Guest blog by Paul Christopher Nathaniel, Parallels Support Team
- Extend Mac Partition
- How To Increase Partition Size Mac Bootcamp
- How To Increase Mac Partition Sizes
- How To Increase Mac Partition Size Mac
Winclone allows you to resize your Bootcamp partition. This process consists of shrinking the size of the current bootcamp partition, creating an image of the current bootcamp partition, deleting the current partition, creating a new partition with a new size, then restoring the Winclone image. Put the disk partition size in GB and apply it. Note: You can also Click add (+) to increase the number of partitions on the device. Click on each partition to change the name and format. Drag the resize control or enter the size of each partition and click Apply. Furthermore, with Disk Utility, you can delete the partition as well. Change Partition In Mac Go to Partition tab and select the partition you want to resize. Then, click and drag the widget in the left corner. Change the partition as you want.
Living in today's world of 'Big Data,' the size of the files we create, share, and store doesn't matter so much anymore. Do you remember those times when we had to shrink the size of pictures just to save some hard disk space? These days, most PCs and Mac devices come with 500+ GB hard disks—not to mention, we've also entered the age of cloud storage.
However, it isn't the same story for users with an older Mac or MacBook Air owners, who only have between 128 GB and 256 GB available. Native hard drives fill up pretty fast, so with the default size of Parallels Desktop virtual machines (64 GB for most OSes), you might have to shrink your VM during or after setup. On the flipside, users with the latest Mac devices may want to increase the size of their virtual machine(s) for a bigger value.
The good news is that both of these procedures (shrinking and expanding the VMs) are very similar. Bad news? No bad news, but I'll also share some tips on how to prevent any issues and get them fixed if they arise.
I'm going to walk you through the process of resizing a Windows 10 VM running on Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac Pro Edition, but the steps are very similar (if not the same) for other operating systems and editions/versions of Parallels Desktop.
Let me point out that these instructions are not applicable to VMs based on a Boot Camp partition. Please contact Apple if you want to resize your Boot Camp partition. A Parallels Desktop VM based on Boot Camp will be the same size.
Also, if you're reading this blog before you set up a virtual machine and you're wondering how to customize the VM size during the setup process, I've created this short video for you:
OK, let's get started! First, I strongly recommend that you check your VM's hard disk for errors and back it up.
To resize the virtual hard disk size for an existing Windows virtual machine, follow these steps:
- Start Parallels Desktop and do not start your virtual machine. Shut it down if it is either suspended or running.
- Click on the Parallels icon on Mac menu bar and select Control Center:
- Right-click on your virtual machine and choose Configure to open its configuration.
- For Parallels Desktop 14 and above:
Go to the Hardware tab, select Hard Disk which requires increasing the size then expand Advanced Settings drop-down menu, then click Properties.
For earlier Parallels Desktop versions:
Go to the Hardware tab, select Hard Disk which requires increasing the size then click Properties.
- If the virtual machine has Snapshots the following notification window will appear. Press Manage Snapshots… to open the corresponding dialogue window then remove Snapshots to start editing the disk size.
- Choose the size you want for the virtual hard disk and click Apply.
- After that Parallels Desktop will suggest creating a backup of the virtual machine.
To proceed further click Continue.NOTE: As mentioned above, we strongly recommend to create a backup of the virtual machine. In case of power surges/failures with the Mac, Mac's unpredictable restarts or third-party applications interventions, during the operations with the virtual hard drive may result in its corruption result in in the inability to use the virtual machine.
Is Windows still showing the old disk size after following these steps?Here are a few troubleshooting steps for you:
- Go to the Start menu, type cmd, right-click on cmd.exe in the search results, and choose Run as Administrator.
- Execute the commands below one by one:
diskpart
list disk
select disk # (Where '#' is the disk you want to correct.)
list partition
select partition #(Where # is the partition you want to correct.)
extend filesystem
You can also try this KB article if you're unable to increase hard disk space in a Windows 10 virtual machine.
That's all for now! As always, questions and comments are welcome. Let me know how Windows 10 runs on your Mac with the new virtual drive size, and don't forget to follow Parallels Support on Twitter. Need to run Windows on your Mac? Download our free 14-day trial.
Summary
Disk Utility got a facelift with the launch of OS X El Capitan. But this makeover didn't go well for a handful of Mac users. Some of them find difficult to perform regular disk management activities on Apple hard disk drives including partitioning the disk, creating, resizing and deleting a partition.
Good News Arriving Soon
Very soon we will need to partition our Mac hard drive in order to make room for macOS Sierra installation which Apple announced this WWDC 2016 in San Francisco.
Tip
But before the time arrives to partition the Mac hard drive for macOS Sierra installation, it is equally necessary to backup the data on Mac startup disk drive to avoid losing any files during the upgrade or installation processes.
OS X El Capitan Partitioning
With the help of screenshots, I will be explaining some basic set of activities that are to be done while partition the OS X El Capitan drive. Alternatively, the same procedure will be explained with the help of a disk manager utility known as Stellar Partition Manager.
Drafting application for mac. Background
I am using an old 40 GB external hard drive to create, resize and delete partition with Disk Utility and Stellar Partition Manager software.
** Resolving Partition Option Greyed Out issue
- Select the external disk from the left side of Disk Utility
- Unfortunately, the Disk Utility partition option is greyed out (see below screenshot)
Solution: Select the ‘Generic USB Disk Media' and the partition option will become active.
Partition Button is Now Active
Click the Partition button to start partitioning the external drive
Task 1) To create 3 Partitions of below sizes (using Disk Utility)
- Partition A = 20 GB
- Partition B = ~10 GB
- Partition C = ~10 GB
Step 1) Enter partition name and format i.e. ‘Partition A' and ‘OS X Extended Journaled'
Step 2) Enter partition size i.e. 20 GB. Press Return and slider will automatically take 20 GB. Else drag the slider to occupy 20 GB of spaces for partition A.
Now select the 19.7 GB of the remaining hard drive spaces and click (+) plus sign. Name the 2 partitions as B and C.
Partition B and C Size
As shown above, the external hard drive is divided into 3 partitions of sizes 20GB, and two almost 10 Gb of partitions. Click Apply to save the changes.
Outcome Looks Good
Very soon we will need to partition our Mac hard drive in order to make room for macOS Sierra installation which Apple announced this WWDC 2016 in San Francisco.
Tip
But before the time arrives to partition the Mac hard drive for macOS Sierra installation, it is equally necessary to backup the data on Mac startup disk drive to avoid losing any files during the upgrade or installation processes.
OS X El Capitan Partitioning
With the help of screenshots, I will be explaining some basic set of activities that are to be done while partition the OS X El Capitan drive. Alternatively, the same procedure will be explained with the help of a disk manager utility known as Stellar Partition Manager.
Drafting application for mac. Background
I am using an old 40 GB external hard drive to create, resize and delete partition with Disk Utility and Stellar Partition Manager software.
** Resolving Partition Option Greyed Out issue
- Select the external disk from the left side of Disk Utility
- Unfortunately, the Disk Utility partition option is greyed out (see below screenshot)
Solution: Select the ‘Generic USB Disk Media' and the partition option will become active.
Partition Button is Now Active
Click the Partition button to start partitioning the external drive
Task 1) To create 3 Partitions of below sizes (using Disk Utility)
- Partition A = 20 GB
- Partition B = ~10 GB
- Partition C = ~10 GB
Step 1) Enter partition name and format i.e. ‘Partition A' and ‘OS X Extended Journaled'
Step 2) Enter partition size i.e. 20 GB. Press Return and slider will automatically take 20 GB. Else drag the slider to occupy 20 GB of spaces for partition A.
Now select the 19.7 GB of the remaining hard drive spaces and click (+) plus sign. Name the 2 partitions as B and C.
Partition B and C Size
As shown above, the external hard drive is divided into 3 partitions of sizes 20GB, and two almost 10 Gb of partitions. Click Apply to save the changes.
Outcome Looks Good
Extend Mac Partition
Task 2) To resize the 3 partitions as below requirement (using Disk Utility)
- Resize ‘Partition A' to 15 GB
- Resize Partition B to ~12 GB
- Resize ‘Partition C' to ~13 GB
Now, here the problems arrives
Unable to resize Mac partition
Entered 15 GB for Partition A and pressed Return. The ‘Partition A' shrinks to 15 GB but created a new partition of 5 Gb, which is unused.
Now as per our second task, we need to create around 12 Gb for Partition B. Let's see if Disk Utility allows us to do it perfectly.
Unfortunately, neither the mouse slider nor the Size box is accepting the Partition B to expand to ~ 12 Gb in size. The same issue is bothering ‘Partition C' which is not expanding to ~13 Gb of size either through the partition slider or with the help of the size box.
No Productivity
Since the partitioning as mentioned in Task 2 cannot be done with the help of Disk Utility on OS X El Capitan we will choose to achieve this task with the help of Stellar Partition Manager utility.
Stellar Partition Manager
Task 3) To resize the 3 partitions as below requirement (using Mac disk manager software)
- Resize ‘Partition A' to 15 GB
- Resize Partition B to ~12 GB
- Resize ‘Partition C' to ~13 GB
Witness the difference b/w Disk Utility and Stellar Partition Manager
How To Increase Partition Size Mac Bootcamp
Fortunately, Stellar Partition Manager utility collects all the available free spaces on the Mac hard drive or an external hard drive and uses it efficiently for resizing the Mac partitions.
Stellar Partition Manager
Now let's achieve our tasks
** Resize ‘Partition A' to 15 GB by using the mouse to drag the edge and shrink the partition size from 20 GB to 15 GB
** Time to resize ‘Partition B' to ~ 12 GB
How To Increase Mac Partition Sizes
12 GB Resize Easily Done
** Time to resize / expand ‘Partition C' to claim all available free spaces. In the above screenshot, you can see that Partition C is of size 8.3 Gb and only 1.74 GB of free spaces are available. Hence it will take all the free spaces but this external hard drive is only 40 in size so the final size of the Partition C will be 9.42 GB.
Mac Partition Resizing Done Successfully With Stellar Partition Manager
How To Increase Mac Partition Size Mac
Click the Start button mounted on the top menu bar to apply the changes. Hence, we have achieved the partition-resizing task up to 90% with the help of Stellar Partition Manager utility. Concluding this article with: How to create bootable USB on Mac with Stellar Partition Manager application.