Don't listen to the advice out there that tells you to
waste an entire weekend backup, delete, create a
new (and bigger!) partition, then restore when you want to
resize your Boot Camp partition. There is a much easier way: iPartition.
Ordinarily I probably would have skipped writing this post. But there's so much of the bad advice out there that I thought I'd post this in hopes that it will save someone the hassle of the ridiculous process described above.
iPartition is not the most user friendly of applications I've used on a platform known for "just working",
but it does get the job done.
For instance, when I opened up iPartition for the first time, there was no indication of what to do. I couldn't figure
out how to resize the partition. Well, it turns out that a tiny warning told me: I just
had to find it first:
Now I need to find a CD and create a bootable disk. Ok, pop it in to create one, and...
Uh oh! I've got Leopard, version 10.5. Well, now I have to take my laptop home and use the Leopard DVD.
But it didn't tell me I'd still need to burn something. That's ok, I've got blank CDs at home. Unfortunately,
it didn't say I'd need DVDs either. I didn't bring one from the office, so I had to trek up to the store.
No problem. I figured I'd need to defrag the drive anyway, since it would need to make sure nothing gets
overwritten at the end of the drive when we resize it. So, I'll start the defrag while I go out and
get a blank DVD.
Ugh. Ok, here are the algorithms:
But the one it says I need isn't available:
Oh well. I guess I'll go to the store and do the defrag after I create the disk. Thirty minutes later,
I'm well on my way to resizing partition bliss:
Only one more hiccup:
How was I supposed to know what to do or that it was done?
Oh, there you are!
iPartition wasn't the only program that gave me trouble during this process. After seeing the
beachball of doom, Firefox decided it
couldn't handle the pain:
After I got past all the distractions, the actual defrag process and resizing partitions went really smoothly.
Even with all the trouble, I'd estimate it took about 3 hours from start to done. Without the trouble,
perhaps only 1.5 hours: and most of that you don't have to be present for - just start it and go lay down to
nurse your Saturday Morning Hangover with some Gatorade, beans on toast with fried eggs, and Saturday morning
cartoons.
It may cost $50, but it's well worth it. Likewise, it might have given me a lesson in how not to design the flow of an application, but most importantly,
it saved me a weekend.
Hey! Why don't you make your life easier and subscribe to the full post
or short blurb RSS feed? I'm so confident you'll love my smelly pasta plate
wisdom that I'm offering a no-strings-attached, lifetime money back guarantee!
Leave a comment
I second that! iPartition is a *very* useful program, and has already probably saved me several hours of work. It's very much worth the $50 price tag.
Posted by Leon Miller-Out
on May 12, 2008 at 04:11 PM UTC - 5 hrs
Update: Apparently, there is a free (as in, no monetary cost) utility that does something similar. In exchange for your name, email, country, and postal code, they'll give you a link to download a pre-release version of the product, called CampTune:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/camptune/free...I haven't tried it, so I can't vouch for it, but I did want to let you know about it.
Posted by
Sammy Larbi
on Aug 19, 2008 at 07:22 AM UTC - 5 hrs
Dear Paragon,
Unfortunately your pre-release CampTune software fails to find the main HDD on my one week old MacBook Pro running the latest Mac OS X 10.5.5 (9F2114) from apple. I got the following error when I boot using your software: "No HDD installed. Program will be terminated." And now my Windows Vista (Bussines), running great for the last week will not even boot anymore.
Thank you for forcing me to use boot camp to reclaim my NFTS partiton and start over... this is not exactly the experiance I expected from using your CampTune software. Please take me off your mailing list as you will not be gettting anymore business from me.
Michael
Posted by michael
on Nov 06, 2008 at 10:53 PM UTC - 5 hrs
Michael,
I'm sorry to hear about your experience with Paragon, but I'm glad you left it here as a tip for others.
Have you contacted them about it? Maybe they have recovery procedures, or something else that can help you.
Posted by
Sammy Larbi
on Nov 07, 2008 at 06:18 AM UTC - 5 hrs
This is wonderful advice. I was about to go through the rigamarole of backing up the Windows Vista partition, etc. etc. until I read your adivce about iPartition. It was really a cinch with iPartition 3 for me, but I had to install iPartition on a separate Mac, and then boot OS X in Target Disk mode to partition it. Worked like a charm - no lost data!
Posted by
Jeff Chapman
on Nov 22, 2008 at 08:12 AM UTC - 5 hrs
