Growing and shrinking BootCamp installations
Once again I have to search for an entire day to figure out how to do something that should be pretty straightforward. Here is the problem statement:
I have a BootCamp partition and Windows XP installation on my MacBook Pro and I dual boot between OS X and Windows (for Games and productivity) and use Parallels to get into the Windows partition to run Windows apps while in OS X. My windows partition is -way- too small now and I need to grow it without making things messy or starting from scratch (as is the way, it seems, in the mac world).
It is pretty interesting to see people trying to do Windows things on a Mac and all of the hilarious MacBoy postings that go on in these forums. Here is what I have tried and what did NOT work, and then I will go on to what finally worked.
- Using CampTune from Paragon:
- Successfully resized the HFS+ partition down and created a new partition to be used for Windows, but did NOT join it to the existing partition. Lame
- Using PartitionMagic 8 to join the new partition to the existing partition
- PM complained about not understanding the drive lettering. I didn’t try with PM 8.5 since I didn’t have a copy.
- Using WinClone to image my windows install and move it back after a new BootCamp partition was created at the new size point.
- WinClone and DiskUtility both created readable images of my BootCamp install, but they were either in a bad state for ntfsclone to restore them or ASR couldn’t deal with the image properly.
- Doing a new windows installation and moving my files back
- After deleting my old BootCamp partition, OSX decided to move some files at the end of the drive which I can not defrag while the disk is online.
Now I am:
- Using Carbon Copy Cloner to make a clone of my OS X drive on a USB disk
- Going to boot the USB Clone and run iDefrag to compact the data towards the front of the drive
- Reboot on the main OS X drive
- Repartition the drive with the desired size & install windows
- Install Windows on the BootCamp partition
- Restore my files from the WinClone image or the DiskUtility image that I made prior.
Being smart and wanting to do things in smart ways, I desperately tried to avoid the above option, but when dealing with the way that OS X lays its disk out I had little option. It seems as though the mantra in the OSX world is just backup and reinstall. In the PC/Linux world I have virtually never blown away an installation unless I wanted to start from scratch for a reason other than problems (new system – new function). Most of my windows installations run for years without a reinstall, mainly because I tune them constantly and avoid needing to futz with it. Only if I get hit with a nasty virus do I usually start from scratch again, but that hasn’t happened in 6 years or so.
I will update the post with my results. BAH!
!!!!!!!!!!!
Update: Well, I got it working but it was a stupid 13+ year old trick I had to use to do it:
!!!!!!!!!!!
- Backup the Windows partition with Disk Utility to a USB drive
- Remove the old partition with BootCampAssistant and create a new larger one
- Install WindowsXP from CD on the new partition to setup the MBR and NTFS disk properly
- Boot back into OSX and delete the existing Windows/Documents and Settings/Program Files directories and restore them from my DiskUtility backup.
After a quick reboot Windows started without a hitch on a new larger partition.
I think it is completed Bull Crap that I have to use a method that I used with Windows 95 to get this working properly. Can’t anyone come up with a -real- way to do this, a supported way? Couldn’t Apple just build it in to BootCamp? Holy cow that was a long weekend 
http://twocanoes.com/winclone/
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/camptune/
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php
