The only way I know of doing it would take a program like Partition Magic, but I don't know if it would work on a Hard Drive previously formatted for Mac.

The only other alternative I can think of would be to use Boot Camp Assistant and increase the size of the partition using that. You'll probably have to reinstall XP afterwords. Make sure you backup your data files beforehand. 5 GBs is barley enough room for XP operate in. The smallest I personally would go is 15 GB. Right now I have 30 GB on my MacBook and 32 GB on the iMac and looking for more space as I have a lot used up for games.

The only way to increase the size is with Boot Camp Assistant, but you'll lose all your info. If your partition is formated NTFS, you can save your info though. Use the free program WinClone to image your Windows install to an external drive, then run the Boot Camp Assistant to remove the partition, then run it again to create a new, larger partition. You can then restore the WinClone image to your new partition.

This will not work with FAT32 format because even if you make the partition larger, when you image the FAT32 image back, it will automatically shrink the partition to match the size the the image.

Good tips Golfer.
I didn't know about WinClone, have you used it? How did you like it?

Yep, I've used it. Very slick, easy to use, and my favorite, FREE!

Cool, I'll try it out as I need to get some more room in my XP partition.

As some of you know my recent purchase of the Mac Book Pro was contingent upon rigging one of the Macs to run Windows XP. Preferably through Boot Camp but I suspect Parallels will work for the minimal things we would need to do. Now for the question.

We have an existing Win XP drive salvaged from a previous Gateway. Is is possible to use that drive, preserving the existing information on that drive of course, for use with either Boot Camp or Parallels. The goal here is not to have to re-install that software if possible. It would be an enormous pain finding the relevant license information.

Don't tell anyone who knows me as a total Apple fanboy, but I decided I want to load Windows on my new iMac via Boot Camp just to see how it works, to learn firsthand the differences in the OS's, and to possibly take advantage of some programs not ported for the Mac.

So, I emailed my company's IT guy on Saturday, asking his advice on which flavor of Windows to run (XP, naturally) and he said he could get me a fully licensed copy through the company's account for 65 freakin' dollars! I jumped on that, of course, and - because they won't license XP anymore, but MS allows licensed users to downgrade one step - I now have in front of me a full copy of XP and of Vista, which the IT guy burned for me today.

So, I'm going to give this a shot and see how it works; this thread and others in this topic have been very helpful already.

Just passing this along: My IT guy also gave me the URL of a program he suggests I try out called "Wine" http://winehq.org/

He says it allows Mac, Linux and other OS's to run Windows programs "fairly easily." (He runs Linux at home.) I'd never heard of it, but said he's used it for years and said the list of apps it can run is around 17,000. I'm not recommending it because I have zero experience with it, but thought his description interesting enough to mention here for what it's worth.

Sly,

I'm pretty sure that route won't work. Sure would be nice if it did though.

cjr,

Codeweaver's Crossover is based on Wine. You can download the Crossover trial and see if it would work for what you need it to.

I was afraid of that Golfer. I've been searching the Net and haven't found a definitive answer. I've seen posts from a few people who claim to have done something similar but don't really give much detail.

I'm not positive, Sly, but I think the only way to select a whole separate drive is if it's installed in a Mac Pro or PowerPC. (EDIT) If that's true, you should be able to reinstall Windows over the top if you choose upgrade in the install options instead of fresh install. This would preserve documents and settings of a previous Windows installation. (Backup first before attempting this, though.)

If you could send me a Mac Pro with 2 two internal 500 GB HDs and 4 GB RAM I'll check it out for you.

cjr, your secret is safe with us. It's actually a pretty neat trick. I still get a, "Whoa! What happened there?" when someone sees me flip in, or out of Windoz when I using full screen on second monitor and then drag XP from one screen to the next. I've got WinXP in boot camp and use parallels. Coherence mode works well for me, too.

Thanks Chris. I was kinda thinking that might be the only way it's possible. I wanted to know if someone else had tried this before I dud. I'm not exactly the big Windows guy.

BTW Chris, I was going to send the Mac Pro along for testing but letting the wife use that machine will be my excuse to use the Mac Book Pro as my main machine.

Hey Sly,

I think you already have your copy of Parallels, so this might not be good for you. But I think you can do what you want with Fusion, I'll give you a link below.

http://www.vmware.com/download/fusion/windows_to_mac.html

Reading further, VMWare make a conversion utility available for free download that will turn your existing PC drive into a Fusion VM. Pop the drive into the Pro, run the conversion utility and you're good to go. Course you will still need to buy Fusion to use the VM....
Might be worth it?

mic

Sly,

Maybe I should learn to keep my big mouth shut on subjects I haven't researched in a while.

Seem Parallels Transporter can do exactly what you're asking about. It can migrate any Windows system newer that Windows 2000, in whole or in part, for use in in Parallels.

How many times do I have to look like a dolt before I learn to research first and answer later!

I think II am going to give that a try. Rick mentioned that to me a couple of days ago but I haven't tried it yet.I was looking at the documentation for Parallels and it seemed a bit iffy about reading something that wasn't the result of a previous Boot Camp or Parallels install.

My wife is salvaging some of the data of of it first just in case something goes wrong. Funny thing is she is having to use the G5 because for some reason her Vista box won't read that drive but the Mac can.i It turns out that what she really needs are the data files since she has found most of the codes for stuff that would be a pain to replace.

My hind sight, is runnin' 20/20, also as I was just thinking about migrating from a PC while reading Mic's reply (your's hadn't scrolled into view yet, Golfer and nothing against Fusion, Mic, - it's just that if Sly already has Parallels, it would seem a bit redundant. I hear Fusion is real good too.)



Wishful thinking, I suppose, but I'll throw in for shipping!

To leigh134: the original poster - now that we've taken your question round the block and back, I think you'll see that there are a lot of options available. Aren't you glad you went with Mac and MacOSG?