Few weeks ago I faced a problem of disk space shortage when I needed to install the space-consuming MATLAB in my Mac’s Boot Camp Windows. As I checked out the free space available in the Boot Camp partition, oops, there remained only few hundreds MB. Oh no, I seriously don’t like all the troubles of backing up all data and reinstall everything from A to Z after readjusting the Boot Camp partition size. It seems I have to get through all these huh?
If you have the same concern as mine, read on. Here’s a solution that can save you all the troubles.
First spend a few seconds on Google to find your saviour, the Winclone.
Download and install it. You can start your backup, repartition, and restoration in ease right away. Wait a minute, check out what is your Windows filesystem before you leap. If it’s is FAT32, then you need to first convert it to NTFS before you can increase the size of your Windows partition. Otherwise no matter how much larger you’ve resized your partition, it will just shrink to match the size of your original partition.
How to convert FAT32 to NTFS?
- In Windows, first go to My Computer and choose the drive you wish to convert. Right click on the drive icon and go to Properties. Make sure you know the drive letter (such as ‘C’ for C drive) and the drive’s volume label.
- Go to Start>Run and type cmd and click OK. The command prompt will appear.
- In command prompt, type convert [drive letter]: /fs:ntfs (for example, convert C: /fs:ntfs). Press Enter.
- Next you’ll be prompted to key in the volume label for your drive. (Don’t type Alliraph, that’s my drive’s volume label, not yours.)
- You’ll be asked to if you would like to force a dismount on the drive (Y/N). Type Y and press Enter.
- Since the drive contains the operating system, conversion cannot be done immediately. Type Y and press Enter again so that the conversion will be scheduled the next time the system restarts.
- Now reboot your Windows and let your computer take over the job. You can go have a cup of coffee while the filesystem is being converted.
- The conversion is done. You may want to confirm it by going to the drive’s Properties again. You should see the filesystem is now NTFS.
Hi-
Because I was running out of space on my Windows partition, I searched for a solution can came upon your post. I followed your instructions to the end, but it didn’t work. Using Winclone, I created a copy of my Windows partition, then used Boot Camp Assistant to delete it and create a larger partition. When I tried restoring it in Winclone, it said errors had occurred. I tried redoing this last part of the process a few times, but its still not successful, and my Windows is completely gone. Now I fear I will have to re-install Windows and re-configure it to my school’s system, which will taken a long time. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do before taking that step. By the way, here’s the end part of the error message:
“/Applications/Winclone.app/Contents/Resources/ntfsclone” -f -f -O “/dev/disk0s3″ /dev/disk1 1>&2
ntfsclone v2.0.0 (libntfs 10:0:0)
ERROR(22): Opening ‘/dev/disk1′ as NTFS failed: Invalid argument
Apparently device ‘/dev/disk1′ doesn’t have a valid NTFS. Maybe you selected
the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/hda, not /dev/hda1)?
return value of “/Applications/Winclone.app/Contents/Resources/ntfsclone” -f -f -O “/dev/disk0s3″ /dev/disk1 1>&2 is 256
“/Applications/Winclone.app/Contents/Resources/ntfsclone” -f -f -O “/dev/disk0s3″ /dev/disk1 1>&2 did not complete successfully
cleaning up: Mounting Disk
Volume BOOTCAMP on /dev/disk0s3 mounted
Fri Sep 12 15:25:32 CDT 2008
Comment by Winclone user — September 13, 2008 @ 4:31 am |
Hi,
I’m not sure how to solve the problem, but may I know which version of Winclone you’re using and where is your winclone file stored?
http://twocanoes.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=703&start=0&sid=685afa652bc9881c0172c02422c2678c
I think there were some users facing the same problem as yours but managed to solve it at last. Perhaps you can get a solution there.
Sorry for not being able to help.
Comment by Alliraph — September 13, 2008 @ 12:02 pm |
Awesome! Thanks so much for the step-by-step. I submitted this article to Digg.com You can see it here: http://digg.com/software/Runn_n_out_of_space_on_your_BootCamp_partition_Heres_a_fix
Go there and DIGG it up so others can see this article and be helped like I was. Thanks again for putting this up.
Comment by Bill — October 6, 2008 @ 7:10 am |
[...] Oops, running out of HD space in Boot Camp Windows partition? « Allison’s Retrospection Few weeks ago I faced a problem of disk space shortage when I needed to install the space-consuming MATLAB in my Mac’s Boot Camp Windows. As I checked out the free space available in the Boot Camp partition, oops, there remained only few hundreds MB. Oh no, I seriously don’t like all the troubles of backing up all data and reinstall everything from A to Z after readjusting the Boot Camp partition size. It seems I have to get through all these huh? [...]
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