So I run Vista on a Macbook using bootcamp. I have 180gb allocated to the Vista partition, and 50gb to OSX. Being a windows guy, I assumed you could shrink the OS X partition to make unallocated space, then allocate that to the NTFS Vista partition (ala disk management under windows) later down the road if need be. Unfortunately, Disk Utility in OS X doesn't seem to let you do this, and I was wondering if anyone else has successfully enlarged their NTFS partition without having to go the long way of restoring OS X to a single partition, then using boot camp to partition again and re-install windows and all the fun that goes with that. My apologies if this has been covered before, flame away! Of course, any constructive comments would be greatly appreciated. =)

I'm speculating here - maybe if you boot from the install DVD and run Disk Utility there? Even if it allows you to resize the partition, it probably won't work for the system volume. Same deal with Vista - its Disk Management snap-in supports non-destructive resizing, but not for the boot partition.

I wouldn't recommend resizing a partition from Vista on the MacBook disk, as it may leave the MBR and GPT partitions out of sync. I'm not sure whether even Disk Utility would keep them in sync.

Hrmm yes I think you're right regarding your second point, I'll give it a shot nonetheless. Thanks for the input!

GPT partitions can be resized, but I believe for non-destructive resizing the start of the partition can't be changed.

So if your Mac partition is the first partition it won't work. You could shrink the Mac partition but you would have to recreate and install Windows again.

Here's another piece of info that might be useful. I tried, out of curiosity, to image and restore my Vista NTFS partition on my PC using Disk Utility. (I imaged with Ghost before starting to be safe!)

After imaging, I erased it with Disk Utility (to FAT/FAT32), then restored. OS X could not mount the partition afterwards, but XP had no problem and Vista booted off it happily. I eventually figured out that the problem was that the restore process did not set the correct partition type in the MBR, but this should be easily fixable with fdisk - can't say how this would go for hybrid MBR + GPT disks. I guess gptsync could help with this.


I just realised my previous post might be unclear - I meant that it might not let you resize the partition while the system is running from it.