com to clean install Windows 7 onto your external Thunderbolt drive.
As described at intowindows.com, this involves downloading Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) and running command line tools. At step 9 in the described process at intowindows.com, at the point where the installer asks if the drive you are installing to is a USB hard disk, the correct input is Y for yes, even if your external drive is a Thunderbolt drive (and obviously not a USB hard disk).
At step 10 in the described process at intowindows.com (Reboot your PC), remember to hold down the option (or alt) key at every restart in the installation process, so as not to start up in Mac OS X. Also, since your machine now has two Windows 7 installations, Windows Boot Manager will appear and ask you to “Choose an operating system to start” and there is a list of two Windows.
I don’t know how to tell which one is on the external drive and which one is on the internal drive at this point, but I started with the top one on the list and this turned out to be the one I wanted (the newly installed one on the external drive). If you pick the wrong one (on the internal drive) at first, simply restart the computer and choose the other one. You know you got the right one when the installation process continues and asks for further input.
After the Windows installation is complete (there will be at least one other restart required - remember to hold down the option (alt) key to start up in Windows, and choose the same Windows on the list in the Windows Boot Manager), you’ll be running a freshly installed, but crippled Windows 7, as you still haven’t installed the specific drivers for your hardware. But don’t worry, that will be fixed in the next step.
Step 4: Clone your Bootcamp partition from your internal drive to the external Thunderbolt drive.
In this step you will copy all the software, drivers, settings and other files from your Bootcamp partition on your internal drive to your external Thunderbolt drive. The easiest way to do that is to clone your Windows partition - and to that end you’ll need to download some free software: AOMEI Backupper Standard 2.0 fits the bill perfectly, as it will let you clone at the same time as resizing the partition to fit your external Thunderbolt drive (I went from a 50GB internal Bootcamp partition to a 120GB external Thunderbolt SSD).
1. Download AOMEI Backupper Standard 2.0 (I used the 17MB download for Windows 7), install it, and run it.
2. In the left column choose “Clone” and in the right column choose “Partition Clone”. By choosing Partition Clone instead of Disk clone, you won’t ruin the newly created (but invisible) boot partition on the external Thunderbolt drive.
3. Press Next and choose your internal Bootcamp partition as the Source Disk.
4. Press Next again and choose your external Thunderbolt drive (your newly installed Windows 7) as the Destination Disk.
5. Press Next again and you’ll get a warning that you will erase the contents of the destination partition and it asks if this is what you really want to do. Press Yes to this question.
6. Next screen is an Operation Summery. Toward the bottom of the Operation Summery screen there are a few interesting options: Edit Size of Partition, Clone Sector by Sector and Align Partition to Optimize for SSD.
7. If your destination partition is larger than your source destination like mine was, press Edit Size of Partition. This will take you to another screen, where you can drag to resize the partition. I dragged this all the way to the right to give Windows 7 the full size of my external Thunderbolt drive.
8. Leave the checkbox Clone Sector by Sector unchecked.
9. If your external Thunderbolt drive is an SSD, put a check in the checkbox entitled Align Partition to Optimize for SSD.
10. Now press the Start Clone button.
11. When the cloning process is done, exit AOMEI Backupper and restart your computer (holding down the option or alt key) to start up in your new clone of your old Windows 7 with all the same software, drivers, settings and files.
Step 5: Enjoy running all your Windows 7 applications from your external Thunderbolt drive!
Step 6: Here is where I need help/advice – can I remove the Bootcamp partition on my internal drive now?
I am reluctant to entirely remove the Bootcamp partition from my internal drive, as I am unsure whether this will disable me from starting up in Windows. I would love to hear from anyone here with insight on the matter.Step 6: Here is where I need help/advice – can I remove the Bootcamp partition on my internal drive now?
To answer my own question in Step 6 above, no, or at least I haven't found a way yet...
Here's what I've done so far:
Used the Bootcamp Assistant to remove the bootcamp partition on my internal drive.
Booted the system with the option (alt) key pressed down and now there was NO Windows drive to choose.
Therefore I used the Bootcamp Assistant to install Windows back onto my internal drive (including installing Bootcamp drivers in the Windows environment). This time I chose the minimum partition of 20GB for the Windows installation on the internal drive.
Booted into the new Windows on the internal drive and installed the drivers for my Thunderbolt drive.
Restarted with the option (alt) key pressed down, chose the Windows drive, but Windows Boot Manager still didn't pop up to allow me to choose the Windows installation on the external Thunderbolt drive.
Booted from the Windows DVD and chose Repair.
Restarted with the option (alt) key pressed down, chose the Windows drive, and now Windows Boot Manager finally popped up, which allowed me to choose the Windows installation on the external Thunderbolt drive again, phew!
So, I can run Windows 7 from the external Thunderbolt drive, but I have to use 20GB of my internal drive for a Windows installation I'll never use. Not the best solution, but at least I've saved 30GB of space compared to my previous Bootcamp partition - and I now have enough space to install the Windows 7 software I need on the external Thunderbolt drive... -
Upgrading MacBook Pro Hard Drive - cannot get Bootcamp partition to work
Hello,
The other day, I decided to replace my 320 GB hard drive with a 1 TB hard drive/SSD hybrid. I did a little bit of research about cloning the drive before that, and it seemed pretty straight forward to clone the OS X partition, but I wasn't really sure about cloning my Windows partition. Originally, my 320 GB hard drive had 2 partitions: 220 GB for OS X Mavericks, and 100 GB for Windows 8.1.
I bought the new drive with an external enclosure and plugged it in. The first thing I did was open Disk Utility and partitioned the new hard drive (750 GB HFS+, 250 GB NTFS). I figured I would need to partition it first and clone each partition separately. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the OS X partition, and it worked with no problem (I immediately could restart my computer and boot with the partition on the new drive, while it was still plugged in by USB).
Next, I tried using CCC to clone the Windows partition the same way (I realize now that CCC cannot do this). 7 hours later, the cloning was complete, but there was an error that a couple files couldn't be copied. I tried copying them manually but it didn't work. I wasn't sure if the Windows partition would work, so to find out, I switched the hard drives and put the old 320 GB one in the external enclosure. I booted my computer and it booted the new OS X partition with no problem. It also mounted the Windows partition that I cloned with CCC, and I can access all of the files in it. However, when I restarted and held down "option", it would not let me boot the Windows partition.
After some googling, I realized CCC is not able to clone a bootcamp partition and make it bootable, so I opened disk utility and deleted the Windows partition (using the minus button), then recreated it (using the plus button). I downloaded Winclone (paid $30), which supposedly can clone a bootcamp partition. I opened Winclone and it seemed pretty simple: you just choose the source partition on the left, and the target on the right. I plugged in the USB enclosure with my old hard drive, and in the Winclone menu the original Windows partition popped up. I chose that as my source, and chose to copy it to the new NTFS partition on the new drive that I created. I left it on overnight, and when I woke up it said it was completed.
I now had two drives mounted: my NTFS partition that I created, and a new one that said "EFI". I have no idea what EFI is. My NTFS partition looks like it has all of the files from my original Windows partition on it; however, when I restart it does not allow me to boot with it, although I now have the option to boot EFI. When I select EFI, I am given the Windows 8.1 start up screen (with the blue Windows logo), but then an error message pops up saying something like there is an issue and it needs to restart (it restarted before I could read the whole thing).
When I boot in OS X, I only have the NTFS partition (with all my Windows files) mounted, and no EFI. When I restart, I can still boot EFI, but I always get the same message and then it restarts.
Is there any way I can fix my Windows partition so that it works the same way it did on my old drive? What is EFI? Can I delete it? How can I make the NTFS partition, which seems to have all of my files, bootable? I only want 2 partitions: one for OS X, and one for Windows. Also, can I do all of this without having to reinstall either of the operating systems?
ThanksHmm, that's a good question!
I headed over to the twocanoes website (the folks that make Winclone) and their guide mentions something about running Sysprep before you create the Windows image. If you skipped that step, that may be why you're having issues
http://www.twocanoes.com/support/winclone/migrating-a-bootcamp-partition-with-wi nclone/
Step 24 in that guide also mentions copying a Boot file - were you able to/did you do that?
You may have better luck over in the Bootcamp forum, which is here.
~Lyssa -
I have a Bootcamp partition on my Imac with Mavericks which I can't delete because the Partition Layout in Disk Utility is greyed out and is stuck on 'Current'. What can I do? I was trying to install Windows 8.1 but apparently, this is not yet possible.
I was originally able to restore to my original Mac OSX partition using Boot Camp Assistant but then after entering Disk Utility and re-RAIDing the default RAID 1 to RAID 0 in the BootCamp partition (I suspect this is the cause of the problem but why was it defaulted to RAID 1 in the first place?!!!!), forever afterwards, I couldn't restore the single OSX partition.
Whenever I used BootCamp Assistant my choice to 'Install or remove Windows 7 or later version' was greyed out. Finally I went to Disk Utility to repartition but the Macintosh HD and BootCamp disk partition functions were also greyed out (even if I started up from Recovery mode holding down option, command and 'R' and choosing Disk Utility). BootCamp Assistant gives the error message 'The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition' with additional small script 'The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows', and DU gives the error message 'The full size of the Fusion drive is not available for repartitioning'.
What can I do to fix this problem? How can I make the Partition Layout button active in DU so I can change the partition to all OSX? I'm prepared to wipe off all my data etc to repartition and have backed up all to disk using Time Machine.My problem is fixed now, thank you. It was caused by my changing the Boot Camp partition's 'RAID1' to 'RAID0'. If I hadn't done that, Boot Camp would still have been able to 'restore' back to the one partition. It was fixed with the help of Applecare by using a terminal and typing a command to erase the IP of the Macintosh disk (not the volume) as well as the IP of the Bootcamp partition (if I remember correctly), but then I had to restore the OS and all my applications and data etc which I had previously backed up using Time Machine. I haven't taken note of the exact command terminology used. It would be wise to speak to Applecare about this if possible.
Two words of warning, 1. According to the cause of this problem, it might be wise, after reinstalling the ops system to reinstall all extra applications one by one, manually, in case a similar problem arises again. Then manually copy back all data. Or the Mac user could use the Time Machine backup and then uninstall all the added apps then re-install them one by one manually. 2. Beware as after all this the user might not have the 'Recovery partition'. There is a small recovery partition (a few 100 Mb is size) which comes with all later Macs. After all this is done this tiny partition might not be there anymore and the user might have to re-install Mavericks again to get it back, or just install the upcoming update of Mavericks due in a month or so. -
How can I restore Windows 7 to Bootcamp partition - not reformat the entire hard drive?
Hello Apple (Mac) Community,
I originally posted this question over on answers.microsoft, but no help was forthcoming. Hope someone can help me with a problem that's (almost) making me nuts! I teach graphics to college students. In brief: I run Windows 7 Pro 64 on a Mac Pro tower, along with Snow Leopard (OSX). Windows is loaded on one partition of a 1TB drive. The other partition is a Mac backup. The Mac OS is on a different drive. Everything was going swimmingly with both OS, until recently. Unfortunately, the drive with Windows showed problems and I determined that the HD was either toast or needed a total reformat. My Mac data was all backed-up. Now I wanted to backup Windows so I can easily get back to the relatively happy point of my Windows 7 experience (drivers loaded, dual monitors all working, etc.). I did some online searching and the recommendation was to create a "system image" of the existing Windows 7 install by attaching an external drive, formatting that to NTFS and selecting "backup to image" in Windows. I did that and also took the opportunity to "create a backup disc" on a DVD. (Windows recommended). Next I rebooted back to Mac OS and completely reformatted the problem 1TB disc to a single partition, zero all data, just to see if it would actually reformat. It all worked! So far, so good. Next I used Bootcamp to create two partitions, one for Windows. I then restarted using the Win7 Pro (64) install disc, reformatted the Bootcamp disk to NTFS (as required) and installed Windows 7. After all that is completed and all working, I next try to use the restore from image function while booted in Windows. I'm instructed to restart from the Win install disc, which I do. Here's where things get difficult. When I try to choose restore from image, at that point the installer asks which drives to I want to exclude... but does not show partitions, only full HDs. I do not want to reformat the entire 1TB drive. I only want Windows on the 120gb Bootcamp partition (which is already formatted for Windows BTW). I spent a lot of time online reading through articles with users having the same frustration.
So here (at long last) is my question: How can I either restore Windows just to a Bootcamp partition... using "Windows System Image" or if that can't be done... can I somehow import all of the settings, etc. from the "image" (image is on external HD) into a fresh Win 7 install? So far the "backup disc" also seems useless. I can't even boot to Windows from it. BTW Apple folks: the only response on the MS side was that some "expert" simply posted links on how to install Windows and restore... not helpful with my particular problem of restoring to a partition.
Any help would be appreciated! Hopefully some help that even a Mac user / new Windows user could understand would be better! Thanks!
-meltWinClone 3 is OS X and saves Windows image it makes for restore - that should work but you will have to try and you would need to make a new image unless it also works with a native Windows system restore image. It is now supported and has come a long way.
http://www.twocanoes.com/
Paragon Clone OS works and does disk-to-disk clone just like CCC you end up with two bootable drives. But does not work with your setup. It would let you clone and move your Windows install to an SSD or another disk drive though and be bootable.
During its clone process it checks for errors which is very helpful and lets you know - something CCC and others should adopt more of.
http://www.paragon-software.com/downloads/demo.html
I wish for our/my sake you had re-read and rewritten the long 'story' and broken it into a brief list of facts we needed.
OS X
Windows
Backup (though external is much safer) and you want bootable OS X clones as well as TimeMachine
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553
There are a number of things to do like chkdsk and others as well as Windows DVD to do automatic system repairs and find out why.
AppleHFS - the abilty to mount and read HFS volumes can be notorious.
I would rearrange and redo your storage setup and how you use the 4-5 internal hard drive bays. -
Bootcamp partition shows up as grey "disk0s4" in Disk Utility
Hello everyone,
So I am a few days into this tiring and discouraging process of trying to get my iMac back to it's original working state. Here's to hoping for a solution:
Ever since I bought my iMac, I've been running OSX Mountain Lion with Win7 installed through BootCamp, without any problems. I recently wanted to increase my Boot Camp partition size from 80GB to 149GB because I was running low on disk space, and that was the start of many problems to come.
Here's what I tried first:
Make a backup copy of my OSX partition through Disk Utility's "Restore" tab (onto external HD 1)
Make a backup copy of my Windows partition through "Create a system image" in Windows Control Panel (onto external HD 2)
Use WinClone to backup a copy of my Windows partition
Erase Boot Camp partition in Disk Utility
Resize Mac OS partition to max
Create new FAT partition (149 GB)
Restore WinClone backup to the FAT partition (hoping it'll "fill up" the remaining free space)
I don't remember all the details, but all of this led to Windows not being able to boot properly, and then soon after, OS X wouldn't work either. The built-in Recovery HD somehow became unusable and showed up as grey in Disk Utility (too chaotic to remember how). After much trial and error, I was left with the Mac's built in Internet Recovery option, which I used to reinstall OS X Mountain Lion (on top of the existing Mac partition). Afterward, I regained the Recovery HD, and resized the Mac OS X partition to cover over the unusable free space that remained.
After that:
Ran Boot Camp Assistant to start the Windows installation process from scratch.
After the installation finished, I used "System Image Recovery" from a bootable Windows Recovery USB that I created.
Upon restart, Windows would not boot (which was fixed using the bootrec commands within Command Prompt off the USB).
This allowed Windows to boot fine, and it was exactly as it was before this all began.
Now, here are my current problems.
I believe the simplest way to achieve my original goal of extending my Windows partition would be to use Paragon's Camptune X, but upon running it, it tells me it can't find any Bootcamp configuration on my system.
While both OSX and Windows appear on the Startup Manager when I hold down the "option" key (which boot and run just fine), the "BOOTCAMP" partition that I would normally see in Disk Utility (under Macintosh HD) is now listed as "disk0s4", is grey, and "unmounted". It's also listed as MS-DOS (FAT), while it shows up as NTFS within Windows.
The Startup Disk preference pane lists Macintosh HD as the only choice.
I'm exhausted from the past week of repeated backup/reinstallations and trying to make this work. I've done my share of research and reading related forum threads, with no real solution. I am hoping "The hatter" will see this, as he's offered much info/advice on this topic on these boards, but I still haven't been able to resolve this issue.
Thanks for reading, anyone have any ideas?By using Disk Utility to try to resize your Bootcamp partition you messed up your hard disk. You need to backup all your data from the disk, eraze and format your disk, and reinstall OSx, then if you want a new Bootcamp partition run Bootcamp Assistant.
Next time you want to resize the Bootcamp partition use CampTune, not Disk Utility. -
Bootcamp partition is no longer visible and bootable
I decided to change size of my bootcamp (windows partition) by following steps in this thread:
how to resize my bootcamp partition without deleting itit
I ended up with having bigger windows partition (which is what I was trying to achieve), that I was able to boot to, but my Windows disk was no longer seen in OS X. I reviewed the thread above once again and it was pointing to another thread where folks were discussing issue similar to mine:
Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition
Bottom line - Unfortunately, after performing the suggested action plan, I am no longer able to boot to my windows partition nor to see it from OS X
(I am able to select Windows disk while hitting Alt/Option during the boot, but then I get the message 'A Disk Read Error Occured. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart')
Please see the diagnostics below and please advise how this could be fixed - at minimum I would like to boot to Windows partition again, maximum - also to access it via OSX as well.
GycioMPB:~ gytis$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=320072933376; sectorsize=512; blocks=625142448
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 625142447
start size index contents
0 1 MBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
409640 531562496 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
531972136 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
533241672 27345080
560586752 64555008 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
625141760 655
625142415 32 Sec GPT table
625142447 1 Sec GPT header
GycioMPB:~ gytis$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 38913/255/63 [625142448 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
1: EE 0 0 2 - 25 127 14 [ 1 - 409639] <Unknown ID>
2: AF 25 127 15 - 1023 254 63 [ 409640 - 531562496] HFS+
3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 531972136 - 1269536] Darwin Boot
*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 560586752 - 64555008] HPFS/QNX/AUX
GycioMPB:~ gytis$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
MBR: hybrid
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/disk0: 625142448 sectors, 298.1 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 000066EB-7670-0000-C052-0000E7240000
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 625142414
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 27345741 sectors (13.0 GiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 40 409639 200.0 MiB EF00 EFI system partition
2 409640 531972135 253.5 GiB AF00 Customer
3 531972136 533241671 619.9 MiB AB00 Recovery HD
4 560586752 625141759 30.8 GiB 0700 Win HD
Command (? for help):
Thanks!Hi Loner,
please see the output:
00000000 eb 52 90 4e 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00 |.R.NTFS .....|
00000010 00 00 00 00 00 f8 00 00 3f 00 ff 00 00 e0 69 21 |........?.....i!|
00000020 00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 f8 07 d9 03 00 00 00 00 |................|
00000030 00 00 0c 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
00000040 f6 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 99 bf 2f fc e2 2f fc d2 |........../../..|
00000050 8c 92 fe 64 fa 33 c0 8e d0 bc 00 7c fb 68 c0 07 |...d.3.....|.h..|
00000060 1f 1e 68 66 00 cb 88 16 0e 00 66 81 3e 03 00 4e |..hf......f.>..N|
00000070 54 46 53 75 15 b4 41 bb aa 55 cd 13 72 0c 81 fb |TFSu..A..U..r...|
00000080 55 aa 75 06 f7 c1 01 00 75 03 e9 dd 00 1e 83 ec |U.u.....u.......|
00000090 18 68 1a 00 b4 48 8a 16 0e 00 8b f4 16 1f cd 13 |.h...H..........|
000000a0 9f 83 c4 18 9e 58 1f 72 e1 3b 06 0b 00 75 db a3 |.....X.r.;...u..|
000000b0 0f 00 c1 2e 0f 00 04 1e 5a 33 db b9 00 20 2b c8 |........Z3... +.|
000000c0 66 ff 06 11 00 03 16 0f 00 8e c2 ff 06 16 00 e8 |f...............|
000000d0 4b 00 2b c8 77 ef b8 00 bb cd 1a 66 23 c0 75 2d |K.+.w......f#.u-|
000000e0 66 81 fb 54 43 50 41 75 24 81 f9 02 01 72 1e 16 |f..TCPAu$....r..|
000000f0 68 07 bb 16 68 70 0e 16 68 09 00 66 53 66 53 66 |h...hp..h..fSfSf|
00000100 55 16 16 16 68 b8 01 66 61 0e 07 cd 1a 33 c0 bf |U...h..fa....3..|
00000110 28 10 b9 d8 0f fc f3 aa e9 5f 01 90 90 66 60 1e |(........_...f`.|
00000120 06 66 a1 11 00 66 03 06 1c 00 1e 66 68 00 00 00 |.f...f.....fh...|
00000130 00 66 50 06 53 68 01 00 68 10 00 b4 42 8a 16 0e |.fP.Sh..h...B...|
00000140 00 16 1f 8b f4 cd 13 66 59 5b 5a 66 59 66 59 1f |.......fY[ZfYfY.|
00000150 0f 82 16 00 66 ff 06 11 00 03 16 0f 00 8e c2 ff |....f...........|
00000160 0e 16 00 75 bc 07 1f 66 61 c3 a0 f8 01 e8 09 00 |...u...fa.......|
00000170 a0 fb 01 e8 03 00 f4 eb fd b4 01 8b f0 ac 3c 00 |..............<.|
00000180 74 09 b4 0e bb 07 00 cd 10 eb f2 c3 0d 0a 41 20 |t.............A |
00000190 64 69 73 6b 20 72 65 61 64 20 65 72 72 6f 72 20 |disk read error |
000001a0 6f 63 63 75 72 72 65 64 00 0d 0a 42 4f 4f 54 4d |occurred...BOOTM|
000001b0 47 52 20 69 73 20 6d 69 73 73 69 6e 67 00 0d 0a |GR is missing...|
000001c0 42 4f 4f 54 4d 47 52 20 69 73 20 63 6f 6d 70 72 |BOOTMGR is compr|
000001d0 65 73 73 65 64 00 0d 0a 50 72 65 73 73 20 43 74 |essed...Press Ct|
000001e0 72 6c 2b 41 6c 74 2b 44 65 6c 20 74 6f 20 72 65 |rl+Alt+Del to re|
000001f0 73 74 61 72 74 0d 0a 00 8c a9 be d6 00 00 55 aa |start.........U.|
00000200
So do you think there are there any chances of fixing it?
Though it is sad that resizing of bootcamp is not supported natively (by Disk Utility?) as it seems a lot of people would like to have this.
Maybe you are looking for
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