How to increase Windows dual-boot HD size on a Mac?

A couple of friends of mine use Mac notebooks nowadays, but run Windows on them because this one app they need to use is only available there.

Mr Anders is happy with his install -- and he likes to point out that although his box is physically smaller than his wife's, is just as powerful -- but mrs Mari has a problem: It appears they have two ways of running Windows; as a guest-OS under the running Mac OS, or booting into Windows and not run Mac OS X at all. She prefers to (or sometimes has to, for performance?) run Windows stand-alone, but it seems she (or whoever set up her laptop for her) screwed up in giving this stand-alone Windows install too small a partition of the hard drive. (When running it under Mac OS, I'm guessing what it sees as its "disk" is actually a Mac OS file, that can be dynamically resized, so that's not the problem. If I understood correctly(?).)

Seeing as how I'm supposed to be a "computer guy" in their eyes, but actually know pretty much squat-all about Macintoshes, I thought I'd ask you guys if anybody knows how to fix her problem. So my question is: Can the Windows partition size be increased after the fact -- is there any partition-management utility to non-destructively increase the Windows partition (and at the same time non-destructively *shrink* the OS X partition, I suppose), or some such -- or does she have to re-install Windows from scratch? Or, worse, come to think of it: Given that the rest of the disk is probably in use by the Mac OS X partition, which therefore presumably would have to be shrunk in order to create room for a larger Windows partition... Will she have to re-install BOTH of the OSes?

The machines and software are all pretty new: MacBook Pro, OS X whatever release was current late spring / early summer, Windows 7.

Post #332,620 by CRConrad 9/15/10 7:12:12 PM Reply	How to increase Windows dual-boot HD size on a Mac? A couple of friends of mine use Mac notebooks nowadays, but run Windows on them because this one app they need to use is only available there. Mr Anders is happy with his install -- and he likes to point out that although his box is physically smaller than his wife's, is just as powerful -- but mrs Mari has a problem: It appears they have two ways of running Windows; as a guest-OS under the running Mac OS, or booting into Windows and not run Mac OS X at all. She prefers to (or sometimes has to, for performance?) run Windows stand-alone, but it seems she (or whoever set up her laptop for her) screwed up in giving this stand-alone Windows install too small a partition of the hard drive. (When running it under Mac OS, I'm guessing what it sees as its "disk" is actually a Mac OS file, that can be dynamically resized, so that's not the problem. If I understood correctly(?).) Seeing as how I'm supposed to be a "computer guy" in their eyes, but actually know pretty much squat-all about Macintoshes, I thought I'd ask you guys if anybody knows how to fix her problem. So my question is: Can the Windows partition size be increased after the fact -- is there any partition-management utility to non-destructively increase the Windows partition (and at the same time non-destructively shrink the OS X partition, I suppose), or some such -- or does she have to re-install Windows from scratch? Or, worse, come to think of it: Given that the rest of the disk is probably in use by the Mac OS X partition, which therefore presumably would have to be shrunk in order to create room for a larger Windows partition... Will she have to re-install BOTH of the OSes? The machines and software are all pretty new: MacBook Pro, OS X whatever release was current late spring / early summer, Windows 7.
Post #332,627 by folkert 9/15/10 8:43:26 PM Reply	Good Luck... I always run Win* in a VM.
Post #332,636 by SpiceWare 9/15/10 9:35:40 PM Reply	here's some info, though I've not tried it myself It mentions a few utilities, plus that OS X and Windows have built-in resizing support. http://guides.macrum...ot_Camp_Partition
Post #332,639 by scoenye 9/15/10 11:01:43 PM Reply	PartEd Magic live USB stick http://partedmagic.com It contains the GParted listed on MacRumors and is a very handy tool to carry around. Works wonders on NTFS, including relocating the partition. However, I have never used it on a Mac (HFS+) partition.
Post #332,642 by CRConrad 9/16/10 2:56:01 AM Reply	Thanks, guys! Will check these out and see if I can help them. Great work! Confession: I didn't even google this first -- thought about it, but, heck, knowing nothing about the Mac world (what software is good; what people are good; which websites are good) I wouldn't have been able to evaluate the pages found... Much better to trust the human filtering to the IGM. Thanks again! -- Christian R. Conrad Same old username (as above), same old GMail.

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