Question Safely increase windows Partition on a triple-boot system (High Sierra, Windows 10, Mac OS 10.7) ?

[DigitalJax]

My mac mini 2011 has a 500G SSD where the first partition is High Sierra, the second one is Windows 10, (upgraded with an iso file on my desktop from a bootcamp installed windows 7), and the third is my legacy 10.7 system for compatibility with older AU plugins. The problem is, I've given it too much space and would like to have more space for my windows partition.

I'm worried about the obvious, somehow messing up the APFS, and would not be able to boot into High Sierra, or losing access to any system. I've backed up my data, but I'd rather not have to reinstall everything when it's taken me months to get this set up and I'm only half way done.



In my understanding, I have a few options, and I've had a problem once with Gparted, but it may have changed now. I'm thinking I could either:

- Boot from a live Ubuntu USB and use a tool such as Gparted or command line from there.

- Log in using recovery mode in mac os x and hope disk utility will let me resize the partition, but I don't think it will, as the windows partition is between my two mac partitions...

- Boot from my windows 10 ghost spectre installer iso and use the partition tool in it.

- Use DISKPART from a USB booted windows, (but that might not respect the mac partitions??)

Or.... what do you think I should do?

 

[USAFRet]

Any manipulation of partitions should be preceded buy a full drive backup, with known recovery steps.

 

[DigitalJax]

Any manipulation of partitions should be preceded buy a full drive backup, with known recovery steps.

Doing that now.

Still doesn't answer my question tho. What would be the best way to increase the size of the windows partition which is between my High sierra and the mac 10.7? Thanks.

 

[USAFRet]

Doing that now.

Still doesn't answer my question tho. What would be the best way to increase the size of the windows partition which is between my High sierra and the mac 10.7? Thanks.

I'm not a mac guy, so can't say anything about procedures or pitfalls.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I think what you should do is back everything up and when you verified all your back ups are good that you nuke the machine and put one OS on the drive.

Then I recommend using virtual machines for running other operating systems

If you try messing with your partitions now you’re going to be sorry and I don’t care if an Apple guy comes in here and tells you what to do you’re going to be sorry. Multi boot systems are horrible and this is why you can’t do anything with them once they’re done.

There’s no reason you can’t have a windows 10 host with nothing on it and just keep it updated and use VMware to host all the other operating systems that you want to use

take my advice and stay away from gparted and stay away from Linux. If you’re not an expert, Linux user don’t use it. That’s the quickest way to screw up your system.

with your system now there’s no way to recover anything reliably. With a single windows 10 OS it would be quick to back up and restore and keep your virtual machines on a data drive.

 

[DigitalJax]

I think what you should do is back everything up and when you verified all your back ups are good that you nuke the machine and put one OS on the drive.

Then I recommend using virtual machines for running other operating systems

If you try messing with your partitions now you’re going to be sorry and I don’t care if an Apple guy comes in here and tells you what to do you’re going to be sorry. Multi boot systems are horrible and this is why you can’t do anything with them once they’re done.

There’s no reason you can’t have a windows 10 host with nothing on it and just keep it updated and use VMware to host all the other operating systems that you want to use

There's a reason why I asked the question instead of doing that, which would be simple, however it would delete my two mac operating systems, which are the reason I got a mac. There are applications and plugins that are mac only, and I also need to use logic audio for myself and others who have made projects in the program and want me to work on them.

I'm fully aware of VMs and versed in linux, and a hackintosh won't cut it.

In my research so far and seeing how I backed up my previous windows installation on another bual boot mac mini with windows 7 and mac 10.6, I see I used winclone about 10 years ago, when looking at my old backup, to now use as the backup for this operation on my newer mac mini.

So, I can: delete windows partition and mac 10.7, resize, then add a new smaller partition, around the size I want to change it to, and reimage windows, then the mac? Or is there an easier way? I don't mind rebuilding the MBR, I'd rather just try and resize the partitions after backup.

 

[DigitalJax]

So... I'm going to backup and find out best way, was hoping this forum, being rated as number 1 for tech support would actually help, and not surreally suggesting things such as not use a multiboot system, hopefully someone on here can prove me wrong.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I don’t have a Mac but your idea sounded ok